Myriad Genetics Refuses To Accept That People Have A Right To Access Their Own DNA Sequences

One of the biggest victories on the patent front was when the US Supreme Court finally ruled that naturally-occurring DNA cannot be patented. The company involved in this case, Myriad Genetics, didn't give up at this point, but tried to claim that despite this ruling, its patents on genetic testing were still valid. Fortunately, the courts disagreed, and struck down those patents too.

However, as we noted at the time, there's another issue that remains unresolved, which concerns the huge database of DNA that Myriad Genetics has built up over years of sequencing the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that have variants linked to cancer. Because of Myriad's unwillingness to provide that important data to the people whose DNA was sequenced, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has decided to take action:

On May 19, 2016, the ACLU filed a complaint pursuant to the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act ("HIPAA") with the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services ("HHS") on behalf of four patients against Myriad Genetics, a genetic testing laboratory based in Utah. The complaint was...