Almost immediately after the Supreme Court ruled that human genes could not be patented, several laboratories announced they, too, would begin offering genetic testing for breast cancer risk, making it likely that that test and others could become more affordable and more widely available. The ruling in effect ends a nearly two-decade monopoly by Myriad Genetics, the company at the center of the case. Eric Lander, HMS professor of systems biology and the founding director of the Eli and Edythe Broad Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, is quoted.
