al-mofhariz

Illustration of "native" DNA in the human cell, from the majority opinion in Ass. for Mol. Path. v. Myriad Genetics, United States Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about a case the US Supreme Court will hear on April 15th concerning whether genes can be patented. As we get closer to that date, I want to pick up the thread where it was left off. As a quick reminder, the case before the court now concerns the validity of a patent that was granted to Myriad Genetics on a pair of genes (BRCA 1/2) whose presence has been shown to confer an increased risk of developing breast cancer. Here, I want to examine how this case turns on a difficult ontological question, namely: what kind of things are genes? A number of people who support Myriad’s patent argue that human genes ought to be understood as a molecule like any other. They are a material object, nothing more and nothing less. Others, including the co-discoverer of DNA’s molecular struct...

We asked Robin Wolfe Scheffler, who studies the history of biomedicine, cancer virology and scientific infrastructure, what thoughts about contemporary science his work has given him. He sent us the following guest post; you can find out more about Robin's work here . Last week, Nature and Science had two very different takes on the same problem. In Science, the editor warns that the current behavior of the United States Congress, particularly the budget sequester, “might justifiably be considered deranged when [it] fail[s] to take actions that will generate tremendous future benefits.” Meanwhile, Nature features an essay profiling five examples of “slow-science”— projects which have been running for decades, even centuries . While Science warns of the hazards of failing to anticipate major problems in the future, such as the rising rate of Alzheimer’s, the projects in Nature range from profound (the Belgian Solar Influence Data Analysis Center ) to “ignoble” ( the pitch dro...

 Yes, I did just say math....I usually only blog about science, but today is an exception.  I've got to share with you my favorite way to teach probability, fractions and decimal connections.  My good friend, Sherrie Roland , came up with this idea many years ago and shared it with me. I have done it for the past three years and each year I believe it is one of the best ways my kids make sense of probability and fractions....through the events that happen on American Idol! I must admit, this year has had me on my toes!  Usually we have some time to explore with 18 contestants and watch them dwindle down to the top 12.  But this year we went from the top 20 to the top 10 in one week! Here's how we start....I created a bulletin board that shows the top 20 contestants with their official photo shoot pictures.   After they were eliminated, and we went from 20 to 10 we noticed that we had lost 10/20 contestants which is the same as 1/2 which is the same as ...

We asked Evan Hepler-Smith, a  historian of science whose work focuses on how chemists have used language, data, and method over the last hundred years, what the sort of questions he asks might reveal about contemporary science . He sent us the following guest post; you can find out more about his work  here . Recently, a small group of scientists has begun been laying the foundation of a new interdisciplinary field. Their ambitions include applying biological mechanisms to the synthesis of new drug candidates, integrating huge collections of biological and chemical data, and linking western pharmaceutical science with the study of traditional Chinese medicine at the molecular level. They call their new field “ chemomics .” So far, chemomics isn’t much more than a twinkle in the eye of a few pharmaceutical chemists, but it already has a catchy name, which makes one reflect on how, as Patrick McCray recently remarked , nearly everything seems to have an “-omics” thes...

Braaaaaaaaains are everywhere these days. In the wake of the big announcement about the  Brain Activity Map (BAM) Project , publicity around the mind sciences has been ramping up. This week is " Brain Awareness Week ," meant to raise public awareness about neuroscience. And today, Scientific American MIND announced a new homepage and blog network . A Portrait of the Author as a Brain Scan  All of this attention has produced some reflection. Patrick McCray has contextualized BAM in what he calls " the *-omics of everything ." He and others— including Gary Marcus —have highlighted the technological and methodological challenges such dynamic mapping faces, compared to the "static" maps of the Human Genome or Human Connectome Projects . What's interesting about all this is how ubiquitous the brain is already. As I noted recently , it's all over the academy: neuroaesthetics , neuropolitics , neuroeconomics , neurohistory —the list goes on. Pivoting aw...

On April 15 of 2013, the Supreme Court of the United States will hear a case challenging the practice of patenting DNA sequences, including human genes. With the forbidding title of Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics , this case is all but certain to have a huge impact on the history of biotechnology, the patent law, and interactions between science and capitalism more broadly. Today, I am posting the first of a two-part piece on the case, with some thoughts on patenting living things and parts thereof. The case currently before the US Supreme Court concerns a biotech company called Myriad Genetics. During the mid 1990s, Myriad successfully filed for a patent on two genes (BRCA1 and BRCA 2) that dramatically increase a woman’s risk of developing breast cancer. Having sequence both of these two genes, Myriad Genetics developed a diagnostic test, which it currently markets for several thousand dollars. It is worth emphasizing that Myriad’s patent covers the genes them...