Slashdot Mirror
The Opening of Biotech
RockinRobStar writes "ABC Science have posted an article about an Australian geneticist, Dr Richard Jefferson, pushing for "free access to the scientific tools of modern biology and genetics...just as computer programming tools were shared in the open source software movement." "The scientific tools...would be licensed under a similar agreement as the general public licence". Dr Jefferson plans to present his program to the World Economic Forum in January."
Dr Jefferson plans to present his program to the World Economic Forum in January.
... and maybe get laughed off the 'stage' by all the money-making politicians/whatever, most likely. They want ways to make money, bear no illusions.
duh
Horrible idea.
If poor countries are allowed access to this information they'll come up with treatments for their local plagues. This will limit the effectiveness of US-led bioweapon attacks on these poverty-stricken nations. The cost of liberating the oil of these poor countries will cost the US much much more than the current oil war in Iraq.
What about cheap drugs? Currently cheap drugs from Canada flood the US. These drugs are exactly identical to more expensive US drugs but the cheap prices hurt the drug companies, which in turn hurts America. This cannot continue. US drug companies contribute millions of dollars to politicians every year, without these contributions people may hear ugly truths about them. This must stop. I'm all for freeing information but under the condition that it still leaves the US with an obvious upper hand in the matter. Only then will the world be a safe place to live.
Long Live King Dubya!
416d3971a5d6c300745425744c6906da
fp
bb
Just because something can be done doesn't mean something should be done.
When we all work together. Like momma said, "Share your toys". Even when your toys are information and software. ~D
This sig has been enciphered with a one-time pad. It could say almost anything.
free access to the scientific tools of modern biology and genetics
I just had a debate about this a mere 30 minutes ago, what with all the cloning etc going at the moment, this isn't always a good thing. I think the information the public at large get should be carefully monitored. We wouldn't want people being able to clone themselves at home.
When anger rises, think of the consequences.
Confucius (551 BC - 479 BC)
The problem with this is that scientists want to get credit for what they are doing. Both of my parents are scientists and even though they want to get more people interested in science they want to get the credit, not someone else who manages to see that two and two equals four where they didn't.
aterr - an open source threaded discussion board.
Think of the possibilities for low wage labor.
What we call folk wisdom is often no more than a kind of expedient stupidity.-Edward Abbey
All the time in articles, books, etc. relating to open source and free software people mention Newton's assertion that science is based on other people's work and that it stands "on the shoulders of giants". It's interesting now that [b]science[/b], in this article, is making an analogy to free/open source software for the same reasons. Kind of the completion of a circle, eh?
Also, although I know very very little about "biotech", I like it just because it's one letter away from "BIOTCH".
But we are not ready for this today. Third world countries are starving to death by the hundreds of thousands. How will gene therapy on plant/seed help when the farmers can't even get any regular plant/seed in the first place? You have to have bio-something before biotechnology becomes useful! Maybe once they get some farms up and running this could be useful. Until then, I think this is just a pipe dream. A step in the right direction, though.
If you find this post offensive, don't read it! THINK ABOUT YOUR BREATHING! I am what I am because of how apes behave.
You could send yourself out for pizza/beer/chips/smokes
The big question is who is going to write the manuals. It's not as if biotech isn't already difficult enough.
He tried to kill me with a forklift!
Biotech is Godzilla.
We have secretly replaced these Slashdot mods' sense of humor with a rusty nail. Let's see if they notice!!
Why is it that people always feel the need to apply a certain business model to other forms of business? Don't they relieze it doesn't work that way? Open scince is great, except it will be forgotten before the day is over - simply because it won't work.
Plus, wouldn't this put the tools of terrorism in the hands of those who would destroy us for the sake of tens of virgins in the afterlife?
The safe thing to do is to hide all knowledge of these technologies from everyone who isn't a corporation based in the U.S.. That way, these tools can only be used for the good of the human race.
Bleh.
If this post were only _slightly_ more thought out and not so reactionary id would probably mod up. I know they are trolling but some good points are made. The disease industry we have in America is not the right system for the rest of the world (just like sometimes democracy isnt). Eventually for humans to continue and survive over the next 100 years information will become free - the internet is certainly a catalyst and is enabling the sharing of informaton that could have meant death for treason a scant twenty years ago. I like to see a little hope in the news every now and again but it seems the above troll still sees the bottle as half empty....
