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

I am all for this

[Lord_Dweomer]

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.

Which is probably why something like this will never be allowed to happen now that people have seen how successful open source is.