Team:Paris Bettencourt/HumanPractice

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Abstract

The grand scheme behind the Parisian Human Practice of this year is to synthetize questions and possibly answer some of the concerns or issues that previous iGEM might have had. While this exercize being done we expect that new questions/concerns might arise. With this exercise, an outline of needs and responsibilities of either iGEMers, synthetic biologists or governmental bodies can be made. Using this final we hope to create a unified document: citizen and scientific proposal on synthetic biology.

For more information read below the call to other teams.

Updates

August 5: A citizen and scientific proposal on Synthetic Biology

After many unsuccessful attempts at creating a viable (may it be anthropological, sociological, ethical etc.) I have come up with the following idea with our main supervisor.
Much like in the early times of Biotechnology scientists gathered and set for themselves some basic standards and practices on both ethical and pragmatic issues I believe that it is time we, iGEMers, as future researchers are entitled to have our word on how the field of synthetic biology (as well as the iGEM competition) ought to look like. Did you know that the President Obama asked last year for a report on bioethical issues regarding Synthetic Biology. the report came out in December 2010 and included a set of recommendations that the discussion panel deemed necessary. Good. Better yet: why not produce a more down-to-earth proposal on synthetic biology ?
As an interesting turn of fate 2012 happens to be the year in which both French and US Presidential elections are happening (and 2013 for the German ones), what if we could produce a unified document that could potentially change the face of how Science is done? Ambitious? Most probably BUT if we co-operate on European level such an aim is completely attainable.
I am therefore setting a call to all Human Practitioners of other European teams, let's work together and try to do something BIG.

Please find the outline I propose for the co-operative project

Right now I have already asked the following team to cooperate in that project :

If any other team is interested in cooperating, of course you are welcome, don't hesitate to contact us.

September 2

Unfortunately, the call collected limited amount of support. Nonetheless, good luck to all teams in the limited time left!
Since the first update, I carried on the first part of the first step:
All the wikis of ALL iGEM teams from 2007 to 2010 have been scanned for human practice projects or otherwise questioning of the utility of their projects or extensive concern about bio-security.
A big thanks to Grenoble for cooperating with us. Thanks a lot for the video you sent to us! It shall be analysed and included in our HP project.

September 18

Here, is the first issue treated and debated by the team.

On the matter of patents and patentability

Through the scanning of previous wikis, it was noticed that a theme, albeit central to biology nowadays, had been treated only twice. It ought to be mentioned that there is no need for an extensive survey of the literature to get a grasp of what the issue revolves around. Conceptually, it is mostly an opposition of private versus public good or reward versus exclusivity. Here, I present a view that is clearly from the narrow point of view of students in research and participants in the iGEM competition.

The process in and of itself had been created to reward an inventor by allowing him exclusive economic benefits for usually twenty years. The European criterion is as follows:

Art. 52(1): ” European patents are granted for inventions that are new, involve an inventive step and are susceptible of industrial application. An invention can belong to any field of technology » ¹

This is quite vague and probably inadequate as we will see later. From my understanding, in regards to patentability of the living, treatment methods on animals and humans are not patentable while the molecules used are. Naturally occurring organisms are also excluded. However, and this is where it is most relevant to us is the point about microorganisms:

Guid. C-IV, 4.7 : The exclusion does not apply to microbiological processes or the products of such processes. In general, biotechnological inventions are also patentable if they concern biological material that is isolated from its natural environment or produced by means of a technical process, even if it previously occurred in nature.¹

Our experience during the competition has been one of open-source: many researcher have kindly shared their strains and their technical knowledge when applicable, most notably the authors of the article we are basing our study on. To be added is the offer of the “push-on push-off” system put together by the PKU team. “Why can't it always be this way?”, I ask myself naively. The immediate answer that was given to me by some non-biologists was that we were working at the fundamental level, with no real big money in play. In effect, bearing in mind [http://parts.mit.edu/igem07/index.php/BerkiGEM2007Present6 2007 Berkeley_UC]'s example, the questions of patents poses itself, at our level at least, if a clear application is the outcome of an iGEM project. That lead to think about this issue, although we did not hit a dead end by confronting any patents. The main belief that I now have is that: genomes should not be patented whatever the organisms.

