Google Accused of Bio-piracy

Simon Phillips writes "ZDNet is reporting that Google has been accused of being the 'biggest threat to genetic privacy' this year for its plan to create a searchable database of genetic information. From the article: 'Google was presented with an award as part of the Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy in Curitiba, Brazil, this week. The organisers allege that Google's collaboration with genomic research institute J. Craig Venter to create a searchable online database of all the genes on the planet is a clear example of biopiracy.'"

Comments

May I suggest....

[Mattygfunk1]

Gnetics?

Torrents.

[LiquidCoooled]

OK, if theres piracy going on, wheres the torrent stream?

Stupid.

[tpgp]

From the about the award pages:

Biopiracy refers to the monopolization of genetic resources such as seeds and genes taken from the peoples or farming communities that have nurtured those resources. It also refers to the theft of traditional knowledge from those cultures.

And the page explaining why Google was nominated.

Nonetheless a recent internal video released from the Googleplex shows that the company are still very actively pursuing the goal of putting genomic information online for free.

So. Google is monopolizing genetic resources by putting genetic information online for free?

There are much better things to go after google for if you don't like them (*cough*censorhip*in*China*France*Germany*US*Unwar rented*Patents*cough) and far better companies to go after for biopiracy (What a stupid term).

The monopolization of genetic information is a serious issue - people are trying to do stupid things - like attempting to apply copy protection measures (both physical and legal) to life. Life attempts to copy itself & tradional copyright / patent laws should not apply.

Unfortunately, these awards look like shameless self-promotion rather then a serious attempt to tackle the problem.

Re:Stupid.

[antarctican]

So. Google is monopolizing genetic resources by putting genetic information online for free?

I was thinking the same thing. If Google is putting this information online for all to use in research, how is that a bad thing?

As a computer scientist who has been working in bioinformatics for over 3 years now, I've been calling for the "googlification" of genomics information ever since I discovered what a mess the community really is. You would not believe how many different databases, with different indexing systems there are out there. To actually do any useful research you first have to spend a month or two trying to make the pieces of data fit together.

Our lab, and many other labs, actually have entire projects dedicated to finding ways to piece these disjoint datasets together for effective quering. This is a huge under-addressed problem in genomics.

And genomic data goes far beyond just the human genome, that's only one small part. If someone could organize all the genomic formation across all the hundreds of genomes which have been sequenced, it would be a very very useful tool. The other half of the problem in genomics databases is half of them are NOT free and available for researchers without paying licensing fees. And to me, a far better use of research dollars is on actual research rather then paying licensing fees for data which was probably originally discovered with public research dollars to begin with. So if Google can open up all this sequence information, and more importantly the related information downstream from just the raw sequences such as pathway information, all the more power to them!

The truth is most genomes ARE already available through sites like NCBI, you can download hundreds of eukaryotic, prokaryotic, and fungi genomes freely already. You can already find similarities between sequences across species through tools such as BLAST, or find orthologs across species with tools such as Ortholuge. I would assume what Google is doing is creating a better way to organize this. And Dr. Venter is already known for trying to find as many diverse genomic sequences as he can, and usually not human ones.

This definitely seems to be panic over nothing, over something which could help genomic research a lot, and ultimately find better ways to protect humans against the nasty bugs out there.

I for one welcome our new Google overlords.

Bio-piracy?

[Uber Banker]

I can understand the meaning of pirate as in someone who sails the seas and acts in piracy - stealing others' belongs by force.

I recognise the notion of piracy as in copying material which has been copyrighted, conducted by a 'pirate'. But I prefer the term copyright infringement.

But what the heck is 'Bio-piracy'? Because privacy and piracy sound vaguely familiar isn't reason enough, IMHO. Naming the awards 'the Captain Hook awards' seems even more facetious.

From TFA, "Google, in cooperation with Craig Venter, are developing plans to make all of our genomes Googlable to facilitate the brave new world of private genetically-tailored medicines" does not equal piracy, IMHO.

