Author's response

My article discusses the ways in which gene patents might interfere with health care. If a gene test is available to determine who will respond to a drug, physicians can better target a drug and not prescribe it to non-responders. However, this will diminish the market for that drug — so a drug company might use its gene patent to prohibit the use of such a test.

A Wall Street Journal article1 indicated that GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) had filed for patents on genetic tests for the effectiveness of its asthma medicine Flovent, but was not going to develop the tests or let anyone else develop them. If Dr Roses is troubled by my citing this article, he could make GSK's actual licensing strategies and agreements available to the public and to scholars at the University of Pennsylvania, USA, and Georgetown University, USA, who have received federal research grants to study the impact of gene patents. Pilot studies by the Pennsylvania group and others have found that many companies have not been forthcoming in this area, leading scholars to turn to the business press.

Dr Roses is correct that the owner of the APOE patent is Duke University, which in turn has granted Athena an exclusive license. So, Athena now has the exact same right that the patent holder would have had to forbid any laboratory except its own to screen for mutations. Using that power, a company can impose its own view of who warrants testing and for what mutations. But do we really want biotech companies to be practising medicine and deciding what tests are available and to whom?