Ephemeral Reflections

We always have some unexpected connections to the things ( and the people ) we have loved and lost over a period of time. Years ago, I was big fan of this Japanese paper folding art 'Origami'. But, I have this bad habit of losing interest over (simply because they are not exciting anymore ....  a bored mind is a very dangerous one). So, this love of mine was lost in time. But some time ago I started watching a TV series called 'Heroes'. In this, Hiro Nakamura convinces Charlie Andrews of his power of time travelling by instantly creating a thousand paper cranes around her. (on a side note: thousand paper cranes have cultural significance in Japan... the legend says this brings luck. Cranes are sacred creatures who are said to live for thousand year. so, one crane for each year. they are also symbolizes fidelity. And they bring luck. So, if you have the patience to fold a thousand cranes ... you will be granted a wish. Also, you can find the story of Sadako and thousan...

I wonder how surfing internet sometimes become like falling down a rabbit hole. I was once looking up something for a friend during when I came across the 'standard essential patents'. This somehow lead me to gene patents. This term revived a distant memory. When I was in B.Sc., one of my friend told me that  the biotech industry stocks suffered a huge loss in single day when president Bill Clinton declared human genome sequences should be available freely ( see  Clinton - Blair Statement ). Of course, this was quite far from the day when their supreme court declared genes are not patent-able after long legal tussle (this I learned now, not then). So I have decided to simply collect the status of gene patents in India and abroad. I present a summary of what I learned and thoughts over here.  A little bit of history for the most famous gene patent litigation. BRCA1 and 2 are quite infamous genes. These genes are involved in DNA double stran...