Slashdot Mirror
Open Source Biology Initiative
Nick dos Remedios writes "The Biological Innovation for Open Society (BIOS) initiative aims to make biological technology more readily available to biologists everywhere. The latest genetics and biology tools should be freely available to researchers over the internet, but instead access is typically restricted by commercial patents and prohibitive licensing fees. BIOS and its associated BioForge aims to overcome these restrictions to innovation by encouraging companies and public sector research organizations to contribute their research tools and technologies to the BioForge repository. In return, users of the technology are bound by an open source license to share all improvements with the original inventors and other license holders."
In my opinion, all research should be this way in fields that are directly related to the betterment of our health. Who would object?
You call it excessive, I call it ambitious.
Sadly, the most pressing problem isn't the availabilty of biological tools, but the fact that researchers are being allowed to gain patents on their genome sequences, even though such people as The Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) are against it. They've no problem with patented gene therapies, but patenting the genes themselves is just a horrible thing for cutting edge science.
Athletic Scholarships to universities make as much sense as academic scholarships to sports teams.
Why select a name that has a specific meaning in your own sector?
This creates unnecessary confusion. A marketing faux pas that could have been easily avoided by simply choosing a lessor known acronym.
Based on upvotes, Ageism is the only "-ism" Slashdotters care about and think isn't SJW
Most of the problems facing the "disenfranchised" of the world are not technical but political. Good on the BIOS project for their efforts, but I think peace and some common sense public health practices in the third world will go much further towards helping those people.
Here's hoping...
If there is no financial incentive, who will pay for the research? Government funding has faded over the years leaving private industry to pay for much of the basic research upon which commercial enterprises are built. People need to understand, drugs are not expensive because the pharmaceutical industry is taking huge profits (unethical, I know) but they're expensive because research is *enormeously* expensive, combined with the fact that most drugs fail clinical trials. The money has to come from somewhere.
Open source biology, eh? Sound nice, but please, let's have someone to regulate and watch over these actions. The potential to improve the quality of life through biological engenieering is as big as the potential to end it.
Were this a utopia...
The cost of production of everything drops all the time. It takes one man now to do a thousand men's work from a thousand years ago. Since the cost of production is tending to 0 (thanks mostly to increased automation) there is no reason why everything cant be free in the long term.
All that is required for this to work is for a small minority to be willing to work for no gain except prestiege. It's not like the work would be boring - mostly conceptual and design, like the creation of new robots. The repetative or boring stuff can be automated.
The proof that this sort of system _can_ work is the open source movement. Where the marginal cost of production is 0 enough people (especially the talented, gifted, self motivated people) seem to be willing to contribute for free to keep the whole system running perfectly well. Those that use and give nothing back... well they cost nothing to those who do contribute, so it doesn't bother them much.
Open source software offers more than just free software. It offers hope that in the long run the sort of utopian vision that had us all not working but enjoying our time on our persuit of choice (which may indeed be something useful - even if no one is making us do it) CAN become a reality. In fact it's fairly inevitable... the only way it can be stopped is tying up of ideas that provide artifical costs to make sure that the things you need never become essentially free.
Beep beep.
What the market will bear. What a lovely sentiment. It occurs to me that an antibiotic or vaccine isn't the same as the new Star Wars DVD.
But you're missing the point. This is a corporation, not an individual. It's a corporation which has a legal obligation to make as much money for its stockholders as it legally can. If it fails to do that, the company becomes legally liable and open to class action suits by the stockholders.
I'm not saying it's the most humanitarian thing in the world. Far from it, but drug companies aren't humanitarian organizations.
Now, if people want to start up non-profit drug companies, that would be fantastic. Of course, the'll need startup money to fund development, and of course, they'll need to charge something for the drugs to at least make back what they spent on the R&D, but I think there's little question they could offer drugs at a much nicer price.
