Human Gene Patents?!

Supreme Court was hearing what Myriad Genetics and their mass of lawyers had to say on the up and coming ruling of the rights to patent human genes. The justices argued how they could patent something like this. One justice referred it to baseball bat or chocolate chip cookies: How can you patent the salt, the eggs, the flour, and the other baking ingredients? Myriad lawyer Gregory Castanias mentioned that a baseball bat doesn't exist until it's isolated from the tree. But the justices argued that a bat isn't a limb off a tree, but rather an invented instrument that was a byproduct from a tree. The issue is that the government is fearing a loss of billions of dollars invested if this plan to patent genes falls through. The patents are set to expire in 2015. The main issue is Myriad wants to patent human genes, not just reconbinant DNA, which is synthetic and could be patented.