Of cabbages and kings

While I wasn't looking, some stuff happened:

23andMe announced it would offer free genotyping to 10,000 African Americans. Daniel MacArthur has your cogent analysis. IMHO, this is long overdue and if it's done right, can be the start of something that will ultimately pay public health dividends. I hope.
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit undid most of Judge Robert Sweet's (U.S. Federal District Court for the Southern District of New York) decision from March of last year and ruled that isolated DNA is indeed patentable subject matter (big ol' pdf). The only significant bit the CAFC affirmed was "…the [lower] court's decision that Myriad's method claims directed to 'comparing' or 'analyzing' DNA sequences are patent ineligible; such claims include no transformative steps and cover only patent ineligible abstract, mental steps." So, uh…boo ya!…We now return you to your regularly scheduled taxpayer-funded biotech monopoly. Dan Vorhaus has real-time thoughts on his twitter page.
The US Department of Health and Human Services has announced plans to revamp its "system" for protecting human participants in research. It's about frickin time, yo. I will have more to say about this once I have slogged through this 92-page cure for insomnia carefully and thoughtfully studied the request for comment in detail.

Have a nice, air-conditioned weekend…

(hat tip)