Gene Patents

This article can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/30/business/30drug.html?ref=science

    If a gene is isolated from a patient’s body and used to make significant advances in medicine, who does it belong to: the doctor who isolated it, or the original patient? So goes the controversy in medicine today surrounding gene patents. In this article, Andrew Pollack discusses the new stance of the federal government: “Reversing a longstanding policy, the federal government said on Friday that human and other genes should not be eligible for patents because they are part of nature.”

    This is an excellent first sentence, and the next paragraph, wherein he gives the relatively unimportant details of the case, is rightly kept short. Then Pollack includes two important quotes that affirm how significant this latest development in the gene patent issue is, one of them being from a patent attorney, saying “It’s major when the United States, in a filing, reverses decades of policies on an issue that everyone has been focused on for so long.” Pollack then goes into the controversy—where the proponents and opponents of gene patenting stand and why, and a brief history of gene patents in this country. It is a nice story because it not only updates the reader on this most recent big event in the gene patent debate, but it also introduces the reader to the debate itself in a clear and concise fashion.