Crab mouse

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A cancer mouse , also Harvard cancer mouse , oncom mouse or - as its trade name - OncoMouse is a genetically modified house mouse that tends to develop tumors more easily . For this organism, which was specially created for medical research, Philip Leder and Timothy A. Stewart transferred human breast cancer genes into mouse embryos with the help of retroviruses at Harvard University in 1984 .

The crab mouse attracted public attention in the late 1980s mainly because of several patents that were granted in North America and Europe for this transgenic organism in favor of the chemical and pharmaceutical company DuPont . The crab mouse was the first mammalian organism to be protected by patent . In the public discussion about patents, in addition to questions of animal ethics, the limits of the patentability of life were also discussed in general. In Canada , the patentability of the crab mouse was rejected by the Supreme Court because higher life forms could not be the subject of an invention. The patent application was also initially rejected at the European Patent Office because animal species were not patentable. The Board of Appeal then differentiated between animal species and individual manipulated animals and initially granted the patent in 1992 under the number EP 169672 and confirmed it in 2004. Besides religious or obligation ethically embossed arguments mainly on the degradation of the creature off, which criticized Federal Ethics Committee on Non-Human Biotechnology (ECNH) on the patenting that due to the high licensing fees, the animal model can hardly be used for research. In general, the patenting of laboratory animals would disadvantage small companies and result in disadvantages for the freedom of knowledge exchange, which could lead to a restriction of research.

The crab mouse became the subject of social scientific analysis in a book by the feminist sociologist of science Donna Haraway (1996), in which the "OncoMouse ™" is presented as a biofact that questions the boundaries between humans and animals, nature and society, as well as value-free science and practical technology and is a characteristic example of practices of a hybrid “ technoscience ”. At Haraway, the mouse modified with a breast cancer gene and protected by trademark is symbolic of the appropriation and marketing of life forms.

literature

  • Fiona Murray: The Oncomouse That Roared: Hybrid Exchange Strategies as a Source of Distinction at the Boundary of Overlapping Institutions. In: American Journal of Sociology . Vol. 116, No. 2 (September 2010), pp. 341-388.
  • Maurizio Salvi: Transforming Animal Species: the Case of 'Oncomouse'. In: Science and Engineering Ethics (2001) 7, 15-28.
  • Donna J. Haraway: Modest_Witness @ Second_Millennium. FemaleMan © _Meets_OncoMouse ™. Feminism and Technoscience. Routledge, New, York and London 1996, ISBN 0-4159-12458 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Harvard College v Canada (Commissioner of Patent) 2002 SCC 76, quoted from Bioethics and Patent Law: The Case of the Oncomouse. In: WIPO Magazine, Issue 3 2006.
  2. ↑ See Jürgen Ensthaler: Commercial legal protection and copyright. Springer, 2009, ISBN 3540899960 , p. 139.
  3. ↑ See also EPA, GRUR Int 2006, 239, 250 - Crab mouse / HARVARD IV.
  4. ↑ In the confirming decision of 2004, however, the patent was restricted to mice, Christine Godt: Property of information: patent protection and general property theory using the example of genetic information. Mohr Siebeck, 2007, ISBN 316149010X , p. 89.
  5. ↑ Arianna Ferrari, Christopher Coenen, Armin Grunwald, Arnold Sauter: Animal Enhancement - New technical possibilities and ethical questions. (PDF; 1.2 MB) Published by the EKAH. Federal Office for Buildings and Logistics FOBL, Bern 2010, p. 114.
  6. ^ Sarah Franklin: Life Itself . In: Sarah Franklin, Celia Lury, Jackie Stacey: Global nature, global culture - Gender, theory and culture. SAGE, 2000, ISBN 0761965998 , pp. 188, 221.
  7. ^ Judy Wajcman: TechnoFeminism . Wiley-Blackwell, 2004, ISBN 0745630448 , p. 89.