Click below for Kelly Servick’s article about proposed patent legislation in the U.S. Senate: “It’s a radical proposal,” says Roger Klein, a physician and legal consultant in Cleveland, Ohio, and a member of the board of directors at AMP, a professional society that signed the ACLU letter. In the Myriad case, AMP challenged broad patents on two human genes held by the diagnostic company Myriad Genetics of Salt Lake City, which claimed exclusive rights to tests for cancer-associated mutations in those genes. … By overturning the Mayo decision, the bill would allow patent claims on the function of specific genetic variants, Klein says. For example, a company could patent a test that uses a specific mutation to predict whether a person will respond to a drug. He fears allowing such patents would make it “extraordinarily difficult … to put [that information] to use in patient care.” https://science.sciencemag.org/content/364/6445/1017