Open access to biotechnology may have unintended consequences that reduce the utility of the biotech knowledge. As much as people hate patents, they do serve a purpose. Giving someone a monopoly right to sell something gives them the incentive to spend money on development. Drug development is hideously expensive -- without some hope of a billion dollar blockbuster payoff, companies aren't going to invest anything in open-access pharmaceuticals.
Now if we could convince goverments to spend money on all aspects of pharma development, we might be OK. Unfortunately, I'd bet that the funding government would get cranky when other countries freely exploit the medicines that the one government paid for. Citizens of countries that fund pharma R&D might reasonably object to shouldering all the burden of developing new medicines for the whole world. Does anyone think the UN would be an effective body for funding the rapid development of new drugs?
Finally, patents are a form of open access (at least in the U.S.). Patents force companies to publish their inventions. This gives competitors a leg up in innovating around any new patented process. Its not as open as the proposed Biological Innovation for Open Society (BIOS) program, but the current system is not as closed as detractors would have you believe.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
pubmed
golden path
bioconducter
public library of science
gnumeric
cluster analysis
etc. etc. etc.
What's the BFD ??? A lot of scientists are on the open source bandwagon and have been for years. Walmart's coming to town and the Ivory Towers are falling.
Well, the impact of this all depends on what is meant by "tools". A lot of the tools of the trade for genetic research (lysing and ligand enzymes, PCR machines, etc.) can easily be purchased from many scientific suppliers, and the methods for creating such tools are well enough known that they can easily be replicated (at my old high school, I kid you not, the Biology teacher and some students constructed a fully functional home-made PCR setup using off-the-shelf hobbyist robotics compnents).
Now, what I'm thinking is that this fellow is proposing "open research". This is a direct reaction to the flurry of biotech patents we've seen over the last few years. Instead of jeleaously gaurding any new biotechnological inventions or discoveries, they would be shared with the community and opened up for peer review. My, that sounds familiar... maybe because it's what the process of scientific inquiry has depended on for centuries. In fact, you might recall that when RMS founded the FSF, his goal was to rekindle the spirit of "software as science" that had existed in the early days of computing. In the days of "biotech as business", scientific openness is an old idea whose time has once again come.
Anonymous Luddite: "What do you think of the dehumanizing effects of the Internet?"
Andy Grove: "Not Much."
Your parents are shitheads.
get rid of them? sure thing
Under such a scheme, you would have to provide the complete sequence of your genome whenever you sneezed on somebody.
I don't know what this guy is talking about. You can already do substantial genetic research with freely available tools and data from the National Library of Medicine and the National Institutes of Health. A major area of granting by both NIH and NSF is the creation of open source or freely available software for genetic research. I would say that bioinformatics is one of the most active areas for free software development today. I would say that the largest problem in biotech is not that tools are closed access, but that companies can patent biological and genetic information that they discover with their open access, publically developed tools.
Wired has an interesting article related to this story. Summary: Open-Source as a design philosophy will be applied to an increasingly diverse set of disciplines.
smd4985
Considering that the world is currently in a stage where third-world rogue nations, and not a duality of superpowers keeping each other in check, are developing high technology, especially weapons of mass destruction.
While the implementation of open source programs and operating systems are great, genetic science is playing God by modifying organisms in irreperable ways, whether they're perceived to be good, bad, or sort of silly like those glowing fish. Even worse, such tools under skilled hands -- usually free university education in the west -- could be used to make gene-specific bioweapons or unstoppable virii like our army just did.
Imagine their scientists getting a huge head start with "accessible" genetics tools under the iron fist of a dictator who would want to use them for blackmail, and then goes insane for one reason or another and acutally uses them. Even if they reached the level the US and the USSR were at in the 1970s or more realistically, the 1980s, with their research, it could still spell disaster.
Most of this playing-God genetic stuff shouldn't even be developed in the first place, much less be made more accessible to the despots of the third world like an open source program.
This development was long overdue. Still, it seems to have a destiny as impotent and sterile as the talk about a "new world economic order" that seems to dominate the agenda at the UN. What surprised me is that it comes from Rockefeller Foundation sponsorship. How times have changed!
