Patenting genetic information increases health care costs
Alex Moss, 24 - the executive director of the Public Interest Patent Law Institute. She was previously at the Electronic Frontier Foundation and a patent litigator at Sullivan & Cromwell. After graduating from Stanford Law School, she served as a judicial clerk to the Honorable Timothy B. Dyk of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit. “Patent Eligibility Limits are Vital to Innovation, Prosperity, and Public Health” 2/21,
Patents on genetic information and uses thereof will not only limit the availability of current medical diagnostics and treatments, they will also restrict the availability of future health innovations. These patents would empower their owners to block competition from those who would otherwise offer more effective or affordable tests and treatments. This exclusionary power would, in turn, deter researchers from developing new tests and treatments for life-threatening and debilitating conditions, like cancer and Alzheimer’s disease. The result will be medical care that is more expensive, less innovative, and less accessible than it is today.
We can predict what will occur because we know what happened before the Supreme Court made clear that isolated genes are not eligible for patenting in its 2013 decision, Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. (Myriad). Before that decision, one company, Myriad Genetics, had patents on isolated genetic mutations, which are highly correlated with breast, ovarian, and prostate cancers, and it used them to prevent other laboratories from developing or offering their own tests, including some which were more comprehensive and accurate.
The Supreme Court’s decision led to the invalidation of Myriad’s patents and benefited the diagnostics industry and patients almost immediately. The day the decision issued, five different laboratories announced they would provide tests for those mutations at significantly lower prices. The decrease in price—from $4,000 to between $1,000 and $2,300—and availability of tests from different providers significantly improved both the accessibility and efficacy of testing. Similar benefits were felt across the diagnostic industry as investment exploded from $6.21 billion in 2013 to over $17 billion in 2018, and a wide range of new tests for genetic conditions became available.