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Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

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Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#101

Post by obstacle1 »

michael_miller wrote: post #61
eldude wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A historical correction to the misplaced tone of your 3/5ths reference, the 3/5ths compromise was by the anti-slavery republican north to prevent the southern democratic slavers from dominating the House of Representatives and the electoral college.[1] [1] http://www.redstate.com/jeffdunetz/2010/07/18/were-our-found...

I know you meant well with your comment, but in general, it's best to avoid well-actually comments. This is one of Hacker School's core rules; they elaborate on why it's a good idea to avoid these types of comments at https://www.hackerschool.com/manual .

Well, actually this is Hacker News, so "hacker school"'s rules don't apply.

IMHO a much better rule is "avoid acting as thought/discourse police."

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#102

Post by davidp »

1337biz wrote: post #54
jweese wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Justice Scalia's concurrence, reproduced here in full: "I join the judgment of the Court, and all of its opinion except Part I–A and some portions of the rest of the opinion going into fine details of molecular biology. I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. It suffices for me to affirm, having studied the opinions below and the expert briefs presented here, that the portion of…

I am unable to affirm those details on my own knowledge or even my own belief. I wish more public officials would show this kind of honesty, esp. those voting on new laws and regulations. I am waiting for the first politician to come foward with a "I have no idea of this stuff, can anyone of my constituents explain to me how and why to vote on that" message.

> "I have no idea of this stuff, can anyone of my constituents explain to me how and why to vote on that"

That is precisely the primary function of lobbyists, as distasteful as it sounds when that word is used.

Many lobbyists also buy access, which is a separate problem.

Can you imagine the disastrous mess Congress would create if they knew even _less_ than they already know about the areas they're legislating? This is why regulating lobbying is hard; at root it's just citizens speaking to elected leaders (again, until money gets involved).

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#104

Post by koenigdavidmj »

Kliment wrote: post #69
daughart wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if you engineer a completely novel protein, with novel regulatory sequences, for a novel function? Should you be unable to patent such an invention?

Honestly, no, it should not be patentable. This is entirely equivalent to a software patent.

Except that we're back in the physical world again. It's basically a very small machine at that point, one with the purpose of producing a certain protein.

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#105

Post by sageikosa »

abitsios wrote: post #39

There's a new TV series that touches upon this - Orphan Black. ---- Spoilers, obviously ---- So they're clones, and they have a "special repeating marker" of some sorts. One of the clones is a biochemist, and she manages to decode it. Turns out, it is a copyright message covering those organisms and their biological offspring as property of X corporation. -------- Spooky, but wouldn't the message get diluted after re…

From what I understand, the likelihood of any cistron in the genetic code getting diluted is dependent on the sequence length compared to the overall length of the chromosome on which it can be found.

However, since this is sci-fi, it may be possible that some of the genetic sequence is setup to actually alter the meiosis process and not perform any "crossing over" events in egg cell construction.

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#106

Post by alsocasey »

daughart wrote: post #78
acqq wrote: post #67

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-06-13/the-supreme-court-s... it is not the scientists who removed the introns from the officially unpatentable original DNA sequence to make the new, patentable cDNA sequence. It is nature itself, through the magic by which pre-RNA, which includes the introns, becomes messenger RNA, which does not. The Supreme Court described this process by saying, “the pre-RNA is then naturally ‘s…

From what I understand, Myriad's test involved synthesis of cDNA (which we scientists refer to as "complementary DNA", not "composite DNA" as SCOTUS does). This is still covered by the patent. However, any test based on sequencing the genomic DNA, for example, would not violate Myriad's patent. Genomic sequencing of these genes was previously a violation of the patent. This is definitely a step forward. In the long r…

The issue is that a hypothetical diagnostic attempting to sequence this region would likely be pre-processed with a PCR to facilitate sequencing of only the region of interest... this necessarily involves a cDNA step.

You could sequence the whole genome at higher depth, but this would be more expensive.

Edit: My mistake, the patent covers the reverse transcription step exclusively, not the act of transcription in general - which means PCR from genomic DNA is fine, but rtPCR or cDNA library construction is not... no scientific consistency there, but looks like cheaper BCRA tests in the near future.

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#107

Post by clarkm »

michael_miller wrote: post #61
eldude wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A historical correction to the misplaced tone of your 3/5ths reference, the 3/5ths compromise was by the anti-slavery republican north to prevent the southern democratic slavers from dominating the House of Representatives and the electoral college.[1] [1] http://www.redstate.com/jeffdunetz/2010/07/18/were-our-found...

I know you meant well with your comment, but in general, it's best to avoid well-actually comments. This is one of Hacker School's core rules; they elaborate on why it's a good idea to avoid these types of comments at https://www.hackerschool.com/manual .

Ok, what's your point?

I don't think "well-actually" comments are bad. Wikipedia says to avoid weasel words and "expressions that lack precision" [1], and I think well-actually statements often help clear up such ambiguity.

If someone follows up their "well, actually..." with a legitimate correction of the facts, then I don't see a problem with it.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#108

Post by niels_olson »

> The nucleotides that code for amino acids are “exons,” and those that do not are “introns.”

Should read "the nucleotide sequences". If they can't get the definitions right, why is the rest of the opinion valid?

Is it time for a "Court of Science" at the district or appellate level?

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#109

Post by ryusage »

daughart wrote: post #88
shmerl wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I principally think than biosubstances should not be patentable. The fact that DNA was generated artificially doesn't make it somehow magically different from the natural one.

What I'm referring to is not only synthesis (artificially generating), but design and engineering. This is substantively different than natural products, in that they are truly invented.

The problem I have with it is that, in all cases, any synthetic DNA could exist in nature. We can't even verify with 100% certainty that any given sequence doesn't already exist in nature. If it doesn't exist already, it could in the future, naturally, through evolution.

Re: Supreme Court: Natural Isolated DNA Not Patentable, Synthetic DNA Is [pdf]

#110

Post by niels_olson »

clarkm wrote: post #107
michael_miller wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you meant well with your comment, but in general, it's best to avoid well-actually comments. This is one of Hacker School's core rules; they elaborate on why it's a good idea to avoid these types of comments at https://www.hackerschool.com/manual .

Ok, what's your point? I don't think "well-actually" comments are bad. Wikipedia says to avoid weasel words and "expressions that lack precision" [1], and I think well-actually statements often help clear up such ambiguity. If someone follows up their "well, actually..." with a legitimate correction of the facts, then I don't see a problem with it. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Avoid_weasel_words

I think that in verbal parley well-actually comments are a lesser degree of the same offense as shooting down someone else's idea in a brainstorming session. Not only does it tend to silence the first speaker by shaming, it tends to derail the larger conversation. In this written context, it's less of an issue, though nested comments do create a similar potential context.

Granted, sometimes you gotta break some eggs. But don't be surprised when the hen who laid that egg isn't to be happy about it.

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