Research into new medicines is being impaired by intellectual property laws that are no longer suited to modern science, two Nobel laureates declare today in a letter to The Times.

Obstructive patents on genes and medical techniques can “impede innovation, lead to monopolisation, and unduly restrict access to the benefits of knowledge”, according to Professor Sir John Sulston and Professor Joseph Stiglitz.

While the intellectual property system was developed to ensure inventors were rewarded while sharing their discoveries, it is increasingly being manipulated by industry to thwart rivals, block research or to direct it away from humanitarian goals towards those that maximise profits, the professors say.

The commercial system that turns scientific discoveries into medicines is “unfit to serve the needs of the contemporary world”, they say.

“We believe it is time to reassess the effect of the present regime of intellectual property rights, especially with respect to the area of patent law, on science, innovation and access to technologies and determine whether it is liberating or crushing; whether it operates to promote scientific progress and human welfare, or frustate it.”

Their call comes as the University of Manchester begins a national debate on the question of “Who owns science?” Forty leading scientists and ethicists will take part in a conference today at the university’s new Institute for Science, Ethics and Innovation, of which Sir John is chair.

The aim is to draw up a “Manchester Manifesto” which they hope will reach a consensus on the way forward for intellectual property and other commercial issues that affect science.

Professor Stiglitz, who chairs Manchester’s Brooks World Poverty Institute, is a former chief economist of the World Bank and senior adviser to the Clinton White House, and won the Nobel Prize for Economics in 2001.

Sir John, who led the British part of the Human Genome Project, won the Nobel Prize for Physiology or Medicine in 2002 for his work on genome sequencing.

Both are prominent champions of open access to scientific information. Sir John was a prime mover behind the Human Genome Project’s regular public release of its data, and was a vociferous critic of Craig Venter, the American scientist who ran a rival commercial effort to sequence the human genetic code.

While entire genomes cannot be patented, intellectual property rights over many individual genes have been granted, and these are often used by their holders to prevent other scientists from conducting research.

Work on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that can cause breast cancer, for example, has been held up in the United States by patents held by Myriad Genetics, a US company, and the University of Utah, though similar patents have been revoked in Europe.

Patents have also delayed research into malaria and “golden rice”, a genetically modified variety that contains the precursor of vitamin A, Sir John said. At least two million people die each year of vitamin A deficiency, which causes blindness in 500,000 more.

Sir John said: “The present system of innovation for medicines is very inefficient and really somewhat corrupt. It benefits shareholders over patients, it produces for the rich markets but not for the poor, and it does not produce for minority diseases.

“The point is that the whole patent and intellectual property system is a good servant but a bad master.”

John Harris, Professor of Bioethics at Manchester, who is also involved in the initiative, said the race to complete the human genome had highlighted the need for fresh debate about intellectual property and science.

“As John Sulston was publishing the results on a week by week basis, Craig Venter was patenting them,” he said. “Venter and others believe that science is better progressed in a different way. We are not going to get unanimity.”

Times Recommends

• Forces chief faces new battle - the economy
• Seven days that shook the world
• Icelanders wake up and smell ... the fish