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on April 15th the US Supreme Court is going to hear the case of Association of molecular pathology versus myriad that case asks the question our human genes patentable in that case I filed an amicus brief on behalf of medical organizations including the American Medical Association the American College of Obstetricians and Gynaecologists the American Society of Human Genetics and others I've also had grants from the Department of Energy and from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to study the impacts of human gene patents on diagnosis and scientific research the United States Constitution privileges innovation there's actually a clause and article 1 of the Constitution that gives inventors a limited-time monopoly over their inventions in order to encourage progress in science and the useful arts and so you can obtain a patent if you invent something that's novel non-obvious and useful you also have to explain in your patent how the invention is made you can't just patent something like a space machine that hasn't ever worked or been used before you have to describe it and so the exchange is you get a monopoly for a limited time in exchange for describing the invention so others can build on it now there's some limits to what can be patented and those limits are part of a doctrine under Section 101 of the Patent Act and under the Constitution itself which says that mental steps abstract ideas laws of nature and products of nature can't be patented in 1980 the Supreme Court heard the case us versus Chakrabarti and came up with the idea that if you make something out of a product of nature what you make has to be markedly different so that you're not actually patenting the product of nature itself and that's the test that will be used in the myriad case to determine if human genes are patentable why are gene patents important what's a gene a gene is a unit of heredity in a person's body that's made up of chemical letters ATC and G so it's a long list of those letters it's important because a single change in that a typo in this sequence is can cause a disease a one letter change in a long sequence causes the disease sickle cell anemia other typos in a gene sequence can cause things like breast cancer this case s is a gene from a person's body similar to a plant from a wild marrow from the ground or is it a human invention in the case myriad argues that it took considerable human ingenuity to remove the breast cancer gene from the body and take it out of all the surrounding chemicals in the body they argue that by isolating it they've given that gene new uses it can be used for diagnosis it can be used for further research they say that they define the gene they've created something that is a human-made innovation they not only isolated it but they used general molecular biology techniques to make synthetic copies of it on the other hand the petitioners are arguing that once the gene sequence a product of nature in the body was recognized a myriad only used common scientific techniques to further isolate it and make it available for diagnostic purposes to the to the petitioners this would be the like someone had you know patented air and charged a royalty every time you took a breath it's a product of nature that should be available to all they say that rather than being true to the purpose of the progress clause in the constitution of encouraging innovation that this actually stops innovation because one entity controls all aspects of testing and research and can shut down anybody else doing research in this case there's a much battle about policy as there about law on the one hand proponents of gene patents say we need money venture capital investment in order to find genes and develop tests and treatments out of it on the other hand the opponents of the gene patents say surveys of scientists and other researchers suggest that most oppose gene patents and in fact that gene patent stand in the way of innovation of the next generation of biotech products for example for under $1000 one could have a genetic test of all 20,000 genes in the body but if each gene patent holder charged over 3,000 dollars as Mira does that test would become unaffordable due to the royalties after a 30-year hiatus since 1980 of not looking at such cases the Supreme Court has taken a trilogy of cases the first one Bilski refused to grant a patent that covered the mental stepped and abstract idea of hedging in energy trading the second meio versus Prometheus covered a law of nature the fact that when you administered a certain drug to people you would have a bodily reaction of a certain type and that bodily reaction could not be patented because it was a law of nature and this third case in the trilogy will round out the three parts of the exception by asking where's the dividing line between what a product of nature is and what a patentable invention that just uses that product of nature as a springboard it can be