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Authored by: OpenSourceFTW on Saturday, January 19 2013 @ 12:28 PM EST |
I seriously doubt someone will successfully sue over that (notice the key word
successfully, I don't put it past someone to try). It's going to be rather hard
to convince a judge that you are infringing a patent merely by having children.
And if so, they have to prove that the gene was passed to children (maybe a
50-50 chance with one parent having the therapy, possibly less depending on
location of the gene),
so that would mandate a genomic fishing expedition. Expression of the gene
could
be limited as well, if it is a recessive trait.
More importantly, this treatment would have to affect the germ-line cells to be
passed at all. Changing "regular" (what are called somatic cells) will
do nothing for offspring (bringing up an interesting problem for the prospect of
gene therapy). The abstract you linked involved intramuscular injection, so the
offspring of those mice would not have the gene.
Also, we are a ways from treating people in this way. These are experiments
with
lab animals. FDA approval would take awhile.
Put all of that together and I don't think it will fly, but stranger things
have
happened.[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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