Comments on Monetary Policy by Governor Jeremy C. Stein
Thank you very much. It’s a pleasure for me to be here at the Council on Foreign Relations, and I look forward to our conversation. To get things going, I thought I would start with some brief remarks on the current state of play in monetary policy. As you know, at the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) meeting last week, we opted to keep our asset purchase program running at the rate of $85 billion per month. But there has been much discussion about recent changes in our communication, both in the formal FOMC statement, as well as in Chairman Bernanke’s post-meeting press conference. I’d like to offer my take on these changes, as well as my thoughts on where we might go from here. But before doing so, let me note that I am speaking for myself, and that my views are not necessarily shared by my colleagues on the FOMC.
It’s useful to start by discussing the initial design and conception of this round of asset purchases. Two features of the program are noteworthy. The first is its flow-based, state-contingent nature — the notion that we intend to continue with purchases until the outlook for the labor market has improved substantially in a context of price stability. The second is the fact that — in contrast to our forward guidance for the federal funds rate — we chose at the outset of the program not to articulate what “substantial improvement” means with a specific numerical threshold. So while the program is meant to be data-dependent, we did not spell out the nature of this data-dependence in a formulaic way.
To be clear, I think that this choice made a lot of sense, particularly at the outset of the program. Back in September it would have been hard to predict how long it might take to reach any fixed labor market milestone, and hence how large a balance sheet we would have accumulated along the way to that milestone. Given the uncertainty regarding the costs of an expanding balance sheet, it seemed prudent to preserve some flexibility. Of course, the flip side of this flexibility is that it entailed providing less-concrete information to market participants about our reaction function for asset purchases.
Where do we stand now, nine months into the program? With respect to the economic fundamentals, both the current state of the labor market, as well as the outlook, have improved since September 2012. Back then, the unemployment rate was 8.1percent and nonfarm payrolls were reported to have increased at a monthly rate of 97,000 over the prior six months; today, those figures are 7.6 percent and 194,000, respectively. Back then, FOMC participants were forecasting unemployment rates around 7-3/4 percent and 7 percent for year-end 2013 and 2014, respectively, in our Summary of Economic Projections; as of the June 2013 round, these forecasts have been revised down roughly 1/2 percentage point each. While it is difficult to determine precisely, I believe that our asset purchases since September have supported this improvement. For example, some of the brightest spots in recent months have been sectors that traditionally respond to monetary accommodation, such as housing and autos. Although asset purchases also bring with them various costs and risks — and I have been particularly concerned about risks relating to financial stability — thus far I would judge that they have passed the cost-benefit test.
However, this very progress has brought communications challenges to the fore, since the further down the road we get, the more information the market demands about the conditions that would lead us to reduce and eventually end our purchases. This imperative for clarity provides the backdrop against which our current messaging should be interpreted. In particular, I view Chairman Bernanke’s remarks at his press conference — in which he suggested that if the economy progresses generally as we anticipate then the asset purchase program might be expected to wrap up when unemployment falls to the 7 percent range — as an effort to put more specificity around the heretofore less well-defined notion of “substantial progress.”
It is important to stress that this added clarity is not a statement of unconditional optimism, nor does it represent a departure from the basic data-dependent philosophy of the asset purchase program. Rather, it involves a subtler change in how data-dependence is implemented — a greater willingness to spell out what the Committee is looking for, as opposed to a “we’ll know it when we see it” approach. As time passes and we make progress toward our objectives, the balance of the tradeoff between flexibility and specificity in articulating these objectives shifts. It would have been difficult for the Committee to put forward a 7 percent unemployment goal when the current program started and unemployment was 8.1 percent; this would have involved a lot of uncertainty about the magnitude of asset purchases required to reach this goal. However, as we get closer to our goals, the balance sheet uncertainty becomes more manageable — at the same time that the market’s demand for specificity goes up.
In addition to guidance about the ultimate completion of the program, market participants are also eager to know about the conditions that will govern interim adjustments to the pace of purchases. Here too, it makes sense for decisions to be data-dependent. However, a key point is that as we approach an FOMC meeting where an adjustment decision looms, it is appropriate to give relatively heavy weight to the accumulated stock of progress toward our labor market objective and to not be excessively sensitive to the sort of near-term momentum captured by, for example, the last payroll number that comes in just before the meeting.
