Subscribers get more award-winning coverage of advances in science & technology. CBC News. Twitter users’ most commonly stated reason for supporting CHEO was the need to protect patients’ access to diagnostics and health care, as indicated by the variable – 18.4 % (n = 57). volume 16, Article number: 55 (2015) BMC Med Ethics 16, 55 (2015). Chou W-YS, Hunt YM, Beckjord EB, Moser RP, Hesse BW. Given their potential impact on access to health care service within the Canadian system, news media, patient groups, and academics have long debated whether gene patents should be allowed in Canada [18, 19]. More specifically, we analyzed the users’ demographics, geographic locations, and attitudes toward the CHEO position on gene patents and the patentability of human genes in principle. Google Scholar. BMC Medical Ethics An inter-coder reliability assessment was conducted using Cohen’ Kappa (k), which generated k scores on different coding categories in the range of 0.735-1.000, indicating substantial or almost perfect agreement based on the Landis & Koch’s benchmark for interpreting kappa [21]. To date, there has been no analysis of Twitter in the context of gene patents, one of the most contentious and longstanding policy issues in this area of research. Manage cookies/Do not sell my data we use in the preference centre. While many tweets focused on spreading the message about the pending lawsuit, users have also articulated specific reasons for opposing the patenting of human genes and have speculated about the potential impact of the lawsuit on patients and IP rights holders in Canada. 2014;34(10):921–6. Article Plos One. 2013;110(2–1):291–7. Inc. and its impact on the patentability of “Designer” genes. Clin Genet. We collected all relevant tweets by using the keyword “gene patent”, and we excluded messages that did not mention the CHEO gene patent lawsuit or gene patents in general. Number of tweets from 3 November, 2014 to 3 December, 2014. 2009;11(4), e48. 2015;33:347–52. 4 As a matter of legal doctrine, the courts and the Patent and Trademark Office (PTO) treated these inventions as chemicals, 5 a characterization that provided an extensive body of precedent to consult in establishing the patent … These allow the genetic researchers to limit their research to only information containing gene fragments. King D, Ranurez-Cano D, Greaves F, Vlaev I, Beales S, Darzi A. Twitter and the health reforms in the English National Health Service. Prenat Diagn. In general, Twitter users did not post tweets in support of gene patents. Patenting genes began with little fanfare and little controversy in the early years of the biotechnology industry, with the patenting of newly cloned genes encoding therapeutic proteins. Social, ethical and legal considerations raised by the discovery and patenting of the BRCA1 and BRCA2. The first is as a way for a biotech or pharmaceutical company to protect the therapeutics—made with the help of genetic material—that go into the development of a new drug. Timothy Caulfield. Russo AH. With over 300,000,000 active users, Twitter has emerged as an important source of health-related information for both the general public and the research community [1, 2]. We collected 310 English-language tweets that contained the keyword “gene patents” by using TOPSY.com and Twitter’s built-in search engine. Accessed June 20, 2015. In terms of the geographic origin of the tweets, most senders (n = 166) were from Canada, with a comparatively small number of tweets (n = 29) posted by Twitter users in the United States. This case provides an opportunity to examine how Twitter was used in the context of this gene patent controversy. Canada is a jurisdiction where there has yet to be a high level of judicial scrutiny into the validity of gene patents [11]. The genes at the heart of the case are called BRCA1 and BRCA2. 2015. https://about.twitter.com/company. When Duke researchers studied Myriad's tests, designed to find mutations in BRCA1 and BRCA2, they found Myriad's patent claims made it nearly impossible for patients to pursue alternative ways to test clinically for BRCA genes without that test infringing on Myriad's intellectual property. 2013;65(4):656–69. Accessed June 20, 2015. While tweeting news on CHEO’s lawsuit was the major characteristic of user activity, arguments against the patenting of human genes were a common theme (e.g., claims that gene patents will hamper patients’ access to diagnostics). Case Studies. N Engl J Med. Nat Biotechnol. The judge in this case, however, found that isolated copies are not that different from non-isolated DNA.
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