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The Opening of Biotech

Posted by Hemos on from the genes-just-wanna-be-free dept.

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."

39 of 200 comments (clear)

  1. Problems by Talrias · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.
    1. Re:Problems by krumms · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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.

      How unproductive. No wonder cancer hasn't been cured yet, if this is the sort of "me, me, me" squabbling that goes on in science.

      Understandable though, assuming that this credit leads to further funding for the said scientists.

    2. Re:Problems by Llyr · · Score: 3, Insightful
      As a scientist myself (albeit a computer scientist) I certainly do get credit for what I do, even what I do that I allow the world to use (by, for example, publishing an algorithm). Of course, publishing is part of my job and so I don't need to hoard my innovations in order to make money from them. It would be rather different if I worked for a company -- but even in the business world there are companies that see the value in publishing their techniques in order to advance science.

      Hoarding key biotech techniques gives a few companies control over what's done with them, which is potentially extremely problematic. It also promotes keeping the basic techniques quiet until they've been able to exploit them for what they want to do, since the technique is not the end goal of their work.

      If I have discovered how to fish, do I fish on my own in secret and sell fish, or allow others to observe (or teach them)? Someone could even improve on my methods.

    3. Re:Problems by Apogee · · Score: 4, Insightful

      How unproductive. No wonder cancer hasn't been cured yet, if this is the sort of "me, me, me" squabbling that goes on in science.

      Understandable though, assuming that this credit leads to further funding for the said scientists.

      Yes, you are right ... collaborating instead of competing for sure could lead to more interesting research, faster breakthroughs and a good community spirit among scientists. But in biology (that's the only discipline I can really talk about), this is pretty much a thing of the past, since grants, funding, positions in academia as well as in industry are to a large extent a direct function of how many papers you have published, and in what journals you published them. Only the best and brightest (something like 20-30 articles at age 35, and a handful of them in excellent journals) will get a shot at a group leader position.

      This system has its merits, but one corollary is that you're not actually selecting the best and brightest, but perhaps the best-connected and those who can "sell" their work better than others. Another corollary, which is more damaging in the long run perhaps, is that nobody shares his data unless his authorship is acknowledged and under lock and seal. Conferences have become boring. I hear that 10-15 years ago, people would come to conferences and share the freshest, most exciting data from their lab. Nowadays, nobody gives a talk or shows a poster at a conference where the data isn't already published (i.e. you most likely read it already), or at least accepted for publication (i.e. you maybe read the e-pub ahead of print).

      It's sad, and it's - exactly as you stipulate - due to all the rewards being tied to your publication record. Publish or perish, as they say.

    4. Re:Problems by SemperUbi · · Score: 2, Interesting
      It's totally reasonable for scientists to get credit for the work they do. One problem is the way that credit is scored, for purposes of advancement. Scientists get a disproportionate amount of credit for first-authoring primary research studies that get published in peer-reviewed print journals. Credit for being an author other than first (or last), or writing a review article, is much less, and credit for work that doesn't result in publication of one's name as author is almost negligable.

      People generally want a strong CV and the chance to advance or secure their position. If the system rewarded people more for cooperating, for sharing good ideas and theories more openly and for participating in large collaborative projects, scientists would follow suit. The current system is pretty circular, since those who make promotion/advancement decisions are generally those who benefited from old system and want to perpetuate it.

    5. Re:Problems by rowanxmas · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Don't forget that while someone may have 20-30 articles, what matters is how often they are referenced. That way the impact that you have has a measurable quantity.

  2. Re:Uhoh by Angostura · · Score: 5, Funny

    What?! My licence specifically says that I am allowed to make one (1) copy of myself for off-site back-up.

  3. Interesting circle by iamdrscience · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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".

  4. Great, now we're going to have 5C13nCe n00b5 by 3.5+stripes · · Score: 5, Funny

    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!
  5. Aren't we past this? by teamhasnoi · · Score: 2, Funny
    Openness? I can't see how the biotech, medical, and defense companies could make a profit by giving the tools to research and create to just anyone.

    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.

  6. Re:Uhoh by Noren · · Score: 2, Funny

    ... but you're not allowed to have two copies of yourself running at the same time.

  7. Re:Why this is a bad idea. by mrtroy · · Score: 4, Funny

    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.

    Apparently you havent been watching American news. THE DRUGS ARENT SAFE!
    Americanos: "These drugs are under no restrictions and are not safe!"
    Canadians: "Yes, they are safe, and we have pretty much the same restrictions as you do, and the drugs are identical to the ones you sell, they are just sold be different providers, and due to our market differences, ours are cheaper"
    Americanos: "But they are cheaper! And our companies are losing business! This means they are bad."
    Canadians: "Well, if you dont like them, stop them at the border" (I was happy when I heard that)
    Americanos: "We cannot! We will put more news articles out there about how unsafe your drugs are!"

