NY judge rules that human gene patents are invalid

NY judge rules that human gene patents are invalid

www.foxnews.com

A New York City judge has invalidated a company's patents on two genes linked to an increased risk of breast and ovarian cancer.

The ruling Monday by federal Judge Robert Sweet challenging whether anyone can hold patents on human genes was expected to have broad implications for the biotechnology industry and genetics-based medical research.

Last March, the American Civil Liberties Union and the Public Patent Foundation sued Myriad Genetics Inc., the University of Utah Research Foundation and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

The ACLU and the patent foundation said Myriad's

(visit the link for the full news article)

The snippet is the whole news story. I found this interesting and awesome to see a company getting it's butt kicked for trying something like this.

We own our own bodies, we should be able to decide what goes into it, and what comes out of it. We own the information contained within our bodies. This is great news indeed.

www.foxnews.com
(visit the link for the full news article)

This is an absolutely crucial ruling, and very good news indeed. What it means is that individual companies/academic bodies will no longer have a veto on other bodies doing medical research into particular genes or be able charge fees for the privilege — which was legally speaking very dubious in the first place, and highly controversial.

If the ruling had gone the other way it would have been a very sad day. Medical research would inevitably have become increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer rich bodies, and progress in innumerable medical fields slowed down enormously way into the future.

Great post — deserves to be flagged!

reply to post by Happyfeet


This is good news.

Watch who fights this however and you will see who wants to OWN you, your genetic code, your diseases and your health and welfare outright.

I wish this had been done in the eighties when Monsanto, et. al., were awarded the opportunity to patent the "life" they were creating. They wouldn't have those thousands of radically screwed up seeds on the market. They wouldn't be who they are without that law, they would just be making more ridiculous chemicals in some other market, sure, but maybe our food supply wouldn't be so screwed up and farmers could actually be farmers.

Wish in one hand.........

Excellent news.. I have been worried about the patents on human genes for a while now.

However I fear that this will just get overturned at a higher level court. The entire medical industry is probably against this ruling and will throw immense amounts of money and pressure at it to change this outcome.