As Rudnick began to navigate the world of living with a serious genetic mutation and the looming decisions it entailed, she naturally turned the lens on herself. She embarked on making the documentary In the Family, which eventually was nominated for an Emmy. She filmed the most intimate parts of her life: the promising beginning and sad deterioration of a relationship, moments of fear and loneliness, the torturous process of deciding whether to have preemptive surgery, frank discussions about how that would affect her sex life.

The project soon took on a much more political and socially conscious focus.

In the course of her research, Rudnick learned that a Utah-based company called Myriad Genetics held several patents on the BRCA genes and any scientific use of them.

The more Rudnick met uninsured or underinsured women having trouble affording the $3,000-plus BRCA mutation test, the more concerned she became about the patents and their ethical and practical implications.

Rudnick was also disturbed that women could not typically get a second opinion, since only Myriad offers the test in the United States. “Women are actually making lifelong decisions about removing body parts, and they can’t get a second opinion,” she tells me.

And in the bigger picture, she did not like the idea that a company essentially owned the rights to her genes. “That’s like patenting thumbs,” she says in her documentary.

Myriad is far from the only patent holder on human genes; about 20 percent of the human genome is patented. This basically means that only the patent-holder can offer testing and other services related to a specific gene. Patents currently cover genes related to other diseases, including Alzheimer’s, asthma, colon cancer, muscular dystrophy, and spinal muscular atrophy, a hereditary disease that kills children at a young age.

But a recent court victory may change all that.

This is a short excerpt of this story that is in the June issue of The Progressive magazine. To read the entire piece, subscribe now for $14.97.