The problem is getting that startup capital, which these days, is a major chunk of change. And also, keep in mind that drug R&D, especially by the smaller companies, is a real gamble. Many small drug companies can prosper or die on the results of a single drug development, so you have to have enough money to be able to develop quite a few concurrently to guarantee that no single loss is going to kill the company (the "don't put all your eggs in one basket" principal). The kind of money we're talking about is probably hundreds of millions, possibly billions, in startup for R&D. That's a good chunk of change. Not many people want to throw that kind of money at a non-profit venture, especially one going into something as dicey as drug development.
The only times patents are used are when an actual product is produced. This can be a kit, a drug, a novel assay, whatever. The point is, that it was developed. This development (in science, at least) takes lots of time and money, and that is why patents exist. Something has to safeguard your time and money, otherwise there isn't a point to developing things in the first place.
You have to realize that while many people use software on a day to day basis, the people who use biochem kits and such are almost all able to make them themselves with little effort and knowledge of the composition. It's not the same as patenting an operator. Open sourcing kit composition is a way to destroy your company unless said kit is really complex (most aren't).
If only I had mod points...
There's a compelling, if naive, argument to be made for open sourcing all pharma research. It proceeds along the same lines as the "If everyone would just throw their guns in the ocean, we'd have world peace!" argument. Or, in different terms, "If wishes were wings, pigs could fly."
The barrier is human nature. People who do things for selfless reasons are few and far between. Most people who think they do things for selfless reasons are self-deluded. It's also really easy to give other people's money away. The same people who think that they'd give all their money away if they were Bill Gates are probably giving little to none of what they do have.
you pie in the sky everything should be free, but never contribute anything but demands people need to understand one simple thing.
someone has to pay for all this research and work, and to pay for something they have to make something in return.
I know that is not how it works in your mothers basement, but that is how it works for those on the outside!
The thing you have to understand out the medical field is that (unlike software patents) royalties (and expected royalties) from medical patents have funded a huge amount of research that simply would not have been done otherwise. Furthermore, the costs to bring a new medicine to market are very high due to FDA regulations, and no company or research institute would have the means to do so if they were not given some sort of monopoly to sell the drug on the market.
I would agree that any research funded by public sources should be public, if if any of it isn't than that should be dealt with. Also, concidering how much profit the drug companies are making, I would agree that we could decrease the length of medical patents at the with out a significant negative impact on the rate of progress. If we approved them for 10 years extended by 5 years at the time of FDA approval, that would give a company time to get their through drug tested and brought to market, with at least 5 years with a monopoly on it's sale. However if a company did not pursue creating an actual product from their idea, they would loose the patent sooner, and even if they did the patent would expire 5 years sooner than it will today.
But after those tweaks you are basically left with a choice - make these privately developed drugs available to the people who can afford them now, and to everyone else once the patent expires - or don't have them at all for decades until the public sector gets around to it. Especially concidering how political the public sector funding can be, I for one am happy that we have a healthly, vibrant private medical sector - that works in addition to, and above and beyond what the public sector can do on it's own.
Excellent point! I think the world needs to look at the fact that there CAN be a medium between capitalism and socialism. We need to, as a society, decide which of those things are to be distributed freely amongst ourselves, and which things are to be sold to the highest bidders. There is only one Mona Lisa. Hence it will exist in one place and be enjoyed by only it's owner. Alast! Someone bought it and displays it for all of the world to see freely. Or is it really free? The taxpayers of France are really footing the bill there. But it is THAT important. To great a thing to be held by one person or even a select few. We realize that now and collectively pay the price to stop that from happening. Collectively the price is very low. It boils down to economics. Taking on those big things collectively males them cheap, but still not free. That is also going to be the case with Healthcare and Education. Neither will ever be free, but collectively we can manage them. The problem is that Healthcare is not managed collectively in the US. Therefore it is bought only by those who can afford it. Software is managed under the same umbrella of capitalism. Perhaps we should not be looking to make it 'free', but to collectively manage the costs. Because making the resultant product(s) available to only those whop can afford it, is not acceptable to most of us. That IS what open source is about. Managing the task collectively and making the rewards of the solution available to all. It does not come without a cost, and to try to remove the cost is detrimental to all involved and will result in a poor product at the end.