    Obviously, these drugs are unsafe, and illegal.

    --
    [I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
  8. Re:ha... by Golias · · Score: 3, Informative
    Won't the current pantent laws, as they apply in most Western countries, take care of this?

    Free Software needed the GPL (or the BSD License... Let's not start up that Holy War again) because software is usually locked up by copyright, and copyright lasts a long time.

    Genetic research usually results in patents, though.

    Patents give researchers a few years to make "ph4t l00t" as a return on their investment, and then lapse into the public domain. It's a pretty good balance between incentive for research and sharing of knowledge. What exactly is the problem here?

    --

    Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

  9. a moderators take.... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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....

  10. Unintended Consequences: Less New Medicine by G4from128k · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.
    1. Re:Unintended Consequences: Less New Medicine by Apogee · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      There are some things on the market in biotech where the distributor (typically the company didn't invent it, they bought the rights from a university) are more or less monopolizing a technique, with the help of patents and license agreements. And the price that you pay at university for this stuff is - while it's expensive - nothing to the price big pharma has to spend for the same thing. I am not talking about hi-tech equipment, but for instance a method + all the reagents to create stably transfected cell lines (that is, a cell that expresses a newly inserted gene). Sure, the work of the person who built up the system needs to be acknowledged, but the price for this kit is just a phantasy price.

      In the end, I think, big pharma wouldn't suffer all that much, and neither would drug development

  11. Done Deal by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

  12. Common Sense by spoonboy42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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."
  13. Much is already freely available by John+Hawks · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Much is already freely available by Apogee · · Score: 2, Informative

      True, bioinformatics is indeed a fantastic open-source playground, due to NIH and other agencies generous granting, as well as the fact that most bix'ers I know are avid open source supporters.

      In the wet lab, the situation is different, though, and I believe that's what Dr. Jefferson has set his sights on, correct me if I am wrong, though.

    2. Re:Much is already freely available by John+Hawks · · Score: 2, Informative

      Agreed, he does refer mainly to chemical and laboratory techniques. But in these areas, universities are major instruments of closing access also. The largest sources of revenue for many universities are the patent portfolios developed for biomedical applications in university laboratories. These patents keep corporations from running away with the game, and keep corporate money flowing into university research. But universities typically allow licensees to develop subsidiary work quite freely--after all, new applications only increase the licensing fees on their old patents.

      I think what is going on here is that some researchers get blocked out of research in their preferred areas because of a history of scientific conflicts with others. Science is "share and share alike" until someone is either perceived as a freeloader or publishes critically against powerful interests. The power to limit resource access becomes an informal adjunct to peer review. I think this system is deplorable in many ways, and opening access to all such resources might be preferable.

  14. prophetic reporting from Wired? by smd4985 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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
  15. Not a very good idea, by SexyKellyOsbourne · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Not a very good idea, by dumllama · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'm so sick of this meaningless "playing God" argument. First, no-one agrees on what "God" is or what it would mean to imitate Him. Second, by any reasonable interpretation of what "playing God" means, humanity has been doing it for millenia:

      1) Domestication of plants/animals
      2) Human-forced extinctions (the exitnction of smallpox was intentional, and there are more intentional extinctions to come, including some animals)
      3) Wholesale replacement of natural ecosystems with anthrocentric ecosystems (rural, sububan, and urban)
      4) Alterations to the atmosphere (drastic CO2 increases)
      5) Digging enormous holes in the Earth and bringing up elements such as Selenium, that used to be almost non-existant on the Earth's surface
      6) Nuclear Fusion (that only happens in stars!!!)
      7) Global transportation networks that have demolished the geographical barriers to species movement
      8) A near-instantaneous global communication network
      9) Launching lifeforms into outer-space.
      10) Executions.

      Basically every technological and organizational advancement of the human race could be described as humans "playing God". The funny thing is that if we look at the history of life, there are pre-human analogies for the things that humans are doing. We're just life, taken to the next level.

      --
      "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty" Wendell
  16. New Industries-New Rules by randall_burns · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Historically, major new industries have put new practices in place. Industrialization for example was a major part of the impulse behind universal, cumpulsory education in Germany.


    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.

  17. Re:Uhoh by fenix+down · · Score: 4, Insightful

    We wouldn't want people being able to clone themselves at home.

    Why not?

    Maybe I'd think you had a point if you were talking about home genetic engineering, or if we had tubes where you could pump out backup copies of yourself like in a Governor Arnold movie, but cloning is just cloning. There's almost no issue there, besides whether cloning causes health problems in the clone. I can make my own Prozac with less expertise and cheaper equipment than I'd need to clone myself, and nobody's up in arms about that.

