Suit Seeks to Halt Patenting of Genetically Bred Animals

Animal rights activists and farmers asked a federal court Thursday to halt the patenting of genetically bred animals, claiming that the government has no authority to issue patents for higher orders of living creatures.

In a Washington, D.C., news conference, officials of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and six other groups said their suit seeks to delay the patenting process until Congress has had time to consider the ethical and economic impacts of such patents.

John Kullberg, president of the ASPCA, said: “What the patent office has done--apparently without authorization--is to open a Pandora’s box that can unleash extraordinary consequences. The inhumane effect (of such patents) is to equate animals with other patentable human inventions such as the pocket-size fishing rod or the cordless microphone.”

Patent for Mouse

On April 12, the Patent and Trademark Office granted Harvard University a patent on a genetically engineered mouse, the first such patent ever issued. More than 20 additional patent applications for genetically engineered animals are being considered by the government.

Practice Not New

A spokesman for the Patent and Trademark Office said the agency had not received a copy of the suit and would make no comment on the action. However, other officials noted that the government has granted patents on plant life since 1930 and on one-celled organisms since 1980.

Charles Van Horn, a lawyer for the office, said the authority for the mouse patent came not from Congress but from a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision. In that decision the court said that a truly new form of oysters would be patentable under the present law.

Based on that ruling, the office issued a new policy in April, 1987, stating that it would henceforth consider patents for any genetically engineered creatures. The only exception, the agency said, would be new forms of human beings.

Almost immediately after the decision, a controversy erupted in the scientific community and in Congress over the implications of such patents. Among other issues, farmers questioned whether they would be charged high prices for new forms of chickens and pigs that outproduced older varieties.

The so-called “Harvard mouse” was created by splicing mouse tumor genes into the genes of mouse embryos. The rodents are expected to be useful in breast-cancer research.

In the lawsuit filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in San Francisco, opponents claim that the patent office exceeded its authority by issuing the Harvard patent before specific Congressional authorization or public input had been received.

“This is not an attack on the merits of genetic engineering,” said Steven Wise, president of the Animal Legal Defense Fund. “It is simply an allegation that the patent office, by attempting to shoehorn all animals into the category of a ‘new and useful process, machine, manufacture or composition of matter,’ has exceeded the authorization Congress has given.”

And animal rights groups predicted that the well being of the creatures would be sacrificed to ever-higher productivity.

To Propose Law

Recently, Rep. Robert W. Kastenmeier (D.-Wis.) said he will introduce legislation governing the use of such patents and protecting the rights of family farmers.

According to Kullberg, the Kastenmeier legislation does not satisfy his group or others filing the lawsuit. “We would like to see a much wider debate in the Congress,” he said.

Granting that the Supreme Court intended to establish the patentability of creatures such as oysters in its 1987 decision, Kullberg said oysters are different from more complex animals. “We don’t believe the patent law ever intended to get into the arena of sentient animals, those who can experience suffering,” Kullberg said.