Research first!
That is the main point I want to focus on, indeed as future researcher we are maybe going to be confronted with patent issues. I see no reason why any form of retention should come up in research even if patented material is used. It seems that usually University researchers do not encounter such difficulty ⁴, however in a preventive manner it should made explicit in biotechnology patents that every bit of information concerning the “invention” should be made public, freely available and threat of going to court forbidden. This is just extending the Synthetic Biology principles already exposed by Jimmy Huan of the 2008 UCSF team but applying them to the whole Living and all genomes. This open source approach in essence makes a common database of genes accessible to all researchers worldwide.
Noteworthy: I am not condemning patenting, it is a perfect way to reward an inventor (a finder more like in the context of biotechnology) for its ingenuity and hard work. However, it must not impinge on further research so, in a way similar to the BioBrick legal situation, all DNA must be open-sourced even though a particular application may be patented. In my opinion, this would be putting into practice one of the ideals of synthetic biology.
A possible solution that I foresee is to be able to patent only the final product of the genetic circuit may it be a function, a medicinal molecule etc. if and only if it has the previous requirements of general patentability.

Pragmatic approach needed
Not even considering religious issues, how can one really claim to make someting new if it is just “discovering” something that existed? The term discovering is used sarcastically since on a conceptual level even if one made a modified antibiotic or whatever he still started with the existing genetic sequence and worked in such a way that one induced a conformational change in a protein that so happened to be beneficial. This point is very debatable but nonetheless patents are useful to get the credit for one's research and efforts. Taking an example of the possible absurdity of the application of patents and the distribution thereof is given by the European Office of Patents ³ : there exist a practice that consists of collecting, characterizing and then use exotic plants to create novel drugs even though the properties of it were known for centuries. Bio-piracy, as it is called, aims at patenting genes that have an obvious function but have not yet been characterized and hence are patentable. This practice is unacceptable because the population that were cultivating it might just have to pay the pharmaceutical firm to get the exact same product. I believe that once again if genes were removed out of exclusivity then no problems would arise. The said firm would have to use faire techniques to compete against the local production: such as proposing cheaper drugs. In the envisaged solution (final product only equals possible patentability) only the final molecules would be patented under this conditional name: molecules X, Y coming an enhanced genetic circuit in microorganism Z. Under this condition, no genes could be patented, the plant genome's or the respective sequenced part available without trade secret, research could ensue and the country could still naturally produce it's plant and use it in a traditional way may the economic incentive to do so be there.

Sources

1) European Guide For Patent Application [http://www.epo.org/applying/european/Guide-for-applicants.html]
2) Biotechnology in European patents - threat or promise? [http://www.epo.org/news-issues/issues/biotechnology.html]
3) India’s Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL): A powerful tool for patent examiners [http://www.epo.org/news-issues/issues/traditional.html]
4) Can patents deter innovation, the anticommons in biomedical research. M.A. Heller . Science 280. 1998 [http://www.sciencemag.org/content/280/5364/698.full?searchid=1&HITS=10&hits=10&resourcetype=HWCIT&maxtoshow=&RESULTFORMAT=&FIRSTINDEX=0&fulltext=michael%20heller]
5) Gene Patents, in From Birth to Death and Bench to clinic: The Hasting Center Bioethics Briefing Book for Journalists, Policymakers and Campaigns. R. Cook-Deegan [http://www.google.fr/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCMQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.thehastingscenter.org%2FuploadedFiles%2FPublications%2FBriefing_Book%2Fgene%2520patents%2520chapter.pdf&rct=j&q=Gene%20Patents%2C%20in%20From%20Birth%20to%20Death%20and%20Bench%20to%20clinic%3A%20The%20Hasting%20Center%20Bioethics%20Briefing%20Book%20for%20Journalists%2C%20Policymakers%20and%20Campaigns&ei=rj12Tve0J6HW0QX9h82YCA&usg=AFQjCNHdE2ns1fmKhHj4A3J12dnjL25ZIA&cad=rja]