"One of the symptoms of an approaching nervous breakdown is the belief that ones work is terribly important." -BRussell
What I read here:
Major portions of the biotech community feel their field would be enhanced by moving towards something more like the Open Source community. The implication of this is that the intellectual property rules may need to change a bit for this to really happen. What might motivate the powers that be to want to make this happen: most wealth/political power in the world is controlled by older folks. Biotech is especially important to the old because biotech has the serious possibility of extending human life spans-and more importantly extending the quality of human life. Basically the political elites have a choice:
Continue playing their games-and die at age 70-85.
Listen to the biotech folks and live comfortably an extra 15-30 years.
I think that the powers-that-be will choose the second choice. We'll see a greater mix in means of rewarding inventors as the biotech revolution develops.
"...just as computer programming tools were shared in the open source software movement."
Were? As in... the OSS movement that is complete?
Not sure how I feel about this idea - to speed up progress research should be shared, but individual benefits should also drive that research. Why would you go into biophysics if your work wasn't going to pay off? (I know there are other reasons, but money's still at the top of most people's list).
Doing this will make it easier to clone people and create WoMD. Not the best idea.
This is not equivalent to the debate over publishing exploit source. There is no guarantee that biological countermeasures can be created to counteract bio-malware, so increasing the pool of exploit-related knowledge is not to our benefit. Besides which, people will die while we wait for the equivalent of patches to be submitted.
Is it possible to amend the GPL to prohibit its use for distributing potentially dangerous biological information -- something like the ebola genome? Perhaps a review board could be established for biological information that is to be distributed under the GPL. I realize this does nothing to stop the information's spread under a different scheme, but at least it might discourage the foolish from cross-applying OSS principles to arenas where they most decidedly do NOT belong.
Good stuff, the more areas of human activity that the free software way of producing things spreads to the better, another science thing is featured on the front page of Creative Commons at the moment, PLoS:
Science and education seem to be areas where this is taking off at the moment, the design of things seems to be happening at a lot slower rate. Perhaps the lack of free CAD software to compete with AutoCAD is one of the main things holding this back?
I'm looking forward to the day when I can buy a washing machine and vacuum cleaner that are build from designs under GPL style licences...
Check out MKDoc a mod_perl CMS
This is just what Mathematics has been doing for centuries, and it works the too. :-D
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
"My homework ate my dog..." bwahaha
So, when can I pick up my own personal mouse with a functioning hand growing off it's back?
in my life God comes first.... but Linux is pretty high after that
Francis Smit
One of my biology professors (who is well respected in his field) has commented on this idea a few times. The scientific community used to be able to regulate itself by keeping all research open and available. Corporations have changed science by taking it behind closed doors for their own greedy purposes. Consequently, this leads to bad scientific practices that are potentially unsafe. It sounds like this is what this guy is talking about.
For the last few hundred years, commerce has been the driving goal behind human development, barring the occasional major war... The reasons are based in the costs of production, dissemination, and utilisation of knowledge and materials, versus the potential profit of using that information.
:-)
One new factor is communication, which has advanced to the level where no great expense is required for long-distance communications. Merchant princes rose and fell by their application of knowledge that others didn't have, today we have near-as-dammit instant communication with negligible costs. We pay people in other countries, and have a truly global market.
There is another new factor coming into play: zero- (or at least, minimal) cost goods.Until recently, manufacturing costs were per-copy of an object, now we deal in abstract knowledge more often, recreating the object we desire locally. This obviously doesn't apply to real physical objects, but how often do we download models, music, video, programs, and data. There is negligible duplication costs involved here, so costs can be amortised over the whole collection, and are far less per item.
Perhaps we can see forward to a future where digital assets have limited protection; the competitive advantage of being first compensating for the lower barrier-to-entry for companies. The first steps towards a truly creative commons, open to all without restriction. If such a thing were ever to become reality, the GPL or a similar (not-for-profit-without-forking-out-dosh) licence would be ideal. In that case, I think we'd all be significantly more grateful to RMS than we are today...
Or perhaps not. (And I leave the reader to decide which point I refer to with 'not'
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
This... bothers me. I'm not sure that I like taking a stance against openness in science, but the comparison to the open source movement made me realize something about why this isn't a good idea. The open source movement is founded on the idea that thousands of eyes on source code allow it to be improved and constantly updated. Bugs are fixed, servers are patched, and viruses are defeated.
This doesn't work for biology.
