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- WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has rejected
an attempt to patent a technique for making animal-human hybrids, the activists
who submitted the patent application said Thursday.
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- The activists, who said they submitted
the patent as a demonstration and never planned to actually make a half-human,
half-animal creature, called the ruling a victory for their cause.
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- "The landmark ruling puts in jeopardy
scores of previously granted patents on animal inventions which contain
human genes and other biological information in their genetic makeup,"
Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, and New
York Medical College biology professor Stuart Newman said in a statement.
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- Rifkin, a writer and economist who has
battled against granting patents on living things, and Newman, who helped
found the Council for Responsible Genetics, said when they filed the patent
application last year that they wanted to spark a debate on the issue.
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- They also hoped to block research that
involves making cross-species animals, known technically as chimeras. They
said they had hoped that by owning a patent on it, they could stop researchers
from using the technique.
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- But according to their statement, the
Patent Office said it could not issue a patent embracing human beings.
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- Rifkin and Newman argue that it already
has.
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- Mice, rabbits, sheep and cows have been
genetically engineered to carry human genes for making products ranging
from alpha 1-anti-trypsin, used to treat cystic fibrosis, to lactoferrin,
which can boost the immune system.
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- Many have been patented, although they
usually only carry one or a few human genes, making them at the most only
a fraction of a percent human.
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- Now Rifkin and Newman said they plan
to appeal the decision.
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- They say they want to force Congress
and the courts to take another look at the policy of granting patents on
life forms.
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- "The question of how much human
genetic information may be included in a genetically modified animal and
still be granted a patent will be of increasing commercial, legal and political
interest in the months and years ahead as life science companies seek patents
on a range of genetically modified research animals and cloned animals,"
they said.
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- "The PTO (Patent and Trademark Office)
has presented no criteria that can distinguish a human from a non-human
organism," Newman said in the statement.
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- "The logical conclusion of their
response to us is that no organisms should be patented."
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- In 1987 the PTO ruled that all living
things can be patented except human beings, because of the 13th amendment
to the Constitution, which outlawed slavery.
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