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"  While everybody was concentrating on the big whizbang at the Supreme Court today \u2014 and I was, and will be, too, from down there on Tuesday afternoon \u2014 the nine wise souls handed down another ruling that&amp;#039;s going to cause some tremors throughout the very lucrative biotechnology field. That the Supreme Court is clearly looking askance at the idea of patenting human genes \u2014 or, for that matter, the notion of patenting any natural phenomenon \u2014 is an indication of the court&amp;#039;s thinking for which bioethicists have been agitating for some time, and a considerable hurdle for researchers to confront going forward. Further, and what this means, if anything, to the greater question occupying the court&amp;#039;s time this week, the successful appeal was supported by an impressive array of health-care professionals on the grounds that, allowing these patents to stand threatened a patient&amp;#039;s access to proper medical care. In short, the court seems to have validated the notion that access to health-care, in this case anyway, is a right that outweighs commercial considerations. The court merely as remanded the case to the lower court for further hearings into the subject, but, as an indication as to where the collective head is at regarding bioethics and the relationship of health-care to market forces, hints are probably the best we can do. (Photo Illustration by DonkeyHotey via Flickr/Special to The Politics Blog) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/politics/a13397/supreme-court-bio-ethics-7625618/>