Celera and the DOE

The Washington Post describes how the Department of Energy and Celera have made a cozy deal whereby the DOE will assist Celera in their genome-mapping efforts, and Celera will extort billions of dollars from the rest of the world by patenting that genome.

Re:too bad

[Xunker]

Money, probably. If you read the article you realise that the Sandia National Laboratorie are a subset of the DOE -- and if you read /. like I think you do, you'll realise that SNL is home to one of the fastest computers in the world.

Also, plagerising directly "...while simultaneously spelling out design requirements for an extremely fast new computer that would be useful both in biology and in national security work".

Re:I can see some good points to it.

[jovlinger]

hrm.

a wee bit of an Iain M Banks fan, perchance?

Re:perspective on genes...

[jovlinger]

things are getting better; no longer can sequences be blindly patented without knowing what they do (this was previously possible -- I have no idea what they were smoking when they dreamt that one up).

So now there actually is a little bit more discovery necessary than the straight output of a DNA sequencer. I kinda think that the exact location of the gene that turns on cancer would be a valid patent. So you patent the understanding of the funtion, not the genes themselves.

Re:too bad

[ruck]

The Department of Energy, along with the NSF and the NIH, sponsors virtually all of the pure scientific research done in this country. They don't "get" anything from researching the genome, money-wise, just as they don't from the pure physics research which is funded through the DOE. It just represents the tiny percent of the national budget that keeps a bunch of America's best minds busy trying to improve the state of mankind.

Most of this research [energy.gov], by the way, has nothing to do with energy. It's just that congress happened to put this sort of research in the hands of the DOE back when it was still the Atomic Energy Commision.

Creation

[Koh-I-Noor]

Did Celera create the human genome? No, billions of years of evolution did what right do they have to patent it?

perspective on genes...

[TWX_the_Linux_Zealot]

I don't think that genes should be able to be copyrighted. Gene sequences either. it's all naturally occurring, or COULD BE naturally occurring. We need to petition our senators (or whatever representative body you have to deal with) to make genetic (end result, not necessarily the process, that all depends on many things) patents void!

"Titanic was 3hr and 17min long. They could have lost 3hr and 17min from that."

The Future of Humanity

[Xtropia]

I believe that one shouldn't be able to patent genes found in an organism. Surely, genes are not an 'invention' - they were found in the cells of natural biological organisms after all!

The argument of those in the business of making biotech profits is that the genes have to be isolated, and that these isolated forms of the genes are not facts of nature, but rather an invention. Well, that seems to me as credible as isolating oxygen from water and claiming that you've invented oxygen atoms!

But the sad truth is that no one will ever benefit from biotech advances without such ludicrous patenting laws ... What company is going to invest billions of dollars into developing biotech products without the patents?

What I'd like to see is a more sensible system that rewards purely intellectual property, such as a definitive description of how a particular gene is involved in a particular disease process. I realise that without an 'invention', you don't get a patent under the current system, but something's got to give.

All I know is, the issue of biotechnology patenting will affect our lives dramatically in the near future ... (Hint: Think of a society in which only a select few can afford to purchase biotech wonder drugs.)

I think Jaron Lanier said it well in his 'One-Half of a Manifesto':

This is where my Terror resides, in considering the ultimate outcome of the increasing divide between the ultra-rich and the merely better off.

With the technologies that exist today, the wealthy and the rest aren't all that different; both bleed when pricked, for the classic example. But with the technology of the next twenty or thirty years they might become quite different indeed. Will the ultra-rich and the rest even be recognizable as the same species by the middle of the new century?

The possibilities that they will become essentially different species are so obvious and so terrifying that there is almost a banality in stating them. The rich could have their children made genetically more intelligent, beautiful, and joyous. Perhaps they could even be genetically disposed to have a superior capacity for empathy, but only to other people who meet some narrow range of criteria. Even stating these things seems beneath me, as if I were writing pulp science fiction, and yet the logic of the possibility is inescapable.

http://www.edge.org/documents/archive/edge74.htm l

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[Joe Groff]

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I can see some good points to it.

[Lover's Arrival, The]

The simple fact is that if it were not for patents, drugs research would not happen at all. How is a company supposed to recoup its investment? Another point is that by the time they actually manage to produce any useful drugs from the material the patent gives them, the patent will only have a few years to run.

Another point in favour is that the money they are paying to the DoE comes back to us all - through the mechanism of public services in America provided by Celera. Thanks to this company you will be paying a little less taz this year. Also, as America is the biggest provider of foriegn aid, payments for the drugs sold in foriegn countries will recoup the USA a little for its unselfish attitude in this arena. IMHO, this deal has some very good points indeed, though there may of course be pitfalls.

Not as bad as it sounds

[Alik]

I belive that gene patents suck; to me, they represent a statement of ownership over human life, a practice which went out of fashion a hundred years ago. I also buy into the well-known arguments that they harm research and innovation.

Nonetheless, as far as that latter argument, this agreement will probably not be a big deal. If the government has joint ownership of all things produced, they have the right to license it for free use to all persons who receive Federal research grants. Since those grants drive the majority of academic research, researchers aren't hindered. Private firms will, of course, have to pay Celera its fifteen pieces of silver, but I fail to see ethical problems there beyond the existing patent issues.

too bad

[Tairan]

genomes don't make power. Why is the DOE looking into this? What are they going to get from it? We all know the government doesn't do anything for free.