The Genome Name

The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled that human genes cannot be patented. Our text says that God knew us while we were yet in the womb.

Companies cannot claim inventor's rights on the works of God.

So says the U.S. Supreme Court in a unanimous decision last June.

Well, that's not exactly how the nine justices put it. Rather than mention the "works of God," the court decision referred to a "product of nature," but if you believe in God as the Creator of the world, you're justified in making the substitution.

The court case concerned a Utah company's patents on certain human genes. Building on the work of the Human Genome Project, the company, Myriad Genetics, had isolated particular pieces of DNA that correlate with increased risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer, and the company received a patent on them. Myriad then developed a test that women could take to determine whether they had that particular risk.

Just a month before the ruling, actress Angelina Jolie revealed that she'd had a preventive double mastectomy after testing showed she had inherited a faulty copy of a gene that put her at high risk for breast...