When a malicious researcher discovers (for lack of a better word) an exploit for the human body, we can't just patch and reboot our systems to compensate. I think that until we can better develop rapid-response countermeasures to new engineered diseases, we might want to hold off on such a proposition. There are too many dangerous things that we can do with today's knowledge that we can't counter to be widely opening it all up.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
I reread the article. It's more about breaking monopoly strangeholds on research than on widely opening up all databases and research libraries. It'll have a trickle-down effect that makes it easier for poorer researchers (including terrorists) to do their work, but I can't really oppose that.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
Anyone else read that as "The opening of Bieotch?"
According to this article, I'm probably not alone.
Clause 2.b of the GPL has been interpreted by everyone from Richard Stallman to Bruce Perens to mean that the larger the organization the less likely they are to publish derivative works because internal distribution is not covered under the GPL. Like many tax policies that penalize small businesses and favor conglomerates, the GPL is designed to encourage bureaucratic growth.
The RPL is more viral. The RPL requires that those who want to keep their derivative works private, find some other licensing arrangement with the authors. If some bureacrat wants to make viruses from free public technology, then he at least gets a viral public license.
Seastead this.
Since when has 'restricting the spread of advanced XYZ knowledge' ever worked? Sure, the RIAA/MPAA would love to contain the spreading of the dangerous knowledge that you can use file sharing programs, and microsoft would love to keep all the advances knowledge about how to build an OS secret. After all, knowing how an OS works could arguably lead to damages and lives lost, like hacking into a power grid (yes, I am becoming a bit melodramatic, I'll stop now, I promise).
My point is: It's a bad idea to restrict the spread of knowledge, since we simply can't. Good textbooks about biology will teach you a fair bit about molecular biology, and lab techniques. All this can be used for good or for bad purposes, as with (almost) all technology. So how do you wish to contain this knowledge? Prohibit anyone from teaching biology? Or perhaps teach biology only in the US, thus protecting the homeland? (oops I am bitter again...)
In that vein, do you think that amending the GPL would help in containing information? Bad people who are planning to kill usually don't worry too much about breaking the terms of a license. And as for the Ebola genome, it's here, courtesy of the NIH. And it is there, publicly available, since some people are actually wanting to study it to find a remedy, and fortunately, they are not all employed by the USAMRIID or DoD but are all over the world.
My first thought was, well, given the "open" plans for, say, a car, it's not easy to make a completely new one from scratch. Then I thought, again. Low Riders! Hot Rods! Could be interesting times ahead. Serioulsy, I just wish they would get to the point where they actually understand things, like depression, mental illness, etc. That would be nice. *cragen.
by Bruce Sterling
Parallel to the issue of the proprietary and patent-encumbered landscape which can inhibit many scientists is the fact that (in the USA, anyway) results of publicly-funded research can be misappropriated by patenting inventions and innovations which are the direct consequence of those results. The results are kept unpublished until after patent applications are made because public knowledge would render the inventions obvious. The public investment in the science or technology serves to enrich those who are unwilling to place their own funds at risk, as the rest of us have to do.
This is no different from the technologies applied to American crops, it's just that the idea is to make it easier for poor countries and their citizens to help solve their own problems. Seems to me that this wouldn't affect big business all that much, and it could give a real boost to the places and people that really need it.
And really, the evil terrorists who want to develop the WMD - are they going to sit around saying "well, if only we weren't limited by those dratted patent laws?" No. This idea is pretty much designed to help those who need it - the evildoers don't really need any help.
"1. Playing God
2. The development of this technology can lead to being cloned without your knowledge"
Religion is losing power rather rapidly (in western nations, at least). Census data from the US, UK, and Australia (I haven't looked at others, but I have little doubt they'd be similar) show that the younger generations have far less religion ("No Religion" or "Atheist" as response) than their parents. "Playing God" may be a major issue today, but it may not be in a few decades.
Being cloned without your knowledge really isn't all that bad. Look at it this way - women who become pregnant unintentionally have a big price to pay, however men who accidentally impregnate a woman only have to worry about emotional issues. How many men do you think have kids they don't know/care about? Obviously a genetically similar (~50% or 100%) kid isn't much of an issue if you eliminate the physical price.
"Neither of those seem to justify the fear to me, but those are the sources I have run up against.
