Mr Blair's Government was then President of the European Union, and sent a very different message. Back then, public opinion about biotechnology was of little account. A whip was put on Labour MEPs to vote to make patenting human gene sequences a part of EU legislation. Indeed, initially many genetic disease patients' groups supported the gene patenting argument. Many then realised that the vision of open, humanitarian genetic research wasn't quite so rosy.
Patents are also ways to protect multi-national monopolies and hold back competitors.
They could also mean more expensive therapies. Most ordinary people outside the patenting and biotechnology professions seem to think we should not patent genes. They are simply discoveries, and part of our own make up. They are not something to be the intellectual property of an individual or a corporation. Not so, says the EU Directive.