The Gene Hunt: Should Finders Be Keepers?
By Lynne Peeples,
Scientific American
| 07. 31. 2009
[Quotes CGS's Marcy Darnovsky]
Defendants in a high-profile lawsuit that could have significant implications for thousands of patents on human genes have now asked a federal judge to dismiss the case, calling it a "thinly veiled attempt to challenge the validity of patents."
Two months ago, more than 150,000 researchers, doctors, activists and cancer patients filed a federal lawsuit in New York City against Myriad Genetics, Inc., the University of Utah Research Foundation and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO). Under the organization of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), they are challenging the legality and constitutionality of gene patents, with a focus on two of the most controversial: BRCA1 and BRCA2. Both genes are associated with breast and ovarian cancers, and both are held by Myriad. The information encoded in our DNA should belong to everyone, the plaintiffs argue, and the current standards for obtaining a patent are too low.
"There's a sense that the privatization of certain things has gone too far," says Debra Greenfield, an attorney and postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Society and Genetics at the University of...
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Bioethics needs an update
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By Elizabeth Chuck, NBC News | 07.09.2024
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.
Released earlier...
By Amanda Becker and Shefali Luthra, The 19th | 07.08.2024
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.
The Republican...