Same here - the defects that result from the imperfect process we currently use is the only qualm I have. Cloning yourself isn't all that far from giving your child your name (xxxxxx Jr., xxxxxxx III, etc.) and raising them to be just like you. While I think it's a bit sick and twisted (vision of self as perfect, vicarious living, etc.), it's not something I'm about to legislate against or get worked up about. If you're so obsessed with yourself that you want a genetically identical (at point of conception) kid, go right ahead. I won't hold it against the kid (though I will hold it against you, sicko).
GL
it is a song which comments on this topic
This would be cool. With open-source biotech, it would likely be a matter of months before we'd have single-celled creatures capable of administering Quake servers!
Note that there was a huge battle over PCR, as Perken-Elmer Cetus owned the patent. Other companies could not sell "PCR Machines" without licensing the rights, and instead had to sell "Thermal Cyclers". Ditto for taq polymerase.
ignoring the fact that your parents are allowing their selfish desires to stop them
The desire to be recognized comes from the desire for further work in the extant culture of scientists.
The desire for further work in the extant culture of scientists comes from the desire for further scientific work and the characteristics of the extant culture of scientists.
The desire for further scientific work comes from the desire for further work and the skills of said researchers.
The desire for further work comes from the desire for a paycheck.
The desire for a paycheck comes from the desire for food and the characteristics of how food is obtained.
The desire for food comes from the desire to continue to survive.
You may consider the desire to continue to survive a "selfish" desire, but few would argue with such a determination.
How do you propose to solve this?
A few years ago I wrote a little molecular biology helper program to use in my graduate studies. Slapped the GPL on it and made it available for download on my site. This was before the age of sourceforge.net and all the other modern facilities. It stayed up for about 2 years, and was downloaded about 20 times in all. Then I changed ISPs several and the original page didn't make it to the new one.
I may still have the source code somewhere - maybe I'll put it up again if I can find it, or maybe set a sourceforge project or something.
I hadn't known there were so many idiots in the world until I started using the Internet -Stanislaw Lem
To try and understand the ethical problems with cloning you need to think about it from the child's perspective and think about the practicalities of the child-parent/clone-original relationship.
Is the father-son dynamic, the same as the original-clone dynamic? How will the son feel about being a clone, biologically identical? how will he fit into society.
You say that being appalled at the idea of circumventing meiosis is weird to you. But that is to misunderstand the issue. It's not just meiosis that we are talking about - cross-fertlization also takes a part.
As an individual created through sexual reproduction I can be sure (twins excluded) that I am biologically unique. I'm not sure how I would feel, and what mental strain would be thrust upon me if I were to be able to look at my mother/father and know that I was an exact biological copy, with an overwhelminmg likelihood of getting - say - prostate/ovarian cancer at age 43.
"Think of the children" is an amusing and oft-quoted cliche, but in this case it is spot on.
Compare:
1) Kid makes computer virus, kills a bunch of computers
2) Kid makes virus, kills a bunch of people
On the other hand, we're already teaching college age people enough to build killer viruses. Just splice in a gene here and wallah!
Most of this playing-God genetic stuff shouldn't even be developed in the first place
Genetic engineering produced synthetic human insulin and the anti-breast cancer medication Herceptin. How do you define "most"?
If it means I'll get my flying monkey-man or dogs that spit bees, I'm all over it!
-Goran
Carpe Scrotum - The only way to deal with your competition.
Governments don't seem to be interested in "extending the quality of human life" (sic), unless you measure this by television size and markets for over-hyped mobile phone/PDA accessories. (note: this is silly)
As far as extending human life spans, this can easily imply extended economic convalescence. As long as the world is driven by "growth economies", extending human life should not be a priority for any gov't. So-called human innovation peaks before middle age, and some EU researchers are suggesting to increase birth rate despite their concerns of overpopulation, simply as a short-term 'fix' for flagging economies and large populations of old-age pensioners. This might sound ghastly, but it's not as bad as if science were to ignore the problem (which seems to be the US strategy).
Alternatively, the powers-that-be might like to entrench themselves in office, while ignoring economics and population studies. We'll see how much more hypocrisy they (being those in the US) can withstand if they do this while conceding the country's research and social agendae to their braindead Christian Coalition constituency. Heh.
However, having heard several lesser-powers-that-be mock the new FDA "trans-fat" labelling (and having a superficial impression of their general health provided by the media), I have a feeling that they are too stupid to understand their own mortality as opposed to their bank account$.