And to tackle their argument, they have not outlined why genetically tailored medicines are bad, not why holding them in private hands is wrong. And private means exactly what? The copyright to GNU/Linux is held in private hands. And Google giving public access to work done by the human genome sequence project seems a lot better than letting all research in the hands of a very small amount of drug companies, those that are most interested in profiting from keeping information 'secret'.

correct me if i'm wrong

[gEvil (beta)]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but if you are someone with the resources to even do anything with this type of information, you will most likely be able to obtain it through sources other than Google.

Yup. Sounds to me...

[schon]

Google is monopolizing genetic resources by putting genetic information online for free?

Sounds to me like these guys are a bunch of kooks who are attacking any large company who uses the words "genetic" and "database" in the same sentence.

Google is one of the biggest, so they automatically attack.

I don't understand

[wetfeetl33t]

Why is it that when a company makes information private, they are considered greedy and secretive, but when a company makes information freely accessible over the internet, they are considered pirates?

What do Bio-pirates say?

[Anonymous Coward]

I guess they're after some Yarrr-NA.

Ouch, sorry about that :)

Riiiight, so...

[AEther141]

Making data publicly available at no charge is evil and advancing the privatisation of genetic data. That makes sense. Torvalds, Cox and Stallman must be evil for all that Free software. The Gutenberg Project must be pure evil for making all that literature publicly available - who knows what Evil Corporations(TM) might do with that information? Seems to me that this 'bio-piracy' malarkey is a thinly veiled primitivist agenda.

RE: need a new keyboard... again.

[fshalor]

This made me spit out my coffee... Arrrrg!

There's a balance between communication and proliferation. There really is.

If a person is being tested for a degree on material, they shouldn't have access to the answers. But if a person is working in the field, they *should*. And if a person is curious, they probably should too.

This is just taking it too far. There may be justifiable reasons why evil corperation X in country Z shouldn't have access to information Gamma, but what real difference will it make if they can google for it. There's a much greater chance of them screwing something up if they're evil than getting something right.

Weight that against the 1000's of corperations/individuals/research groups also looking at information Gamma and doing something promising, and google is, on average, doing a good service.

I have to google for facts that make our research institute run literally daily. Usually its simple stuff like " what the hell is bentonite and how much can we put in this beaker without breaking something." or "what the heck is this photoflo stuff. It works great for this demonstration experiment, but we can't find the bottle..." a short google later, and we have a home brew wetting agent made, in the tank, and making the flow over a glass edge laminar just as we wanted.

Biopiracy? Please: Communication is a *vital* part of the scientific method. Shure, 1/1000 it might bite someone in the ass. But without modern communication pathways, we wouldn't have all these cool toys or long lives in which to buy more toys.

Re:Yup. Sounds to me...

[networkBoy]

Best explanation I could think of as well.
I read this and said WTF?
then I read teh story and said WTF?
then I read your comment and said Ahhh!
-nB

Re: need a new keyboard... again.

[Anonymous Coward]

You run your research lab based on facts from Google?

The first thing you learn, is the internet is not a reliable source of research information. Have fun on the day you do that google for how much bentonite to put into the beaker, and find out the paper you got it from on the internet was only a draft, not peer reviewed, and had a decimal point in the wrong place.

Re:Bio-piracy? Yes, Bio-piracy indeed.

[kusanagi374]

Quite simple. Because those genes are taken from natively Brazilian plants and animals, used abroad for research then patented. So, if a local small industry decides they want to use that plant for something (a native plant) they must pay royalties to a corporation from a FOREIGN COUNTRY, usually a country where such plants/animals don't exist.

That's what they classify as bio-piracy. Steal native elements from a country and patent them as a property of your corporation, then sell it back to that very country or charge for royalties.

Torrent stream

[jfengel]

In my pants.

[Apologies. Crude, but I couldn't pass up the opportunity.]