Angelina Jolie, actress and director, underwent a prophylactic mastectomy recently after finding she had a high risk for breast cancer. Her op-ed commentary in The New York Times discusses her decision and the high cost of BRCA testing in the United States.

The PBS NewsHour and NPR also took a look at the BRCA issue with this piece.

The U.S. Supreme Court is considering whether a private company can own a piece of your body. Myriad Genetics has a patent on 2 genes associated with breast and ovarian cancer. This means that they can (and have) placed restrictions on who conducts research on the genes, which limits scientific progress in understanding these diseases. This animated video illustrates the threats to health, patients’ rights and scientific research that are at stake in the court case Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics. The video can be seen at www.aclu.org/brca or  www.aclu.org/brca-court. It’s also on YouTube at http://youtu.be/ywj_a0Mulvk.

Marc Williams, MD, director of Geisiginer’s Genomic Medicine Institute, is co-author of an opinion piece in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

The search for the breast cancer genes, BRCA 1 and 2, is about to be a major motion picture. Click for story.

Area paper notes GMI recognition in Clarity Challenge. Click for story.

Why We Have a Right to Consumer Genetics
MIT Technology Review, Jan. 2, 2013
Click for story

More

Click for genomics news archive (2010 - 2012)