Weekend Open Thread: All Your Base (and Amino Acid) are Belong to Us

This is bad — really bad, even worse than the pun in the above headline.  Let’s go to the video:

The U.S. Supreme Court will soon decide whether this patenting of human genes — possibly your human genes — described in the video is legal.  (Here’s a lawyer explaining the issues in Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics for you, if you’re into that sort of thing.)  Apparently, they’re not that likely to win — although they did win at a lower level — but even the attempt is an example of a corporate action best expressed as, spelling things out in the language of amino acids, “GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA”!  We’ll have more on the story as it develops — unless they repossess the body parts we need to type it for you.  (By the way, people have been unable to get cancer tests because they can’t afford the royalties they have to pay Myriad Genetics due to their patent, so this is sort of “life-and-deathy.”)

Definitely Twisted

This is your Weekend Open Thread. Talk about this or whatever else you’d like, within broad bounds of reason and decorum.


About Greg Diamond

Somewhat verbose attorney, semi-disabled and semi-retired, residing in northwest Brea. Occasionally ran for office against jerks who otherwise would have gonr unopposed. Got 45% of the vote against Bob Huff for State Senate in 2012; Josh Newman then won the seat in 2016. In 2014 became the first attorney to challenge OCDA Tony Rackauckas since 2002; Todd Spitzer then won that seat in 2018. Every time he's run against some rotten incumbent, the *next* person to challenge them wins! He's OK with that. Corrupt party hacks hate him. He's OK with that too. He does advise some local campaigns informally and (so far) without compensation. (If that last bit changes, he will declare the interest.) His daughter is a professional campaign treasurer. He doesn't usually know whom she and her firm represent. Whether they do so never influences his endorsements or coverage. (He does have his own strong opinions.) But when he does check campaign finance forms, he is often happily surprised to learn that good candidates he respects often DO hire her firm. (Maybe bad ones are scared off by his relationship with her, but they needn't be.)