Shobita Parthasarathy: My area of expertise is in the comparative and international politics of genetics and biotechnology.  And in 2007, I published a book entitled “Building Genetic Medicine”, which compares the development of genetic testing for breast cancer in the U.S. and Britain.

In 2007, the ACLU contacted me because of my work on this issue and they were trying to get together, figure out who might be the appropriate plaintiffs if they were to launch a lawsuit and so we spoke about who might make good plaintiffs.  Then a couple of years later when they were ready to launch the lawsuit and starting to figure out how to do the argumentation, they also asked me to submit a declaration in the case.  The declaration was about 30 pages in length and it basically summarized the findings of the book particularly vis-a-vis Myriad that is focusing on the process of scientific discovery, the development of testing services and Myriad use of its intellectual property position.

In terms of the broader implications of this case, there are three I would say.  The first is whether or not patents are good for innovation and in what circumstances patents are good for innovation.  This is a case in which I think it can be pretty clearly argued that patents weren’t really great for the innovation process.  But how should we think about this from a policy perspective?  Where should we draw the line?

The second is how should we think about the broader implications of patents in terms of the cross of healthcare?  Again, in this case, it seems pretty clear that existence of a patent increase the cost of healthcare.  But, many people argued that if you’re going to think about the medical or health implications, you should talk about the fact that innovations are available to the public at all because of patents.  What does it mean if the cost of that are really, really high prices?

So that starts to raise the question about what are the kinds of things that we should be thinking about when we think about patent law.  Should it be more than just economic competitiveness and narrow ideas about what it takes to stimulate innovation?  Should it be broader questions about the health implications, the moral implications of commodifying life and the scientific implications of how patents might change the culture of science?

Those are the kinds of things that I think we’re about to start a national discussion about and I’m really excited to see where that national conversation goes regardless of what happens in terms of the outcome of this particular case.
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