[Next-Generation Sequencing Book]
  • [Photo] J.W. Bizzaro • July 10, 2002
    By Nicholas Thompson

    ``Can a band of biologists who share data freely out-innovate the corporate researchers who hoard it?
    [...]
    ``The great physicist, then, might be disappointed if he learned that in 2002 he'd need approval from 34 different patent holders before buying a new kind of rice genetically engineered in Costa Rica to resist a tropical virus. Or that, according to a recent Journal of the American Medical Association survey, three times as many academic geneticists believe that sharing has decreased in their field over the past decade as believe it has increased--despite the ease with which one can now transfer information online. Indeed, nearly three-fourths of the geneticists surveyed said that a lack of sharing had slowed progress in the their field. Info-hoarding may help explain at least part of the decline in pharmaceutical innovation. According to a recent study by the nonprofit National Institute for Health Care Management, a rapidly increasing percentage of new drugs approved by the FDA have the same active ingredients as other drugs on the market. In other words, the industry may not be innovating as much as learning how to market and package old drugs in new ways.

    ``Fortunately, a potentially revolutionary counter-trend is developing. A small but growing number of scientists, most of them funded by the National Institutes of Health, are conducting cutting-edge research into the most complex problems of biology not in highly secure labs but on the Internet, for all the world to see. Called `open-source biology,' this work is the complete antithesis of corporatized research. It's a movement worth watching--and rooting for.''

    Full story:
    http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2001/0207.thompson.html

    Reference by Slashdot.

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