Ferida Wolff’s Backyard Series: Clouds Communicate and A Gift of Diamonds
“I dare say Mrs D. will be in Yellow”: Reconstructing an Art Exhibit Attended by Novelist Jane Austen
Editor’s Note: 2013 is the 200th anniversary of the publication of Pride and Prejudice. Although you’re perhaps too late to attend a lecture by Professor John Mullan* at Chawton, events throughout the year are continuing to celebrate the bicentennial of the novel.
‘It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a good fortune, must be in want of a wife.’ Chapter One.
The Department of English at The University of Texas at Austin has launched an online reconstruction of an art exhibit visited by novelist Jane Austen on May 24, 1813 .
In a letter to her sister, Austen joked that she would be searching for a portrait of Mrs. Darcy among the portraits, says English Professor Janine Barchas, who created the virtual gallery — “What Jane Saw” — with a team of student assistants and staffers in Liberal Arts Instructional Technology Services.
The e-gallery features 141 paintings by British portraitist Sir Joshua Reynolds that were displayed at the 1813 exhibition at the British Institution in Pall Mall, London. The show amounted to the first large commemorative exhibition devoted to a single artist.
In addition to offering new insight into Austen’s life and work, the e-gallery is the first to digitally reconstruct the exhibition.
“Even if Jane Austen had not attended this public exhibit, it would still be well worth reconstructing,” says Barchas, author of Matters of Fact in Jane Austen. “The British Institution’s show was a star-studded ‘first’ of great magnitude for the art community and a turning point in the history of modern exhibit practices.”
Among the canvases in the retrospective gallery, the many portraits of 18th-century politicians, actors, authors and aristocrats offer concrete examples of just how someone such as Jane Austen, who did not personally circulate among the social elite, was nonetheless immersed in Georgian England’s vibrant culture.
The website helps transport visitors back to a specific event in 1813, the same year when Austen published Pride and Prejudice. Today, the paintings that took part in that exhibit are dispersed across the globe, and the original building in Pall Mall that once housed the British Institution is so altered as to be unrecognizable. Virtual reality, says Barchas, was the only way to put these objects back together.
“Seeing the art in situ revives the interpretive consequences of proximity and distance,” Barchas says. “For example, some sitters are judiciously juxtaposed while others — rival politicians or high-profile socialites — are hung at painstaking removes from key members of the royal family. Only a visual reconstruction allows the retrieval of these hidden narratives, hinting at the implied concerns of the original curators.”
As a special treat for guests at the pre-launch party, Barchas and the LAITS team constructed a 3-D walkthrough of the exhibit at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) Visualization Lab in May. Guests at the reception used an Oculus Rift Virtual Reality headset to experience the e-gallery as if they were there in person.
Visit the website at: www.whatjanesaw.org
*John Mullan is Head of the Department of English Language and Literature at University College London and author of What Matters in Jane Austen?: Twenty Crucial Puzzles Solved
Page One: Artwork by Charles Knight, British Gallery, Pall Mall. An engraving of the British Institution building at 52 Pall Mall, London, formerly John Boydell’s Shakespeare Gallery
Project Gutenberg free text of the novel: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42671. Another 28 entries for Jane Austen’s works: http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/68
Top Medicare Official: ‘We Can and Should Do More’ to Oversee Drug Plan
Stung by reports of risky and profligate prescribing by doctors and others, a federal health official promised Monday to revamp the way Medicare scrutinizes its massive prescription drug program for seniors and the disabled.
Jonathan Blum, director of Medicare, told a Senate panel that his agency needs to do more to search for fraud and abusive prescribing, problems flagged recently by ProPublica and by government analysts.
Among the steps Blum said his agency plans to take:
- Require that all providers who write prescriptions to Medicare patients be enrolled in Medicare. That means they must verify their credentials and disclose if they’ve been disciplined or criminally convicted.
- Push Medicare’s high-paid fraud contractor to ramp up searches for prescribers with troubling patterns and refer more cases to law enforcement.
- Give private insurance plans that administer the drug program information about suspect pharmacies and providers, and, for the first time, allow them to limit or reject payments to them. Currently, the plans must pay for prescriptions written by all providers unless they’ve been kicked out of Medicare.
