Clause 1 - Methods of treatment or diagnosis
Patents Bill
10:30 am
Mr Paul Flynn (Newport West, Labour)
I am sympathetic to the points that have been raised, and share the doubts of the right hon. Member for North-East Hampshire.
This is an area of enormous importance. Pharmaceutical companies have had something of a Jekyll and Hyde career. Wonderful scientists have made miraculous breakthroughs in scientific knowledge and in discovering how our bodies work, and we do not want that to be inhibited, but the way in which the pharmaceutical companies have used patents has not been entirely for the benefit of human kind. Scientists produce their great works, which are handed over to the marketing people who behave in a way that is entirely oriented to making profits for the companies. The marketing people manipulate patents when a drug's patent is running out: the normal practice is to put part of an existing drug into a new drug, give it a new patent and a new name, and harvest the resulting sales.
Scientific progress on the human genome should be shared throughout the scientific community; it should not be used by one single company to obstruct development by all the other scientists in the world, but that, sadly, is likely to happen. A discovery in the field of human biology is different from an invention by a scientist as a result of his own creativity, or from an inventor who registers a unique discovery that is entirely the product of his or her imagination. Discovering a new scientific truth in the field or biology is different. Although the Patent Office cannot make the necessary decisions in such cases, it is right that we understand the potential abuses that can arise from patents on scientific discoveries, which should be available for future development by all scientists, not just one company.