Open Source for Biotechnology

LarsWestergren writes "The Economist claims that Open Source is such a success for software development, the model should be used more often in areas such as biotechnology and bioinformatics. The similarity between open source and the academic process with their 'you share, I share' principles is shown by the human genome project. The paper argues that this process should be used for instance to developing medicines unburdened by patents, useful especially for third world countries or diseases that affect relatively few people, where medical corporations have previously thought that the cost of research have not been worth it."

Comments

Re:I am all for this

[sTalking_Goat]

If biotech becomes really easy for consumers to use/create, similar to the manner of open source software, I think something like this could put a lot of power into the hands of the people.

I don't see this happeneding. I work in Biotech. The cost of instrumentation alone is astounding. Its not like you can go out and setup a sequencing lab in your basement. An older model used Thermocycler will cost at least 10K, and thats on the low end of the instrumentataion scale. Even if you scratch build equipment yourself (which I've done) its still going to cost you, and try convincing peer reveiw or god forbid, Mr. FDA that your findings on non-validated equipment is worth anything...

I'm all for open source but I don't see it getting very far in high-end Biotech.