Who Owns Your DNA? Supreme Court to Decide on Genetics Case

Who Owns Your DNA? Supreme Court to Decide on Genetics Case :

 If a company invests a great deal of time and money into a discovery, should it be able own all aspects of that research, even if it includes work on DNA that was generated by Mother Nature? That question was at stake earlier this month as the Supreme Court heard arguments from lawyers representing Myriad Genetics– a Utah-based biotech firm that patented two genes known to heighten an individual’s risk for ovarian and breast cancer.

Myriad claims they should be able to keep the patent because of their investment into researching the properties of the BRCA1 or BRCA2 (or Breast Cancer 1 and 2) genes, which, if present, can increase the risk for cancer in individuals by age 70. But Myriad’s critics say they not only object to patenting DNA in principle, they believe it poses problems because it could lock up valuable data in the hands of private company and slow research efforts.

FORA.tv hosted two conferences recently on genetics, genomics, and the future of research within these fields: the GET Conference and the Sage Bionetworks Commons Congress.

The following clip from Sage Bionetworks features a discussion on why open research doesn’t necessarily have to be unprofitable for a company.