More on Clinton's Announcement - Bioinformatics.org

Gary Van Domselaar • March 19, 2000

More on Clinton's Announcement

President Clinton announced today that the U.S. and U.K. would make raw data from the Human Genome Project publicly available. "By making the raw data publicly available, companies can promote competition and innovation, and spur the pace of scientific advancement," said Clinton in a press conference.

It is not clear, however, if this announcement means there will be any change in laws or policy in either country, since the raw data was originally destined to be publicly available. The announcement may merely be a confirmation that the respective governments will not allow corporations to privatize genome sequences. "We must ensure that the profits of the human genome are measured not in research dollars but in the betterment of human life," said the President.

With a moon-walk to make Michael Jackson jealous, Craig Venter of Celera and TIGR said that companies should not patent DNA sequences. "The only things that should ever go forward with patents are things that the drug industry is going to use immediately to develop new diagnostics and therapeutics that are available to the public," he said. However, Venter's company, Celera Genomics, has to-date applied for more than 6,000 patents on gene sequences.

The presidential announcement hurt some publicly traded biotechnology stocks today. Companies including Celera Genomics, Immunex, Human Genome Sciences, Amgen and Genzyme lost between 10 and 25 percent of their stock values.

Discussion forums: More on Clinton's Announcement

Expanded view | Monitor forum | Save place

Start a new thread:

You have to be to post a reply.