Genome piracy

[Mr P.A. Van Heusden]

On Thu, 28 Oct 1999, Carl Remick wrote:
> 
> At length, the European parliament succumbed to the multi-million pound 
> assault on its intellect, and passed the re-drafted directive. On September 
> 1 this year, the bill became European law. The rest of the story hardly 
> needs relating. An American company, Celera Genetics, has done precisely 
> what the bill's opponents predicted, and staked a claim to a great chunk of 
> the human genome. Tony Blair and Bill Clinton have begged Celera to 
> re-consider its application, and Celera has chosen to ignore them. The 
> blueprints of human life will become its private property.

This isn't quite correct - Celera has *not yet* staked a claim. They are
busy trying to stake a claim. 

Celera Genomics (http://www.celera.com), which is run by Craig Venter, is
actually owned by Perkins-Elmer (who happen to make a very popular model
of sequencing machine), are trying to sequence the whole human genome
before anyone also using a technique called 'whole genome shotgun
sequencing'. I won't go into the details of that technique, but basically
they're taking a risk that they will be able to assemble a complete genome
sequence using this technique - its not proven, but Venter argues that
they will achieve unprecedented speed doing it their way. 

Craig Venter previously set up TIGR - The Institute for Genomic Research
(http://www.tigr.org) - after he fell out with, and left, the US Human
Genome Project. TIGR made quite a few strides in sequencing in the early
1990s. Celera seems to be continuing the mission of Celera using other
sources of funding (TIGR was a 'non-profit' - it might still be, I'm not 
sure).

Celera says they will release the complete genetic code that they produce,
and not charge people for it (I think this has already happened for some
of their data - e.g. Drosphila i.e. fruitfly sequence), but they want to
patent all the genes they find.

Arrayed against Celera is a consortium of government-sponsored sequencing
centres, with the biggest being the Sanger Centre (http://www.sanger.ac.uk
- next door to me as I write this). The Human Genome Project - the result
of this collabortion - intends to release all the data it produces into
the public domain. The HGP looks like it might win the race on this
particular project.

A number of scientists involved in and associated with the HGP consider
Celera Genomics to be the devil incarnate, as far as I can see. The
problem in my mind is that genetic research, and the business of
scientific research in general, is so tied up with capitalism as to lock
workers in the field into a truly Faustian contract. People's feelings
about Celera seem to largely be motivated by concern that Celera's work
will break down the ties of scientific collaboration which research
scientists have traditionally relied on.

This is of course a totally inadaquate response. What is *vitally needed*
is putting this issue on the agenda as part of an attack on private
property, and on capitalism. That's not going to happen from NGOs,
professional environmentalists, or the UK Labour Party, though.

Science workers unite and take back science for the people! (yeah right,
as if that's going to happen!)

Peter
--
Peter van Heusden : pvanheus at hgmp.mrc.ac.uk : PGP key available
Criticism has torn up the imaginary flowers from the chain not so that man
shall wear the unadorned, bleak chain but so that he will shake off the 
chain and pluck the living flower. - Karl Marx 

           NOTE: I do not speak for the HGMP or the MRC.