Responding to an HHS committee's request for comment on its educational and marketing practices, Myriad maintained that urging doctors to conduct genetic counseling in house instead of referring patients to a genetic counselor is legally sound, follows professional medical societies' standards, and accommodates the shortage of cancer genetics professionals.

Roche NimbleGen, Atlas Biolabs, Silicon Kinetics, Dimole

Have strong feelings on the NIH grant review process? Well, here's your chance to sound off and vent your frustrations with a reader poll over at DrugMonkey's place. The purpose of the poll is to determine whether the number of summary statements and the review service changes the way researchers view the alleged flaws in the review process. If you've got a bone to pick because, for example, a really high percentage of your applications have received seriously flawed reviews, let your voice be heard so that maybe, just maybe, things might be better for the next generation of investigators.

The New York Times profiles GlaxoSmithKline's Andrew Witty, particularly focusing on his efforts to help the poor. Witty has promised to limit the price of GSK drugs in poor countries to no more than 25 percent of what they charge in wealthy nations and to donate one-fifth of the profits from poor countries to build up their healthcare systems. Witty, of course, has his detractors. Daniel Berman, who began the Doctors Without Borders' Access Campaign says that moving vaccine technology to middle-income countries was "still a lot of smoke and mirrors" and that GSK's malaria-focused lab in Spain "still doesn't have a big enough budget to make a difference." Witty has won over others, including Oxfam's Sophia Tickell. "I'm in charge of an organization that can actually make a difference for people in the third world, and I am not going to be the person who, after X years, sits back and says, 'Oh, I wish I'd done more,'" Witty says.

Tunisia Riley at Under the Microscope compiled a list of family-friendly companies in science, technology and health. She says that each of the companies on her list "have one or more of the following: a high percentage of women employees, good paid maternity/paternity leave, on-site childcare and a proven commitment to a work-life balance for their employees." And that list includes Cornell University, Eli Lily, and Genentech, among others.

Sequenom expects its CLIA lab to launch the test in early 2011.