Slashdot Log In
Open Source Biology Initiative
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Nov 22, 2004 11:02 AM
from the good-move dept.
from the good-move dept.
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."
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Full
Abbreviated
Hidden
Loading... please wait.
ummm (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:ummm (Score:5, Insightful)
The same people who would object to the betterment of our computers, e.g.:
Parent
And SPACE (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:And SPACE (Score:3, Informative)
Re:ummm (Score:5, Interesting)
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
Parent
Re:ummm (Score:5, Insightful)
What are you kidding ? Medicine Producing Companies will NEVER cure anything. Cures immediately close the market for a product. Why do you think we have so many allergy treatments and no cures ? Why do you think we have arthritis treatments but no real cures ?
The answer: Cures = Limited Profit ( once cured, they aren't customers anymore), Treatments ( that don't kill ) = Perpetual Unlimited Profit
Parent
Re:ummm (Score:3, Interesting)
research division (whose operating costs were mere pennies on the larger company's P&L.
Re:ummm (Score:3, Funny)
I'm just waiting for the day when God turns up and claims he has prior art to the patented gene. :-D
Of course, with our system the way it is, sitting on top of prior art and waiting for infringement to come about as a business model has been patented, so God would be in trouble.
Me (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Me (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Me (Score:3, Interesting)
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 co
Re:Me (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
Re:Me (Score:3, Informative)
While some things take 12-15 years, many do not. Look at the first version of aids drugs. They used 3-5 di-DNA to terminate the DNA and prevent rna->dna reverse-transcription. The entire idea was from sanger, nicholson sequencing. In 1981, I was doing sequencing of VEE (and other virus) dominatly using this approach. In '83, when the first drugs came on line, it was simply the chain terminator. There was no R. Yet a patent was granted. How much money was spent? very little.
As to the costs, well, just be
I would. (Score:3, Insightful)
I would agree that any research funded by
Patents (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Patents (Score:3, Insightful)
Not that I think genes should be patentable at all, unless you designed them yourself. Tha
yeah, I don't understand this (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
not likely (Score:3, Funny)
Great (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Great (Score:3, Insightful)
BioForge sounds like a candidate for GForge... (Score:3, Informative)
Splitting up the project load makes sense to me; that way one site - SourceForge - doesn't have to bear the full load. Also, it lets folks do custom things to make their site more useful - like Graal [graal.net].
BIOS is working close with the CMOS (Score:4, Funny)
open source biology: anathomy (Score:2, Funny)
Let's make everything free! (Score:5, Funny)
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!
Re:Let's make everything free! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
Re:Let's make everything free! (Score:2)
But in counter-point to your exaggeration, I personally don't think that way. Software doesn't need to be free, but I greatly appreciate those people who do contribute their time to making free software. Music doesn't need to be free, but at current prices I'm not in a hurry to buy, I'll just keep making my own.
However, I do think there are some things that sho
Re:Let's make everything free! (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Parent
ummm...... Nice name. Seems familiar though (Score:3, Insightful)
Why select a name that has a specific meaning in your own sector?
This creates unnecessary confusion. A marketing faux pas that could have been easily avoided by simply choosing a lessor known acronym.
Re:ummm...... Nice name. Seems familiar though (Score:2, Interesting)
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 m
Isn't this mostly true anyway? (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Well, it cuts both ways. (Score:2)
This link [noaa.gov] shows you that by sharing protocols on the web, it is a fact that researchers can save money and even get better results than the crap that is being pushed in a lot of these kits. In fact, the profit motive typically acts contrary to the ends of good science.
And speaking of on-line protocols, this is what I expected to see from something call
Can I be the first... (Score:4, Funny)
No?
I'll get me coat.
From their project document (Score:2, Insightful)
bioinformatics.org? (Score:5, Interesting)
"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)..
Re:bioinformatics.org? (Score:3, Interesting)
Threading on thin ice here (Score:4, Insightful)
Nice idea, but... (Score:5, Informative)
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.
Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:2)
Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:3, Insightful)
But you're missing the point. This is a corporation, not an individual. It's a corporation which has a legal obligation to make as much money for its stockholders as it legally can. If it fails to do that, the company becomes legally liable and open to class action suits by the stockholders.
I'm not saying it's the most humanitarian thing in the world. Far from it, but
Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:2)
If it was just their money that had been invested, I'd be closer to buying into your argument. But when a large chunk of it is my tax money, I see no reason they should be
Re:Nice idea, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
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
Just to play devils advocate (Score:2)
Some companies spend a fortune researching this stuff and pay some of the smartest people on a planet a shed load of money to do it. What entitles you to the fruit of their labour free of charge?
Without the backing of sophisticated equipment and experience these
I am Jack's pessimistic outlook (Score:2)
Even if the organization or individual who takes out the patent has the best of intentions, once a patent exists the potential is there for use of
Is greater transparency in biology a good thing? (Score:2)
For every disenfranchised third world junta dictator, there are a hundred veterinary medicine scientists trying to keep undernourished flocks alive in countries like Uganda.
But I just have to think that in the current climate it may not be the greatest of ideas to make available this kind of tool. Same way I fe
Science Commons (Score:3, Informative)
Science Commons [creativecommons.org]
They're more focused on 1. supporting open access to scientific literature, especially taxpayer-funded literature and 2. building licenses and modular contracts that allow companies and universities to waive some IP rights when it makes sense (such as, if we know we aren't going to make money on a gene patent and you could use it to cure tuberculosis, good on ya, but if you want to use it to make a viagra competitor, we get a piece...so to speak).
Prior commitments (Score:2, Interesting)
This may get more resistance from the schools,, (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Where's my Open Source DNA Sequencer! (Score:2, Interesting)
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.
Re:Where's my Open Source DNA Sequencer! (Score:2, Informative)
The cost of sequencing and data analysis is actually quite low, and all publically funded (NSF/NIH) data should be made available to the public.
The best way to make sure that this data remains open source is to increase funding to national granting agencies like the National Science Foundation and the NIH.
Re:I didn't (Score:2)