News Outlet:
The Huntsville Times, al.com
HUNTSVILLE, Alabama – Instead of freezing the market for new genetic products, the U.S. Supreme Court's decision that genes cannot be patented will "bring many more creative minds" to genomic research, the head of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology said Monday. Genes cannot be patented now, Dr. Rick Myers said, but new drugs, tests and technologies based on DNA research can be. It will be easier for innovators to generate those new products, Myers said, without having to deal with company patents on the genes needed for their work.
The Supreme Court ruled June 13 that genes, as products of nature, may not be patented. Myers, who was part of the original Human Genome Project team that first sequenced all of the genes in a human being while at California's Stanford University, agreed with the reasoning. "The notion that anyone could own something as fundamental as a human gene never sat well with most people," he said.
Read the full story on al.com here. You can also read Myers' full remarks here.