    Everybody goes on about how cloning is a moral crisis, without ever pointing out exactly where the crisis is. Rich people cloning themselves? They do that now, they just use somebody else's DNA to help. Overpopulation? How is a screaming food-hole that's genetically identical to you any more appealing than a screaming food-hole that's only 40-60% genetically identical to you? Cloned soldiers? That's a movie, if you're going to form an army of brainwashed-from-birth psychos, cloning isn't going to help you very much. Other than the fact that we're playing God by shockingly inserting on our genetic material into an egg cell in order to reproduce manually rather than leaving it to a chemical reaction, I don't get the shock and horror.

    I understand not wanting to clone people until we can figure out whether or not you end up with a genetically diseased baby, that's reasonable and absolutely necessary, but being appaled at the very idea of circumventing miosis is just weird to me. But perhaps I'm just odd.

  18. Past tense by lukewarmfusion · · Score: 2, Informative

    "...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).

  19. someone stop this idiot by sbma44 · · Score: 3, Interesting
    I don't know how we're going to restrict the spread of advanced biotech knowledge, but I wish I did. Yeah, information wants to be free -- I agree, until that information can kill people. In fifteen years an undergrab microbio degree will be enough to create a plague. The methods won't require particularly exotic reagents and the equipment won't be hard to get.

    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.

  20. Perhaps the birth of a new paradigm by Space+cowboy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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!
  21. Re:Why this is a bad idea. by mrtroy · · Score: 2, Informative

    Canadian drugs ARE NOT THE SAME. In some cases, yes. But how exactly do you think those drugs can be sold at a profit for so much less? In many cases, they are made out of country, at place with far fewer quality controls. In other cases, they are made out of country, where pollution and the discarding of some of the toxic by-products are not regulated.
    It has nothing to do with pollution, or quality. First off, Canada actually follows the Kyoto Protocol and has stricter pollution controls than the US. Secondly, it has to do with competition, monopolies, and different marketplaces. They are identical drugs.

    The prices in Canada are lower because, frankly, the testing isn't as thorough, the administration isn't as monitored, the quality is not as controlled, and frankly, as the Head of Illinois Pharmaceuticals pointed out when the Illinois state government considered outsourcing drugs to Canada - their drugs really ARE second rate in many cases.

    I hate to break the news to you, but most of the prescription drugs in this world are produced, researched, and tested by a very few corporations. THEY ARE THE SAME DRUGS. I do not know how you think these drugs differ. Pfizer makes Viagra. Canadian Viagra is produced by Pfizer. American Viagra is produced by Pfizer. Canadian viagra is cheaper, due to marketplace, blah blah blah. So Americans choose to import a case of viagra.

    If anything, Canada has a more strict system than the US. And you do not see Canadians getting sick from prescription drugs. So why is this importing of them going to magically make people sick? I dont see the link

    --
    [I can picture a world without war, without hate. I can picture us attacking that world, because they'd never expect it]
  22. Re:Oh Christ that's scary. by limabone · · Score: 4, Funny

    Well maybe I'm just the kind of guy who says 'The cup is half full of terrorists!'

  23. I really don't agree with you by Apogee · · Score: 3, Insightful

    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.

  24. objectives of biotech by lockholm · · Score: 3, Informative
    The point that Jefferson is trying to get across is not that patents should be outlawed (his group's idea is that end products can be sold, but that tools should be shared) or that big biotech companies should not succeed, but rather that the ultimate goal of those companies is to make money for themselves. Large profits do not lie in creating useful technologies for developing countries, they lie in creating wonder drugs for the rich fraction of the world.

    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.

  25. awesome by mabu · · Score: 2, Funny

    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!

  26. "Most" by tepples · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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"?

  27. Why I like it... by sirgoran · · Score: 2, Funny

    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.
  28. Bio Perl & CPAN by atherton2 · · Score: 2, Informative

    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.

  29. Biotech != Medicine by DNAman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    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.

  30. Re:The ethical problems with cloning, by linoleo · · Score: 2, Insightful

    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.

    All a matter of perspective. In her 1976 story "Houston, Houston, do you read?", James Tiptree, Jr. subverted this position by positing a future in which cloning has become the norm, sexual reproduction having been eliminated by disease:

    "It's so perfect," [the clones] tell him. "We each have a book, it's really a library. The Book of Judy Shapiro, that's us. Dakar and Paris are our personal names, we're doing cities now." They laugh, trying not to talk at once about how each Judy adds her individual memoir, her adventures and problems and discoveries in the genotype they all share. [...] "We make excerpts of the parts we like best. And practical things, like Judys should watch out for skin cancer."


    And our cherished "biological uniqueness" elicits only pity from the Judys:

    "How do you know who you are? Or who anybody is? All alone, no sisters to share with! You don't know what you can do, or what would be interesting to try. All you poor singeltons, you---why, you just have to blunder along and die, all for nothing!"


    In short, biological uniqueness, being pretty much the only game in town at this point, may be grossly overrated.

    - nic
    --
    Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard