Wrong again, Kelly. Many government grants go to public universities. The same universities that train the researchers that go to those private companies. Training that would dry up without research grants to attract students and retain instructors.

Your example of government grants also illustrates how some of this research would not get off the ground without the government getting it started. Government employees do not need to be the ones who do the research for the government to be the prime motivator, so forget that fairytale about the government not having a leading role. Foreign countries have begun to overtake us in both pure sciences and in tech R&D because of reductions in public funding. When Bush restricted funding of stem cell research to a few contaminated lines, he drove many of the top researchers out of the country. We are years behind, and only now have a real chance to catch up. Don’t even get me started on NASA and DARPA, you really don’t want to go there.

Let me be clear here: the $3000 is NOT for a life-saving procedure, it is for the TEST. No second opinions allowed, no verifications allowed, just a single TEST. Actual treatment would be above and beyond that. You said that “$3,000 is not that much”, so I was trying to illustrate how much $3000 can mean to others, especially in these economic times, because I try to see things from more perspectives that just my own. It’s called empathy. Look it up.

When I said this article has nothing to do with universal health care or private health care, I meant that the article does not mention public, private, universal, or any other kind of health care delivery system. That was your schtick. Try to stay on topic.

And the topic is whether human genes, which exist in nature, can legally be patented – and whether it is good for society to do so.

India has spent the last several years trying to defend it’s pharmacopoeia and traditional remedies from foreign patents.

Make no mistake, the bio-tech industry is driven by avarice, not concern for anyone’s health. They are patenting everything they can get away with. Anything they think they can make money on, regardless of the consequences. Traditionally, things occoring in nature have not been considered patentable, but this seems to be changing.

About 20 percent of a human’s genes are patented, which means the patent holder controls who has the right to study or test for that gene.

This is not free market competition, this is a ban on free market competition. This is the government creating a one-horse race, a monopoly. This isn’t just protection of a company’s investment, it is preventing other companies from making the same investment and developing different solutions. This is unfair competition and government interference at it’s finest.

To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

While patenting solutions promotes progress, patenting the problem sharply restricts progress. These patents appear to fail the test for patentability, and should be rejected in court. This is another indication of just how overworked and underfunded the Patent Office is. They cannot keep up with the workload, let alone the technology behind the patent applications. No wonder some fools wanted to do away with “prior art”, even though it would completely screw up the very concept of patent protection.

And if you think that Myriad Genetics did ALL the research, then you should familiarize yourself with the Human Genome Project and the genes in question: