Landmark EU Decision Against Stem Cell Patents

 31st Mar 11

In a landmark opinion, the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has said that stem cell procedures that require the destruction or modification of a human embryo cannot be patented. The Advocate General of the Court, M Yves Bot, issued the preliminary opinion which questioned the ethics of embryonic stem cell research and could lead to much stricter regulation or even bans on the controversial experiments.

The case was referred to the Court in November 2009 by the German Federal Supreme Court, which had requested clarification of the legal definitions of human embryos in relation to patentability. A ‘human embryo’ is not defined in EU directive 98/44/EC on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions. The German court was attempting decide a challenge to a patent held by Oliver Brüstle, director of the Institute of Reconstructive Neurobiology at the University of Bonn. The environmental organisation Greenpeace charged that the patent was unethical because human embryonic stem cell (hESC) lines are derived from human embryos. the rest

In his opinion, Bot concludes that pluripotent stem cells cannot be defined as embryos because “they are no longer capable of developing into a complete human being”. However, he adds that the embryonic source of pluripotent cells “cannot be ignored”. Bot argues that techniques involving hESC lines are not patentable—even if the process in question does not involve the direct destruction of embryos—because they are tantamount to making industrial use of human embryos, which “would be contrary to ethics and public policy”.