Genes without patents
As Supreme Court Justice Elena Kagan questioned Myriad Genetics’ attorney about patenting genes, Chris Hansen rejoiced. The attorney said that yes, genes should be patentable. But it was only under the pressure of further questions that he said that chromosomes, too, should be patentable, and — more reluctantly still — organs such as kidneys. “It was all I could do to not leap out of my chair and go, ‘Yaaay!’ ” Hansen said of the spring hearing. To Hansen, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) lawyer who led the lawsuit against Myriad Genetics’ patents of two human breast cancer genes, BRCA1 and BRCA2, the exchange augured well for the case’s outcome. The line of questioning seemed to bolster the ACLU’s argument that the genes were a product of nature, like a kidney, and so by law, not patentable. In isolating the genes for breast cancer, it argued, Myriad invented nothing that wasn’t already...