TANIA SIMONCELLI: Gene patent foe A US science-policy expert fought to keep genes open to all. In 2005, Tania Simoncelli managed to shock the senior lawyer at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). Simoncelli, the organization’s first science adviser, informed him that companies were s… [More]

In the war against inequality, we’ve become so used to bad news that we’re almost taken aback when something positive happens. And with the Supreme Court having affirmed that wealthy people and corporations have a constitutional right to buy American elections, who would have exp… [More]

Almost immediately after the Supreme Court ruled that human genes could not be patented, several laboratories announced they, too, would begin offering genetic testing for breast cancer risk, making it likely that that test and others could become more affordable and more widely available. … [More]

In May, the actress Angelina Jolie announced she had a preventive double mastectomy after learning she inherited a faulty copy of the BRCA1 gene, which put her at a high risk for breast and ovarian cancer. The genetic testing that gave her this information can only be conducted by one company, M… [More]

It was obvious from the questions they asked and analogies that they dreamt up that the nine US Supreme Court justices hearing one of the most important and complex patent cases in a decade were not wholly comfortable with the subject at hand.   The question before them – whether … [More]

The Supreme Court recently began deliberations in a case that highlights a deeply problematic issue concerning intellectual property rights: Can human genes—your genes—be patented? Put another way, should someone essentially be permitted to own the right, say, to test whether you hav… [More]

Angelina Jolie’s double mastectomy revelation had the unintended side-effect of boosting the share price for the biotech firm that owns the patent to her “breast cancer gene,” highlighting an ongoing US Supreme Court battle over the right to patent life. On Monday, Jolie tol… [More]

On April 15, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics. This was another significant step—probably the penultimate one—in the long-running Myriad drama. It began with a group of plaintiffs (including researchers, doctors, an… [More]

Today, the Supreme Court granted our petition seeking review of an appellate court’s 2-1 ruling upholding patents on two human genes associated with hereditary breast and ovarian cancer. We represent 20 plaintiffs, including geneticists, patients, and scientific organizations representing over… [More]

  A U.S. federal appeals court has once again affirmed the right of Myriad Genetics Inc to patent two genes linked to breast and ovarian cancer, after the U.S. Supreme Court told it to take another look at the hotly contested case. A 2-1 panel of the U.S. Federal Circuit Court of Appeals… [More]