Breast Cancer Genes and Patient Protection in an Era of Personalized Medicine
By Karuna Jaggar,
Huffington Post
| 03. 20. 2014
Genetic testing is often heralded as a cornerstone in an imminent and exciting new age of personalized medicine, in which our health care is customized based on our individual genetic profiles. But let's not get carried away by the fantasy and promise; progress has lagged while persistent medical, ethical and scientific issues associated with genetic testing abound.
Last week, we witnessed a major step toward reigning in what has, until last year, been a veritable Wild West of genetic testing. On Monday, a U.S. District Court Judge in Utah decided that Myriad Genetics could not stop a competitor (Ambry Genetics) from offering commercial BRCA ("breast cancer gene") testing as their current legal suit winds through the courts. (Full disclosure: Breast Cancer Action filed an amicus brief in opposition to Myriad's request for an injunction, along with the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Public Patent Foundation (PUBPAT), Association for Molecular Pathology (AMP), and the AARP, each of which was also involved in a multi-year lawsuit cited below which challenged Myriad's patent claims on the two BRCA genes.)
This somewhat esoteric legal...
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Image courtesy National Human Genome Research Institute
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is supposed to encourage effective medical advances while also ensuring that patients and research subjects are protected. This dual mandate demands tricky judgment calls that are made more difficult by outside pressures of several kinds, political, judicial, and especially commercial. This April story at Bloomberg examines one deeply troubling pattern of regulatory capture:
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A Netflix docuseries has put a spotlight on the unregulated world of sperm donation, particularly the lack of stopgap measures that might prevent donors who have been banned by one country from simply going elsewhere to donate more.
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Image by Duke University Archives from Flickr
Republicans have adopted a slate of policy positions ahead of next week’s convention that does not call for a federal legislative abortion ban, but opens the door to establishing fetal personhood.
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By Isabelle Bartram
| 07.17.2024
Image by Kuzzat Altay from Unsplash
Uyghurs, a predominantly Muslim minority in China, are mainly located in the autonomous region of Xinjiang. The Chinese government has pursued an aggressive settlement policy in this region since 1949, with the percentage of Han Chinese in the region increasing from five to forty percent in the second half of the 20th century. Since 2014, the Uyghurs have been subject to persecution and re-education – various sources have estimated that at least one million...