Limit certain patents, not patient care, from American Medical News

The AMA and other medical organizations have taken a strong stand on how wrongly permitted patents stand in the way of good health care.

Editorial. Posted April 16, 2012.

A recent opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court starts out citing an earlier judicial example tying together Albert Einstein, Sir Isaac Newton and the essence of what’s off-limits to be patented. Einstein could not have patented E=mc2, nor could Newton have patented the law of gravity, noted the court, because those discoveries were manifestations of nature upon which no one could make an exclusive claim.

Smaller in scale, but no less a manifestation of nature, are workings and responses of the human body. In a unanimous decision, the justices rightly applied the example from that earlier ruling to a patent case that represented a major threat to patient care.

more... http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2012/04/16/edsa0416.htm