Supreme Court to judge on patents for treating disease

THE long arm of the law may soon reach your doctor's office. In a case before the US Supreme Court, a drug company is fighting for a patent that could hold medical knowledge hostage.

Prometheus Laboratories in San Diego, California, holds a patent on guidelines for treating gastrointestinal diseases. It is battling the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota over claims that the clinic's methods of treating these diseases conflict with its patent, which covers dosage adjustments that tell doctors how much medicine should be prescribed based on metabolites in the body.

Although discoveries can be patented in the US, this claim over natural body processes goes too far, according to a statement by a group of organisations including the American Medical Association in support of the Mayo Clinic. "Long before the patentee drafted his claims, physicians treating autoimmune disorders... recognized the relationship between metabolite levels and therapeutic efficacy of the drugs," they write.

They say that patenting the "utterly conventional steps" will result in poorer patient care. "Higher priced medical care is an inevitable result," they add.

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