Patenting Human Genes

Guests:

Joining us from Salt Lake City is Tom Harvey, business reporter at The Salt Lake Tribune, where he's covering the Myriad Genetics case.

Joining us from New York is Chris Hansen, Senior National Staff Counsel at the American Civil Liberties Union. He is lead attorney in the gene patenting lawsuit that pits the ACLU against the Salt Lake City firm Myriad Genetics and the US Patent and Trademark Office. You can read the ACLU's complaint here (pdf).

From Washington we're joined by Hans Sauer, Associate General Counsel for Intellectual Property for the Biotechnology Industry Organization, known as BIO. Its membership includes more than 1,200 biotechnology companies and is aligned with Myriad Genetics in defense of gene patenting.

And from New York we're joined by Wendy Chung, M.D., Ph.D., director of clinical genetics at Columbia University and a plaintiff in the ACLU v. Myriad Genetics case.