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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."
Unfortunatly large medicine producing companies don't agree with you....
In the current system your illness isn't likely to be cured soon unless there is a significant market for the cure.
Add to that the moron that came up with the idea to allow genes to be patented and you get a nice world to live in.
If only a few governments (rich & developped) would have the guts to make cheap drugs and good research possible without wanting profits. (There will be profits ofcourse, but not in a monetairy sense)
Jeroen
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In some ways, it makes sense that dna sequencing hasn't been released to the public directly.
To analyze that amount of data and to create the sequence data, it requires insane amounts of cpu cycles and the companies doing the anaylzing, are paying lots of $$$ for the job they're doing without sure revenue.
The risk investment in researching is simply too big, to just hand out the results for free in this case.
There are no atheists when recovering from tape backup.
Doesn't this mostly just duplicate the efforts of bioinformatics.org?
"The Bioinformatics Organization, Inc. (Bioinformatics.Org) was founded to facilitate world-wide communications and collaborations between practicing and neophyte bioinformatic scientists and technicians. The Organization provides these individuals, as well as the public at large, free and open access to methods and materials for and from scientific research, software development, and education. We advocate and promote freedom and openness in the field as well as provide a forum for activities which facilitate the development of such resources."
This is just another example of someone trying to carve out a niche in the "hot" area of bioinformatics - the same way as this profusion of Live-CD's for Bioinformatics. It seems to me it's all quite divisive. Bioinformatics models itself on the OSS movement for the most part, but its inherent bindings with industry means there seems to be a lot of people trying to make names for themselves with "projects" even if it means duplicating the effort of someone else.
(Yes I am a bioinformatician)..
I don't read your sig, why do you read mine?
Uhhhh, _very_ few people know what BIOS means. Sure, we know what it means on /., it could also be argued that a significant percentage of people on the internet know, but that data is heavily biased.
For instance, when I worked for an ISP, I had a hard time telling people (lots of everyday life friends, peers and fellows) what ISP meant.
Cross-sector acronyms not only exist, they are very common. We (IT sector) can't even keep acronyms for a single thing (UML comes to mind), much less settle on what they mean (Sorry, brainfart, but there are hundreds out there).
I doubt naming it BIOS will have any kind of impact whatsoever.
It's even very likely that the IT sector has tons of acryonyms that already exist in the medical world.
And if the space shuttle's replacement will be using free software? No, seriously folks. How do we expect to progress as humanity unless every aspect of our large scientific projects become open and shared? Space exploration is going to stagnate unless they start using open technologies.
http://persianews.on.nimp.org/?u=Tar_Baby
Actually, that is a real myth.
The RD budget for most pharmaceutical companies is relatively minor. For many it is less than 10%. These companies have outlandous marketing costs that compare to what was done in the 60's.
This does not mean that I am opposed to patents and copyrights. But I do think that things have gotten out of hand. The office is broken and patenting things that come from large companies almost at will. Likewise, the length of time granted for patents and CR are also ridiculus. When our country first started doing these, the idea was to give the little guy a chance to develop the ideas. Now, it is simply a way to rape the public.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
I can see this taking off after some 'critical mass' is achieved. A big problem will be IP agreements that working researchers have with their employers. Some are so restrictive that 'the company' holds IP ownership on discovery totally unrelated to the employees 'paid for' expertise.
Now I'm the grandest Tiger in the Jungle!
I'm just waiting for the day when God turns up and claims he has prior art to the patented gene.
Who cares where the drugs are made? All the "generic viagra" spam proves that this is already done on a large scale. As it should be!
Having worked for a pharma and now being in the public research sector, I know you are right. R&D represents 1/3 of the total budget of pharmas, of which Research is a 1/3.
Nowadays, most new drugs are not coming from pharmas but from biotechs anyway. What pharmas are good at is Development which costs 100s of millions of dollars/euros, takes years and signals the death of most potential drugs coming out of research.
Can anyone explain to me who will pay for development if there are no patents? The only way pharmas can make money is by having the exclusivity on a drug for some time. If you can see another way, please tell me what it is.
I'll do it for cheesy poofs.
That's the law now . It used to be the law that a corporation had to serve the public good. There are sound reasons for the change but they needn't be absolute. (And another pet peeve, the corporate "person" fiction, makes sense but only if we can have the corporate death penalty too.)
The "market" is merely a (very usefull) description of certain kinds of interactions amongst spearate entities. It is not a god that must be obeyed. If the "market" makes it profitable to deny medical care to some, perhaps this is a "market" that should be examined and regulated. Perhaps it isn't possible to develop needed drugs in a regulated market. But maybe it is. There may be a profitable market in using infants' chest cavities as self-fertilizing planters. That doesn't mean the market must be served.
The rules were changed to benefit the corporations at the expense of individuals. The rules might change back. So what. If corporations don't like the rules, they don't have to play. These aren't commandments. These are social conventions. If they don't serve society's interests, change them so they do.
Q:How many libertarians does it take to stop a Panzer division? A:None. Obviously market forces will take care of it.
Merely discovering things that exist in nature in any other field is not patentable.
If I am inspired by some strange cave formation and design a new method of supporting buildings around it, perhaps I can patent it the particular method of supporting buildings. But I can't just patent the cave formation after discovering it and sue anyone who then applies any principles contained therein to anything.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Having spent many years in the "Life Sciences" arena, I can attest to how (sadly) true this is. I hopped on board a small research division of a very large company. The division was essentially a group of scientists who really did (do) care about finding a CURE for a specific disease. The large corporation (who owns another division that benefits greatly from a TREATMENT for said disease) starts to do the math...
research division (whose operating costs were mere pennies on the larger company's P&L.): shut down.