JAMA Opinion Piece: The Short and Long Term Implications of Myriad Decision

On June 13, 2013, the Supreme Court ruled in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics that a human gene removed from the body and unchanged from its natural form cannot be patented.   Cancer advocates greeted the ruling with enthusiasm and also hoped that the ruling would have the impact of creating more competition for the BRCA 1 and BRCA 2 tests marketed by Myriad.  Since the ruling, Myriad has sued to block marketing of competitor BRCA tests.   Lawrence Gostin of Georgetown University Law Center discusses the short- and long-term implications of the Myriad decision in an opinion piece published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, “Who Owns Human Genes? Is DNA Patentable?”