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May 14th, 2012 
FAKE NEWS for the Zionist agenda A Labor backbencher is breaking government ranks in a push to outlaw the patenting of human genes.
WA MP Melissa Park has united with Liberal senator Bill Heffernan over the issue and will introduce a private members bill to federal parliament in coming weeks.
In the past, patents have been granted to biotechnology companies for genes linked to breast and ovarian cancers.
In late February, the government passed the Intellectual Property Laws Amendment (Raising the Bar) Bill aimed at encouraging investment in Australian research and technology.
The laws were also aimed at protecting cancer researchers wanting access to genetic material that had been patented by private and public corporations.
But Ms Park said the government’s bill left a loophole open because it didn’t deal directly with “patentable subject matter”.
“Genes contain fundamental information about the human body that should be freely available and not locked up by private corporations,” Ms Park told ABC TV.
“Genetic information belongs to all of us; they are products of nature.”
Ms Park said the US Supreme Court recently made an historical ruling that genes should not be patented.
She is working to get support from her Labor caucus colleagues.
Senator Heffernan has long pushed for patents to only apply to inventions.
He put up a similar bill two years ago.
He said hardworking medical researchers trying to find cures to cancer and other diseases shouldn’t have to fight armies of lawyers to do their job.
“You can take wood out of a tree and build something but you can’t patent the tree,” he told ABC TV.
“I would have thought the long term health of the human race should be put above politics.”
Four thousand human genes out of 23,000 have already been patented.
There has been a longstanding debate, mostly within the academic community, about whether patents should apply to human genes.
The biotech industry argues it needs the patents to protect intellectual property and attract investment that allows vital research and development work to continue.
The Cancer Council is supporting Ms Park’s bill.
“If you can just get a patent by discovering the presence of a gene, you really block everyone else from working on that gene,” its chief executive, Professor Ian Olver, told ABC TV.
“It should be about an inventive step; then you can have the patent.”
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