Hollywood megastar Tom Cruise has reportedly been given a pay cut in his production deal with Paramount Pictures. The actor and his business partner Paula Wagner's previous deal allowed them a budget of up to $10 million a year to cover overheads and develop films through their company Cruise/Wagner Productions. … Paramount funded Cruise's latest movie Mission: Impossible III, which is expected to take up to $400 million in the international box office, but due to Cruise's expected profit margin, the studios will only just break even. The actor's lawyer Bertram Fields says, "We received an offer and we are digesting it. We will sit and talk about it."

A few years ago, UCLA geneticist Wayne Grody was working hard to help deaf children. Grody was conducting clinical tests on Connexin 26, a human gene linked to deafness, hoping it would lead to more effective treatment for kids. Then one day he received a letter from Athena Diagnostics, a Massachusetts-based biotechnology company. Grody says the letter informed him that Athena owned a patent for the Connexin 26 gene -- and he could no longer perform tests on it himself. Instead, he would have to pay thousands of dollars up-front and send future gene samples to Athena for testing. He had no choice. "I had to stop," Grody says. "The cost was out of sight." The clinical tests ground to a halt.

It may sound bizarre, but it's true: A company can actually "own" human genes. That's the brave new world of gene patents, where big biotech firms are claiming rights to our genetic blueprints and guarding them with teams of lawyers. And the result, say scientists like Grody, is stalling vital medical research, perhaps even delaying lifesaving cures.

"I don't think most people realize what's occurring," says Lori Andrews, a law professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology who specializes in the subject. "People find that the genes within their bodies have been patented without their knowledge and consent."