- Work with Congress on legislation that would restrict patients who are suspected of “doctor shopping” to obtain painkillers. Medicare had previously opposed such a step.
Blum’s pledges were met with skepticism by Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma, who noted that Medicare doesn’t have a good record of following through on promised reforms. Coburn, ranking Republican on the panel, said he wondered whether the committee would be sitting in the same place a year from now asking why officials had not acted.
“People are going to continue to die, right, under this program, and we’re going to put out rules in the fall?” he said at one point when Blum discussed making some changes later this year. “Why wouldn’t we put out rules now?”
Coburn, who is also an obstetrician, demanded that Blum submit written progress reports every three months and said they would be made public.
The hearing followed a ProPublica investigation published last month that found Medicare had failed to use its own records to flag doctors who prescribed thousands of dangerous, inappropriate or unnecessary medications.
One Miami psychiatrist, for example, wrote 8,900 prescriptions in 2010 for powerful antipsychotics to patients older than 65, including many with dementia. A black-box warning on the drugs says they should not be used in such patients because it increases their risk of death. The doctor said he’d never been contacted by Medicare.
ProPublica also found that many of the top prescribers of the most abused painkillers had been charged with crimes, convicted, disciplined by their state medical boards or terminated from Medicaid. Nearly all remained eligible to prescribe in Medicare.
At the time, Blum told reporters it was not Medicare’s responsibility to second-guess doctors and that any questions should come from the private insurance plans.
But facing the committee Monday, Blum stated, “Clearly we can and should do more.”
Culture Watch: The View from Penthouse B and The Paris Wife
Reviewed by Jill Norgren
The View from Penthouse B
By Elinor Lipman; c. 2013
Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. Hardbook; ebook; 252pp.
and
The Paris Wife
By Paula McLain; 2011
Published by Ballantine. Hardbook; paperback; ebook; 331pp.
Walking along the south side of Forty-First Street toward the New York Public Library a visitor traverses a dozen bronze plaques with literary quotes set into the sidewalk: Isak Dinesen, Emily Dickinson and then Ernest Hemingway. “Hem’s” plaque contains a quote from his December 1934 Esquire article. In it he instructs, “All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened and after you are finished reading one you will feel that all that happened to you and afterwards it all belongs to you; the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, and sorrow, the people and the places and how the weather was. If you can get so that you can give that to people, then you are a writer.”
Hemingway establishes a near-impossible standard, one demanding that readers identify so completely and intimately with the events and characters of the story that the line between character and reader falls away.
This is an extraordinary goal, hoping for readers to say, “I felt as if I were Bovary, or Nana, or Gatsby.” Yet much good fiction warrants attention without achieving that particular end. Elinore Lipman’s The View from Penthouse B and Paula McLain’s The Paris Wife each score as highly readable novels although not every reader will close these books feeling as if “it all belongs to [them].”
Relationships of several sorts are explored in these domestic dramas: that of siblings, friends, dates, colleagues, spouses, and ex-spouses. The View from Penthouse B offers a ménage á cinq wrapped up as a delightful fairy tale. Lipman brings together two sisters, one not-so-recently widowed, the other the victim of Bernie Madoff’s Ponzi scheme. They join forces in Penthouse B, the only asset not lost to ruse, to save money. To bolster their coupon cutting, Gwen and Margot take in the young Anthony, a gay boarder who not only pays rent but cooks, cleans, and analyzes life in usefully sensible ways. Lipman, a seasoned novelist, has a gift for dialogue and much of the book is carried by her ability to give her characters just the right words. The plot is pure Cinderella but the voices are pitch perfect and the world she constructs is a kind, gentle, and forgiving place. Lipman, like the Scottish writer Alexander McCall Smith, wins readers with the affection she shows for her characters, flaws and all, and for her belief in redemption.
Paula McLain cannot claim the same high ground as a writer. Her prose is serviceable, yet often heavy and self-conscious. But what a story McLain has chosen to re-tell. Using the device of historical fiction, she lets Hadley Richardson step forward and narrate the events of her courtship and marriage to the unknown but upcoming writer Ernest Hemingway. The Paris Wife reads like biography and, of course, poses all of the issues of historical fiction — first and foremost, why write fiction when voluminous biographical materials exist about the Hemingways and their circle of friends and colleagues?