The obligatory science fiction recommendation for this latter case is Bruce Sterling's _Holy Fire_. A masterful piece of whimsical speculative fiction, save for apparently being cut 50-200 pages short... I'd much rather have a Holy Fire trilogy than Stephenson's pretentious history-wank.
Cheerio!
BioPerl.org, biojava.org and CPAN have loads of useful tools, functions and modules for the biological programmer (bioinformatition) out there, this is all free and mostly great.
"Well, who knows what a person's reasons are? I'm sure there are legitimate reasons/cirumstances for making a clone of oneself, just as there are sometimes legitimate reasons for killing another person."
Okay, then - what are they? I can understand killing someone when there is no other option to prevent them killing someone else, but I haven't thought of any for cloning yet, aside from cloning biologically "useful" individuals for science (i.e. rare people naturally resistant to cancer/AIDS/malaria/etc). In those cases, the clone would be a guinea pig, not just somebody's kid. If you've got a reason for clone yourself (other than what I just said, which would nearly always take the form of a scientist requesting to clone you, not you deciding to clone yourself), please add.
GL
Some tools are freely available including source code. Example: Blast (ugly and difficult code, but you can look at it if you like).
Other tools are written by academics and tightly controlled. They freely license these tools for academic use, but redistribution is not allowed and source code is not available, Examples: Phred, Phrap, Cross-match (there are many others). These academics make a career out of writing papers about, and maintaining this software (they do need to make a living somehow). Let me tell you, I would love to get my hands on cross_match and make it run more efficiently, but I can't. The system is broken. We need a way that these authors can get credit (recognition and $), and at the same time there should be a time limit of a certain number of years that they can keep the source code secret. Maybe the NSF or USDA could just pay select authors to release their code.
The third kind of tool is one written by a commercial company, and isn't free in any way. Some of these packages don't have good free equivalents. Example: GeneSpring is used to analyze micro-array data, and is very expensive
The guy wants
"free access to the scientific tools of modern biology and genetics...just as computer programming tools were shared in the open source software movement...
Last time I checked, a computer that gets a new and nasty kind of virus can still be cleaned up and restarted. A human that gets a new and nasty kind of virus may not be so lucky.
It's a big assumption to suppose there is any useful analogy between open source for computer code and for biological materials! It would be a potential human hazard to give 'free access' to all biological research materials.
But if 'free access' is just taken to mean that accredited researchers doing work under fully controlled conditions should not have to pay for research materials that they may want to play with -- then the options are already there, and sometimes used, for researchers (or their institutions) to exchange materials without payment and authorise their use -- at the option of the researcher/institution originating the material.
-wb-
Dr. Jefferson is interested in agricultural biotechnology. While most people who commented on this article have equated biotechnology to medical research, this is not the area in which open science is most needed. It is in the agricultural sector where funding is tight, profit margins slim and there was a long history of sharing materials and methods in the public (even private) sector that open science is desperately needed. In the 1980s, the ability to patent methods and living things in combination with the Bayh-Dole act started a chain of events which has diminished the ability of agricultural researchers to work for the public efficiently.
Some will argue that the ability of companies to patent materials and methods promotes research by promising a return. As a scientist working in the field of plant breeding I see that this is not the case here. Large biotech / seed companies are most interested in working on species which are grown widely (e.g. corn, soybeans and cotton) and on which they can make a profit due to economies of scale. Many minor crops which are important to those people who grow and consume them (particularly in the developing world) do not get the attention of the large companies. Plant breeding efforts must be regional because plants interact with their environment in ways that cannot be easily predicted. Therefore a variety bred for use in the midwest of the United States might not be suitable for use in the northeast let alone Africa or Asia. If the modern molecular biology tools which are useful are encumbered by patents which restrict their use (either directly or through licensing costs) the ability of people all over the world to benefit from scientific knowledge and use that knowledge to feed themselves is lost.
This problem is compounded by the fact that in the development of new varieties many genes / methods are included. Multiple parties might be patent holders in one variety which could easily price the variety out of the market. An example (which was resolved with complex negotiations) is the so called golden rice (contains increased vitamin A precursors) which involves about 30 different patents.
