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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.
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.
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.