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[JimIvey]

It's not secret here that my perception is that the Patent Office's understand of Section 101 is pure lunacy.  My general sense is that the lunacy has been waning since Dudas's departure.

Having said that, I think there's all sorts of authority that claiming a human being is entirely proper under Section 101.

One is the mere fact that there's been an uproar of sorts demanding modification of Section 101 to exclude human beings (after Dolly, the cloned sheep).  That suggests Section 101 currently doesn't exclude human beings.  There are many patents on mice or other animals with human components, often a human immune system.  There are many patents on human genes ("in isolation").  The biggest problem with claiming a human being is that human beings have been in public use and described in publications (biology texts) for well more than one year.  I'll leave "on sale" and some ugly parts of our history out of this discussion.  Just let it suffice to say that the biggest hurdle for claiming a human being is Section 102, not Section 101.

In addition, the history of Section 101 analysis is chock full of cases in which methods and devices required a human being in one way or another.  One of my faves is In re Abele.  I like the case because two nearly identical claims fell on opposite sides of Section 101.  One claimed a process for taking a number and doing all sorts of operations on it and display an intensity corresponding to the result (a pixel in a greyscale image).  The other claim recited something like "wherein the number represents tissue density of a human patient."  I think it was a CATscan innovation, but I could be wrong. 

The latter claim implicitly required a machine and physical steps of putting the patient in the machine and operating the machine to measure some aspect of the patient's tissue to get the number.

Many of my claims recite "receiving signals generated by a user" and doing something in response thereto, often displaying or presenting something to the user.  I rarely see 101 rejections, even under Dudas.  Of course, I describe in the spec that the CPU, executing code retrieved from a memory through an interconnect, receives signals from one or more user input devices (also connected through the interconnect) that generate such signals in response to physical manipulation of the user input device(s) by a human user.

Regards.

[orangequant]

i know you guys are all deadly serious but...
coming here from other thread on nonworking inventions-- this one takes today's prize for pure entertainment 
anyway, it makes me feel really smart because what i'm currently drafting touches on three or four medical claims and based on your discussion it looks like i may have accidentally got it right.
i've gone with the "adapted to create [interface] with [anatomical part or system] of an organism".
at first, it was with a "living organism" 'til i realized there might be uses in fresh cadavers too.
so, as already suggested, "adapted" averts a 101 rejection. alternatively, without "adapted", but using instead an "organism" as part of the invention it would trigger a BRI 101 rejection.

all that said, there remain the biotech inventions, many of which recite human cells-- so, only half-kidding, how many human cells does it take exactly to trigger 101?

where a claim needs a "user" (which i think is largely avoidable anyway), the language i like is:
"...a keypad, each key thereof adapted to respond to input pressure on the surface thereof by [doing something]..."
rather than,
"...a keypad, adapted such that a user may..." [even tho 'user' is not part of invention]