WHEN Genetic Technologies announced to the stock exchange that it was making a "gift to Australia", it was accompanied by applause and dancing in the streets.
Much of this applause came from women as this gift was a potentially lifesaving test used in screening for the genes that can cause breast cancer.
Despite having the exclusive right to conduct the tests in Australia and New Zealand, Genetic Technologies said it would not attempt to stop health providers such as public hospitals from conducting the tests free of charge.
The genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, have been detected in up to 10 per cent of breast cancers and women with the BRCA genes can be from 40 to 85 per cent more likely to get the disease than those without it.
Prime Minister Kevin Rudd may have decreed that greed is bad, but Genetic Technologies has now discovered an unexploited bonanza.
So appealing did the company find it that the "gift", announced in 2003, is to be taken back.
Now, any woman who wants to know if she is genetically inclined to breast cancer will have to pay about $2000 for the knowledge.
If you don't have the money, and obviously most people will not, then it's too bad.
Genetic Technologies attempted to justify this by saying, as some laboratories were taking up to 11 months to process the tests, there would be benefits for women's health because the company could turn them around in four weeks.
They failed to spell out just how the health of all those women who couldn't afford the test would be improved.
Women have found an unlikely champion in Liberal Senator Bill Heffernan, that same Heffernan who once claimed Labor deputy leader Julia Gillard was not qualified to lead the country because she chose to "deliberately remain barren".
The senator has told Parliament the move by Genetic Technologies would hamper research and increase healthcare costs: "What this means is that all laboratories testing for breast cancer in Australia – and prostate cancer will follow because there is a patent out there on the gene technology – are going to be centralised and monopolised.
The Government ought to have the guts to say, 'We're not going to tolerate this'."
Heffernan is on the money with this issue for while the present price is between $2000 and $2500, there is absolutely nothing to stop Genetic Technologies from charging whatever it thinks the market will bear. Not surprisingly, the company has denied it will do this.
However, Cancer Council Australia chief executive Ian Oliver has pointed out that when a different company took similar action in Canada, prices rose 200 to 300 per cent.
Indeed, newly installed GT chief executive Michael Ohanessian apparently can't understand why Australian women are whingeing, saying they will be doing "very well" if they are charged $2000 a test because women in the United States are charged $4000.
Four years ago the Australian Law Reform Commission inquired into genes and genetic patents, warning of the scenario which is now evolving and saying the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission needed to look at it. The Howard government took one look at the report and tossed it in the Too Hard bin.
The Rudd Government says the ACCC is now looking into the matter.
Publicly listed Genetic Technologies has an interesting history. It's never made a profit and rents its Melbourne premises from a company owned by Genetic Technologies' founding director and board member, Mervyn Jacobson, for $501,000 a year. Another Jacobson company, Transmedia Inc, was paid $414,133 for providing licensing services to Genetic Technologies while Jacobson also earns $138,000 in director's fees.
Its shares went into a trading halt recently when a boardroom split saw Jacobson calling for a spill of all directors' positions.
Last month two stockbrokers were banned from providing financial services for five years after alleged manipulation of Genetic Technologies' shares.
Against this background, Australian women are being held to ransom – pay up or be unaware that you should be taking extra precautions to detect breast cancer and so risk a premature death.
The ACCC should move quickly to determine if the Trade Practices Act is being breached and the Federal Government should prepare to take whatever action is necessary to ensure the test remains accessible to all Australian women.
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