As others have pointed out, a system of open tools / technologies in the sciences is great for the many of the same reasons free software development works so well. There are some of us who are working to promote both of these things in the agricultural sciences. If we succeed, plant breeders in developing countries will be able to tackle the difficult problems which face their farmers and their people and they will be able to do it without having to rely on the generosity of the developed nations and / or multinational corporations.
I think I do see your point, but I guess a distinction can be made between tools, i.e. methods, reagents, protocols (and to some extent labware) that are necessary for basic science and the drug development process. In the end, cheap access to basic biotech techniques may be beneficial for big pharma, as well, cutting down research costs.
These are good points -- R&D tools are a bit more removed from the horrible economics of the new drug application process. (What is the success rate of new tools? What is the effective investment required to develop a new tool?). Yet I am sure that the companies that develop and use these tools see them as creating competative advantage. Moreover, I cannot help but think that the people that develop new tools and methods are not partially motivated by the financial windfall associated with sales of such tools.
In theory, true experimenters should have access to the patented processes under fair use ( citation of cases ). Unfortunately, I have read (at a link lost to the sands of time) that patent holders are disputing university researcher's fair use rights because of university IP policies. The trend of academic researchers or their universities selling or licensing the fruits of academic research knocks the legs out from under the researcher's claims to non-profit fair use.
Even open access for tools would have unintended consequences. If reagents were not covered by patents, production of these chemicals would move to low-cost producer countries such as China. This could be a good thing by further reducing the cost of supplies for research. Or it might be a very bad thing by bankrupting Western pharmaceutical tool companies.
It would seem that there are economic forces that would reduce tool innovation in the absense of patents/monopolies and forces that would increase pharmaceutical innovation based on depatented tools. Perhaps the short-term would see more drug innovation with wider access to tools and the long-term would see declines in innovation as funding for tool creation drops. I don't know the answer to that one, but you raise very good issues.
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
Bio-technology
Ain't what's so bad
Like all technology
It's in the wrong hands
Cut-throat corporations
Don't give a damn
When lots of people die
From what they've made
-Jello Biafra
------ hi mom
This initiative sounds nice, but most if not all molecular biology techniques and tools are already accessible to anyone who can read. The basic techniques are described in a set of manuals that anyone can buy (the famous "Maniatis"), several computation tools (BLAST, Consed, Phred/Phrap, Clustal(X) and so on) are already freely available. Molecular biology kits are not free nor open source, but you don't really need those if you have the manual. Making the results of your research freely available (using for instance www.plos.org), THAT would be truly innovative and useful.
----- One learns to itch where one can scratch.
First countries regulate drug prices, stealing revenue from drug developers. Now they want their tools too. They haven't considered that these tools cost money to develop and someone has to pay for it, and needs a return on his investment if he's going to think about investing more money.
This argument sparked alot of debate about whether using open source tools and software meant that the findings of that research was also open source (Obviously bolocks but that's what the appoenents were trying to say)
AEnertia
Witty, tag line goes here
The article makes an analogy with open-source software, where the cost to reproduce a program can be a few moments time and the cost of the CD-ROM.
This is not necessarily true for hardware. Hardware _can_ be expensive to reproduce. Free hardware is going to cost someone, somewhere, a lot more than free software. If governments adopt a free-hardware stance it will certainly mean the taxpayer. But I think non-profit organizations can do a better job of this, and people like Richard Jefferson should be encouraged to organize one.
The really difficult part will be getting the for-profit companies to let go of their patents. Patents are probably the biggest obstacles to reproduction of a lot of hardware, and for the use of molecules. The free use of software may be a minor issue compared to getting around the patents on the hardware and the genes and the other molecules used in genetic engineering.
