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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.
I like this free kick we are on. I think everything should be free. No one should be allowed to make or invent anything that isn't open source, (at least that I want to use). I would ever have to spend money again. Of course I couldn't make any money either, seeing as how everything is free. The up side is that I wouldn't have to work anymore because I don't have to pay for anything. But then who is working to make my bread if everything is free?
Somethings have to be possessions of an individual, so that we can charge others to use them and make money ourselves. Jealousy or envy is not a reason to force someone to give something up. If you can make a saleble product from the tools you need, then buy the tools. OTherwise I would venture to guess that it is not worth doing to begin with. Gosh, I had to buy a computer to write code with, what a horrible thing that I had to pay for a tool that should be free!
Typically for academic institutions, you publish all of your techniques including changes that you made to the protocol to get your results. This, and the willingness to share and explain your approach, is called good science.
The problem comes when you try to open up approaches done by commercial companies. Many of these companies spent years putting together the kits that they sell. Only the restrictive licensing and patents allow them to fully recoup their losses.
Take Amaxa for example. They supply an electroporation kit that works wonders for expressing constructs in cells. Unfortunately each kit costs $300 for 25 transfections. My lab typically goes through 3 of these every 2.5 weeks. Now if Amaxa would just tell us what the composition of the buffers are, that is all that I need to put together my own electroporation system and save my lab at least 15k a year! As a downside, Amaxa would cease to exist. What would be the point of having a biotech company that develops new techniques? Selling support? Please.
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?
This is a really nice idea. The problem is that all this research costs money and a lot of it is being done by publicly owned companies. A publicly owned company has an obligation to its stockholders to make profit and generally to maximize that profit.
That's not just someone's idea, but that's actually the law.
So, this research costs money and it's being done by companies that are obligated to make a profit off of this research they've paid for. So, they sell the results of that research for insanely large amounts of money.
Now, we say, "that's just insanely priced," but in economic terms, that's "what the market will bear," which in layman's terms means that enough people are willing to pay that "insane price" that it's worth it to keep it at that price.
This all follows very standard formulas that apply to most industries, not just drug companies. So, we sit around and talk about the evil of the drug companies, but the fact is, they're just doing their job as the law specifies.
I have no problem with us changing the law, but it's kind of like changing the rules of the game after the game has started. All the players hurt by the new rules cry foul, for obvious reasons.
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.
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