``Babies with a severe form of epilepsy risk having their diagnosis delayed and their treatment compromised because of a company's patent on a key gene.
``It is the first evidence that private intellectual property rights over human DNA are adversely affecting medical care.
``Deepak Gill, head of neurology at the Children's Hospital at Westmead, said he would test at least 50 per cent more infants for the SCN1A gene - which would diagnose the disabling Dravet syndrome - if the hospital could conduct the test in-house.
``But rights to the gene are controlled by the Melbourne-based Genetic Technologies, which has already threatened to stop public hospitals testing for breast cancer gene mutations, and the hospital will not risk a similar problem.''
![[Next-Generation Sequencing Book]](https://www.bioinformatics.org/images/ack_banners/NGS-Book-1-728x90.png)