Can I interject a couple of helpful points here? I'm new to the Slash/Dot community so my knowledge of the etiquette of this forum is limited - if I transgress, please excuse. In my work (which initiated this thread) I'm trying hard to make a distinction between open access used for LICIT vs. ILLICIT purposes. The argument about 'won't all that knowledge/technology be available to TERRORISTS!' should be viewed with some reality check. Patents - by their nature - are fully disclosing to ANYONE of precisely how to make/do an invention. They must be. It is only those people/entities working on LEGAL use of these technologies - and reducing them to practice to add value (social, economic) to peoples' lives who must face the unfortunate constipation that these tool patents present. Anyone having no interest in LEGAL implementation, but rather ILLEGAL use of such information will be actually empowered by the patent literature! This seems counterintuitive perhaps, but ironically it is true. Making the distinction between licit and illicit use also allows more clear thinking about how to promote 'good' (meaning societally accepted or even required) application of biology. Basically its a matter of allowing decentralized and truly democratised problem solving, whether it be in agriculture, environment or public health. Open Access - which we're trying to develop really is different than open source, and we're trying hard to model these differences now. For one, most biological organisms are easy to 'decompile' as sequencing the DNA is trivial and one can then 're-invent' many such innovations in a (admittedly well equipped) garage. But its not legal, and the world's food production community (farmers!) have to operate in a legally constrained world of commerce, even the smallest farmers in the less developed world. What we're working towards is very distinct from 'freedom of information access'. The latter is laudable. And important. And completely and devastatingly easy to hijack. I would say all the information in the world, and a dollar, gets you a cup of coffee. The new battleground - silent but deadly - is the 'enabling technologies' for converting information (experimental results, DNA sequence, whatever) into a tangible public/private good. These 'conversion' tools are being routinely infringed every day in every laboratory in universities around the world. There is no research exemption in US (or Australia) Universities, so the illusion propagates that R&D is unfettered by patents...but in fact, the 'D' is absolutely controlled by patent proliferation, and restricting access to commercial use of these enabling technologies is one of the most insidious hijacking of public money, public spirit and public creativity. The only ones that can use that (legally) are often very heavily capitalized and often monolithic entities. Not many in this community would view that as favorable? Anyway, just a couple of points to add to the discussion. But in biotechnology, the focus of our work is more on the equivalent (in your world) of programming languages (at all levels) and operating systems rather than applications. Thanks for thinking and talking about this stuff. Richard Jefferson
Actually, the issue is taken very seriously by the Forum - and they invited participation in this topic, and yes, there is a very strong focus on 'making money'. But in the current Mexican Standoff between the public and corporations can do anything, it can illustrate that there are new ways of doing business than can be productive. I don't think IBM is suing SCO to show its Marxist tendencies. Open source / open access really is a new way to stimulate an otherwise torpid industry. Focusing on developing profitable 'applications' while allowing many diverse low-margin innovations to occur makes very good business sense, whereas the current stalemate does not.
When you sleep with somebody, you're sleeping with everybody they've ever slept with, and everybody they've ever slept with, and ...
It saddens me that so many clueless people have so much power over things such as this. I am a biotechnology student and there is nothing that we do that is not already done in Nature.
I guess that saddest part about it is that (at least in the western world) education is available to nearly everybody in some form or another, and so many folks squander their learning years filling their heads with useless garbage like theatre or other pointless endeavors.
There is a severe shortage of doctors and technologists and the ones we have are forever being hounded by the uninformed crying of the general population.
With cloned human embrionic stem cells we could cure countless diseases that plague us today, but the woefully clueless scream loud and hard and foolish laws get passed banning the things that could save so many lives, merely because they don't understand, nor will they ever take the time to even try.
Yeah, many of the technologies (being in their infancy) are not perfect, and certainly not safe for use in Humans, but they will never get there when the people who can do such things are stymied by the ignorant.
This situation sickens me.
220 voltas can give you a fast, fast death! Classify electricity! NO ONE without cleareance should be able to use a power switch!
Please. I mean, please. What, do you trust scientists? Now, get serious. The guys who give us Hiroshima and biowarfare agents? The "ivory tower witch doctors", to quote Gibson?" This is the kind of people who are trustable? I am an ex-scientist myself. I run away, scared. I know better. I much rather have the info out. Yes, it is more dangerous in some ways, but it also is much safer in others. I'll take my chances with opennes---and I'm a biologist by original training, so I should have better understanding of the dangers than the layman.
And if you think science is open, you are misinformed. The web was created at CERN for the only purpose of facilitating scientific communication. It's used by everyone (including pornographers) but scientists. Go out and check. Most scientific 'publications' are not publis al all
. And no self-respecting scientist will read something that has not been censored (i.e. the so-called "peer review", which is neither). I guess they can't turst themselves to check the research by themselves. And they certainly don't want someone coming along and making real progress, they are very confortable in their positions doing very little, thank you very much.Secrecy is the beginning of tyranny. I grew up in one. No thanks, I'll take my chances with freedom.
``L'imagination au povoir.''