Image: Quotation on Library Way, NYC, Jerome Lawrence (1915-2004) and Robert E. Lee (1918-1994) The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail
Mail, Mail, Go Away!
“Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night stays these couriers from the swift completion of their appointed rounds.” So proclaims the motto of the United States Postal Service.
If none of the above deter my intrepid mail carrier, I wonder if a vicious pit bull might. I’ve got to find some way to stop him. I’m desperate. Every day, except Sunday, he inundates my mail box with mountains of miscellany — bills, of course, plus solicitations from every imaginable charity and religious organization of every denomination, sales flyers from every store within a fifty-mile radius of my home, and mail order catalogs from companies based in states boasting purple mountain majesties or fruited plains, from sea to shining sea — and even from across those seas. (How did that cheese maker in Liechtenstein get my address? And who gave that tailor in Hong Kong my measurements?)
The bills I can understand. I don’t like them, but they’re my own fault. I keep squandering my hard-earned money on such foolish things as taxes, food, heat, and electricity — so it’s no surprise that demands for payment show up regularly in my mailbox. But why do I have to put up with all that other stuff?
Consider the solicitations for donations, for example. Of course I want researchers to discover a cure for cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, leukemia, heart disease … Obviously I realize we all owe a huge debt of gratitude to our brave veterans. My heart breaks for all those starving, homeless and malady-stricken children. And I do love God and all the devoted missionaries who are sacrificing their very lives to spread His word. But give me a break! I can’t help them all; and the few that I do try to support continually bombard me with thank-you letters that invariably conclude with appeals for even more money. And do any of these organizations really believe that they can guilt me into writing another check by sending me a nickel, a dime, greeting cards, note paper, and still more return-address labels to add to the hundreds they’ve sent previously?
As for those store flyers, I don’t even glance through them. They go directly from my mailbox to the recycle bin. For this a rain forest in Brazil had to die?
And what’s with all the mail order catalogs? I can’t be positive, but I’m pretty sure it all started the day I was foolish enough to order a bathrobe online. My robe arrived in the mail a few days later, soon followed by catalogs from every clothing producer on the planet. And it mushroomed from there. Eventually I started receiving catalogs from manufacturers of gift items, household appliances, furniture, gourmet goodies, electronic gadgets and gizmos …
Apparently the company that sold me that bathrobe made a profit, not only on that sale, but also in the sale of my name as a likely prospect (spelled S-U-C-K-E-R) to commercial entities world-wide.
A while, back I discovered a website that promised to remove my name from lists of catalogs I do not want to receive. I faithfully reported the names of those companies repeatedly. It was an exercise in futility. If anything, my efforts seemed to generate even more unwelcome mailings.
I can think of one way to stop it all. Unfortunately, though, there probably are federal laws prohibiting setting fire to mailboxes — or mail delivery folk.
©2013 Rose Madeline Mula for SeniorWomen.com: Rose’s books, Grandmother Goose – Rhymes for a Second Childhood; If These Are Laugh Lines, I’m Having Way Too Much Fun, and The Beautiful People and Other Aggravations, are available through your bookstore or on Amazon.com and other online booksellers.
Photos: US mailbox; Mailbox in Budapest, Hungary — we couldn’t resist the red color and wrought iron. Wikimedia Commons
ProPublica: A Buyer’s Guide to Safer Communication
This is part two of a two-part series. Here’s part one: Worried about the Mass Surveillance? How to Practice Safer Communication.
“Encryption works.” — Edward Snowden
What makes choosing good security tools hard is that despite the news, we don’t know what government agencies like the NSA are really doing on their wiretaps and with their court orders. People in the security community call the NSA the “ultimate adversary,” and point to a huge array of ways they could be analyzing and attacking every part of the net and telephony system. They could be able to decrypt everything, and even without breaking encryption, they could be able to look at enough of the internet to determine who is talking to whom just by looking at the timing of conversation. But on the other hand, they might not be able to do any of that, and are trying to project the image of data omniscience to discourage people from even trying to protect their privacy. Parts of the NSA could be pretending to be able to do things it can’t while other parts are doing things more invasive than anyone knows, hidden from oversight. In the end, our questions still exceed our answers, and even the parts we think we know keep changing. The NSA’s data collection is a story that will only make sense in hindsight, and we don’t know how far from now that perspective is.
