AR-News: (UK) Groups Ask U.S. to Revoke Beagle Patent

[Animalara2003 at aol.com]

Thursday February 26, 2004 12:01 AM 
By APARNA H. KUMAR 
Associated Press Writer 
WASHINGTON (AP) - An animal-welfare organization and a patent watchdog group 
asked the government Wednesday to revoke a University of Texas patent 
involving beagles, calling the patenting of animals for medical experiments ``neither 
legally valid nor morally acceptable.'' 
The patent, number 6,444,872, assigned to the University of Texas System's 
Board of Regents in Austin, Texas, was approved in September 2002. It describes 
how a beagle's immune system was suppressed to produce an animal model to 
study a fungal lung infection. 
One of the University of Texas researchers who received the patent said it 
was granted for the procedure, not the animal. 
Borje Andersson, the University of Texas doctor who worked on the patent, 
said the groups were mischaracterizing his research. ``It's not a patent on a 
beagle; we could have done this on a pig or a sheep,'' he said. 
He said testing large animals like beagles was a necessary step before trying 
any medication on humans. 





full story:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/uslatest/story/0,1282,-3789980,00.html 









"The world is a dangerous place,
not because of those who do evil,
but because of those who look on and do nothing."
Albert Einstein    

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