EU Biotech Directive "Essential"To Secure Investment, Says Monti

The proposed European Union Directive on the legal protection of biotechnological inventions is "crucial" to securing investment in the EU's biotechnology industry and also for the competitiveness of the European economy. This was said by EU Commissioner Mario Monti, speaking at a meeting of the new European biotechnology association in Brussels, Belgium.

Mr Monti added that European public opinion needed to be reassured concerning the ethical implications of biotechnological inventions, and he welcomed the opinion which has just been delivered by the EU's Group of Advisers on ethical implications. This opinion underlines the ethical principle that the human body should not be commercialized.

Conditions Of Acceptability An invention issued for the knowledge of a human gene is therefore acceptable only if it enables genuinely new possibilities, for example, development of new drugs.