While Americans get to have a conversation with their government about whether this is right or wrong, the 95% of the planet the NSA is allowed to surveil without further scrutiny doesn’t get to weigh in at all, nor do the people living in countries whose governments practice widespread Internet surveillance and censorship. That’s billions of people for whom choosing tools for protecting their privacy on the net is simply a question about the technology, not about the law.
The good news is that as we understand more about how surveillance works, it helps the people who create and use secure tools to make better and more informed choices — even if that choice is simply not minding having their data collected.
There are a lot of ways to talk to people securely on the internet, some are purpose-built to enhance your privacy and security. This is by no means an exhaustive list, but it’s a place to start.
We’ll keep filling out this list over the next few days, so if there’s a piece of software you want us to have a look at, mention them in the comments or e-mail them to us at opensource@propublica.org.
Cryptocat
What does it let you do? Cryptocat is a web-based encrypted text chat for two or more people.
Cryptocat heads up this list of tools because it stands out for good interface and good policies. It’s the easiest tool on this list to use, and Cryptocat’s creator is transparent about how the software handles your data: It goes through a server run by Cryptocat’s creator, Nadim Kobeissi. Kobeissi wrote a blog post with a table explaining who can see your metadata and messages when you use the service.
To get it, go to crypto.cat, and download the browser plugin. Mac users can also find it as a standalone program in Apple’s App Store. After that, you pick a name for the chatroom and for yourself. Share the chatroom name with whoever you want to talk to, and start chatting. It is hands-down the easiest way to get started with end-to-end encryption, where only you and the person you’re talking to can see the message. For more on what end-to-end means, see part one.
What does it replace? Cryptocat replaces unencrypted instant messaging and chatrooms, and has some Facebook- and Google-style group coordination features. It’s sometimes the only option when you don’t have the ability to install software on the computer you’re using.
Cryptocat, like all the tools on this list, go through a third party server. This means the communication is more like making a phone call, (which goes through the phone company) than talking on walkie talkies (which go directly to the other party). All of Cryptocat is Open Source, so if you are up for more of a challenge, you can run a server inside your own network, and your Cryptocat chats, in addition to being end-to-end encrypted, never traverse the open Internet.
A Grandmother by Any Other Name
by Julia Sneden
Over the river and through the woods,
To Grandfather’s house we go …
I never knew either of my grandfathers, but one of life’s better blessings was growing up in a household that included both my grandmothers. There was Grandma, my father’s mother, and Grandabbie, my maternal grandmother. I was the youngest child, so I had no part in the naming of Grandma, who had lived with my parents since shortly after they married. I assume she chose the appellation, and my brother, obedient and verbal child that he was, simply picked it up.
The name Grandabbie, however, was my own invention. Before she came to live with us, my mother’s mother lived next door to a lively band of six nieces and nephews who called her Aunt Abbie. By the time I was two or so, I had become enamored of that whole crew, and whatever the glamorous older cousins did, I wanted to do also. One day I joined in a conversation and referred to my Grandmother as Aunt Abbie, whereat several of them pounced on me.
“She’s not your aunt,” one of them said. “You can’t call her Aunt Abbie,”said another. I remember feeling crushed, but I don’t remember how I came up with the solution of combining Grandmother and Abbie into what was to become her label for life. From that time on, we called her Grandabbie, and so did all our friends and most of our neighbors. Poor Grandabbie: she used to tell me: “All my life, I looked forward to being called Grandmother. It’s a beautiful word. But then,” she would sigh, “I hadn’t reckoned with you.”
Sometimes grandmothers are named before the kids get a chance at it. We continued the tradition of Grandabbie’s name by referring to my own mother as Grandmary, when our children came along. At first it felt artificial to us, but obviously the kids never questioned it, because she’s Grandmary to this day.
Finish Julia Sneden’s classic essay on the names we take to celebrate our new status: http://www.seniorwomen.com/articles/julia/articlesJulia110700.html
Shopping at Santa Monica’s Museum of Art
We haven’t come across a museum shop that we’d like to plunder for a while, but now Santa Monica’s Museum of Art Shop does it for us. Quirky, amusing, hip.
A bit of a warning, though … the site is slow-loading but be patient. Tip: Check the ‘All’ box.
