Ontario Refuses to Honor Gene Patent Rights

Excellent move... a company shouldnt be able to patent human DNA...Ontario is defying an American companys demand that the province stop funding a cancer-screening test, arguing private patents on human genes that are used in such tests put Canadas health-care system at serious risk.Ontario has no intention of following British Columbia by excluding the predictive test for ovarian and breast cancers from the provinces health plan, Premier Mike Harris said on Wednesday. Moreover, Harris told a gathering of geneticists, Ottawa has to seize the initiative and look at how Canadas patent laws are applied to the rapidly advancing field of genetics."The frontier of gene patenting has been treated like the Wild West for too long," said Harris."The benefits of a worldwide effort such as the human genome project should not be the property of a handful of people or companies."
http://news.excite.ca/news/cp/010919/13/ontario-defies-us