Michael Crichton on Why Gene Patents Are Bad

BayaWeaver writes "Michael Crichton, author of The Andromeda Strain and Jurassic Park has made a strong case against gene patents in an op-ed for the New York Times. Striking an emotional chord, he begins with 'You, or someone you love, may die because of a gene patent that should never have been granted in the first place. Sound far-fetched? Unfortunately, it's only too real.' From there, he moves on to use logic, statistics, and his way with words to make his point. Arguing against the high costs of gene therapies thanks to related patents, he eventually offers hope that one day legislation will de-incentivize the hoarding of scientific knowledge. As he points out: 'When SARS was spreading across the globe, medical researchers hesitated to study it — because of patent concerns. There is no clearer indication that gene patents block innovation, inhibit research and put us all at risk.'"

Comments

Please RTFA

[walterwalter]

In a State of Fear!

Hey, I wrote a book about genetic stuff

[0racle]

Hey this is genetics, I know this!

Look on the bright side...

[robably]

You, or someone you love, may die because of a gene patent that should never have been granted in the first place.

On the other hand, it could be someone you really hate. It all evens out.

I wish that he would keep his mouth shut

[eldavojohn]

I've read a lot of Michael Crichton's works. I enjoyed them.

What I do not enjoy, however, is his political commentary. The same can be said for Orson Scott Card. Why is it that authors, singers, actors, etc feel the need to get political? Are we enveloped in a society where it is expected that if you have any leverage, you push your beliefs on other people?

To quote a speech of Crichton:

First, we need an environmental movement, and such a movement is not very effective if it is conducted as a religion. We know from history that religions tend to kill people, and environmentalism has already killed somewhere between 10-30 million people since the 1970s. It's not a good record.

Mr. Crichton, you're great at plot twists and you also happen to be great at political spin. Please keep to the former so I can remain a fan of yours. I like your position on this topic but you do not end your commentary well:

Fortunately, two congressmen want to make the full benefit of the decoded genome available to us all. Last Friday, Xavier Becerra, a Democrat of California, and Dave Weldon, a Republican of Florida, sponsored the Genomic Research and Accessibility Act, to ban the practice of patenting genes found in nature. Mr. Becerra has been careful to say the bill does not hamper invention, but rather promotes it. He's right. This bill will fuel innovation, and return our common genetic heritage to us. It deserves our support.

How will this bill fuel innovation? You wrote in Jurassic Park that it is better to invest billions in a dinosaur theme park than to find a cure for AIDS. Why? Because you can't charge people anything you want for a cure for AIDS, that would be immoral. What if it was acceptable to charge a million dollars for a single dose of a cure? The benefit of medical research would sky rocket and I'm sure more money would go into development. My question is simply, how do you ensure that forcing parts of research to be open to the public won't prevent companies from dumping money into that research? If a company discovers and goes through the painstaking research of finding "natural genes" then why shouldn't they be able to profit off that?

I agree with you, but if you're going to comment on this, you must be prepared for the counter argument. "He's right." Simply won't suffice for me.

Re:I wish that he had written this earlier.

[eln]

Of course it's easy to cast doubt on his arguments. If genes were not patentable, John Hammond would not have been able to patent all of that dinosaur DNA, and we would have had even more dinosaur-inhabited islands out there. There simply aren't enough cynical mathematicians out there to protect us against people building more of these parks. More people could have been senselessly killed in dinosaur attacks.

Fact: Gene patents save lives.

Simple solution:

[PFI_Optix]

A law stating that any genetic pattern found to exist in any natural organism cannot be patented. If the pattern is patented and then found in nature, it is immediately voided.

I don't want to get hit for patent infringement because I decided to have kids and just happen to possess a genetic pattern someone claims to own...and don't think they wouldn't do it if they could.

Distorted truth

[wiredlogic]

'When SARS was spreading across the globe, medical researchers hesitated to study it -- because of patent concerns'

This is a distortion of the truth. Patents do not impede pure medical research. They only impede researchers who want to make money off of their findings and are unwilling to share with the efforts of those who preceded them. All scholarly activity is exempted from patent infringement. This isn't to say that medical patents, especially gene patents, involve some deep ethical problems but they don't prohibit related research.

Re:If you agree with this article

[fancycwabs]

"If you disagree with this article, then you're a child molester."--M.C.