We know just the right recipients for this Cats Attack scratching post: “Does Fluffy have dreams of grandeur? Our new cardboard cityscape scratcher can help her fulfill those dreams by allowing her to reenact her favorite 1950s horror film. Cat Attack, designed by Mat Lyon for Luckies of London is a natural scratch post designed to keep kitty’s destructive nails from your upholstery.”
A little late for Father’s Day, but perhaps a birthday. Gent’s Deck: 50 Style & Etiquette tips, in your pocket. “Perfect for those situations in life where you need an ace up your sleeve. From proper revolving door etiquette to learning how to tie a Windsor Knot The Gentleman’s Deck will help you become a man of the 21st century.”
In this age of video games, apps and overly expensive toys, blocks still win. Here are four sets of blocks to play with: Hebrew, Chinese, Korean and Japanese. “This Hebrew aleph-bet block set offers a great way to educate a child with family heritage as well as learning a language. This set includes 27 blocks made from sustainable Michigan basswood, featuring Hebrew letters, numerals, and animal pictures.”
Korean Blocks Lil’ Genius: “Learn a new language, or perfect the one you know with this stunning set, made from sustainable Michigan basswood. The Korean character 32 block set includes 22 animals, the numbers 1-10 in English and Korean, a word construction grid, all of the Korean consonants and vowels, and a puzzle. 32 1.75″ cubes (44mm)block set includes 22 animals, the numbers 1-10 in English and Korean, a word construction grid, all of the Korean consonants and vowels, and a puzzle. 32 1.75″ cubes (44mm) Ages 2+.”
The Gene Patent Decision Explained by the Supreme Court Blog: In Plain English
Lyle Denniston Reporter, SCOTUS Blog (Supreme Court of the United States Blog)
Gene Patent Decision: In Plain English
The Supreme Court long ago ruled that an inventor who discovers a phenomenon in nature, or figures out a “law of nature,” cannot get an exclusive right to use or sell that by obtaining a patent from the federal government. Natural phenomena are the basic tools with which every would-be inventor starts, so locking up the right to use them in a monopoly held by a specific patent owner will frustrate others who might want to look for new ways to interpret that phenomena, the Court has said.
Special Envoy to the UN High Commissioner on Refugees, Ms Angelina Jolie at the launch of the UK initiative on preventing sexual violence in conflict, 29 May 2012.
The exclusion of natural substances from eligibility for patents was the theory on which the Court relied Thursday in its unanimous ruling that a company cannot get a patent monopoly on the use and study of human genes that it isolates in the bloodstream, and them takes them out — without changing their natural character — for research.
The case involved a Utah company’s patent for having isolated, outside the human body, two basic genes that contain natural phenomena which suggest that a woman who has them is at significantly higher risk of developing either breast cancer or ovarian cancer. The company had claimed that the act of locating these genes in blood, and then extracting them for study, was a true invention, something that did not exist before.
The Court said the company actually did not create anything at all, but simply extracted the genetic material from its location in human blood, and setting it apart for study.
The Court, however, said that the company might be eligible to get a patent when it created a synthetic form of those genes — in other words, a laboratory imitation of them. Such imitations, according to the ruling, do not exist in nature, and so do not run counter to the rule against patenting nature.
Opinion recap: No patent on natural gene work
Analysis
Pronouncing what may seem like a patent truism, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously on Thursday that biotech researchers have to create something to get monopoly protection to study and apply the phenomenon. Because Myriad Genetics, Inc., “did not create anything,” the Court struck down its patent on isolating human genes from the bloodstream, unchanged from their natural form. Because Myriad did create a synthetic form of the genes, however, that could be eligible for a patent, the Court concluded.
The decision was a major blow to a company that believed it had a right to be the sole user and analyst of two human genes, mutations in which show a high risk, for women found to have them in their blood, of breast and ovarian cancer. But the ruling will give medical and scientific researchers, and family doctors, greater opportunity to help women patients discover their potential vulnerability to those types of cancer.
In a way. the ruling was a silent tribute to screen actress Angelina Jolie, who recently gained huge notoriety not for her acting but for voluntarily having her breasts surgically removed after discovering that she had the threatening mutations in her body. She, of course, was able to pay the high cost of that test; now, women of less means will be able to afford it, and that was a key motivation for challenging Myriad’s patent rights.