LANDMARK cases are under way in Australia and the US to test companies' legal right to enforce patents over human gene sequences. The cases, brought by Australian advocacy group Cancer Voices and the American Council for Civil Liberties, may not be making front-page news, but are likely to affect every one of us. The courts must decide who has moral and legal ownership of the genetic codes in our bodies. This has huge implications for access to diagnostic testing and treatment.

Gene patenting has a bearing on the detection and treatment of a vast range of illnesses and medical conditions. The explosion of genetic knowledge has revealed the profound influence of our genetic inheritance and mutations on most aspects of the human condition. The test cases involve the BRCA1 mutation linked to breast and ovarian cancer, but the decisions are relevant to almost all areas of human health and disease because of the pervasive influence of our genes. Since the human genome was published in June 2000, about 10,000 genes have been declared subject to private intellectual property rights.

Since the human genome was published in June 2000, about 10,000 genes have been declared subject to private intellectual property rights.

In 2000, then US president Bill Clinton and British prime minister Tony Blair jointly called for ''unencumbered access'' to human genetic information. The Age shared the view that such knowledge should be freely available for the benefit of all humanity, which was incompatible with patenting human genes for profit. For people of modest means, the question of who owns human genetic rights literally becomes a matter of life or death.

Governments failed, however, to frame laws that protect our common genetic interests. Patent holders can and do charge for use of the DNA sequences they ''own'' in testing and research. The BRCA1 patent is held by US company Myriad Genetics and its Australian licensee, Genetic Technologies. US patients pay a substantial royalty - $US3200 ($A2970) - for each potentially life-saving diagnostic test. In Australia, Genetic Technologies tried to enforce its patent in 2008, when it ordered laboratories to stop BRCA1 diagnostic testing, but backed down under pressure. In 2010, a US District Court invalidated the patent but the decision was overturned on appeal last year. Now the matter is before the US Supreme Court.