No, No, You Have it All Wrong

In light of the ACLU versus Myriad Genetics case, David Ewing Duncan at Tech Review asks the age-old question: "Should human DNA be owned?" In the US, Duncan says that an individual's BRCA1 gene cannot be patented, but that Myriad could patent a mutated gene sequence associated with breast cancer. Then, patients' genes could be compared to the patented sequence -- that is what the ACLU and other plaintiffs say is a mistake. Duncan says the complaint is beside the point. "The dustup about to unfold in the ACLU vs. Myriad case misses the real issue, which is how to best push forward and clinically validate the thousands of biomarkers now languishing in databases," he writes.