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Sir John Sulston was awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize in physiology or medicine, along with Sydney Brenner and H. Robert Horvitz, for discoveries about the genetic regulation of organ development and programmed cell death. He wrote the following article around that time, addressing some of his concerns about the results of the Human Genome Project, of which he was a principal participant:
``The US recently clarified its guidelines on granting gene patents to provide a somewhat tighter definition of utility - use must now be `substantial, specific and credible'. But the guidelines still allow sequences to be patented since they can be used as probes to detect genes responsible for various diseases. The European patent directive, approved by the European parliament in 1998, states that a sequence or partial sequence of a gene is only eligible for a `composition of matter' patent when it can be replicated outside the human body (in vitro), for example copied in bacteria, as we do for human genome sequencing.
``This argument has always seemed absurd to me. The essence of a gene is the information it provides - the sequence. Copying it into another format makes no difference. It is like taking a hardback book written by someone else, publishing it in paperback and then claiming authorship because the binding is different.''
Full article at Le Monde diplomatique:
http://mondediplo.com/2002/12/15genome
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Discussion forums: Sir John Sulston's `Heritage of humanity'
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human genome program
Submitted by
Nobody
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posted on
Wednesday, February 18, 2004
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executive programs can be built within the main flow providing that input and output conditions are well defined. Could this be how human DNA controls the unfolding of an emergent creature inside an egg without any apparent means of cell differentiation, all cells being otherwise identical? It would imply telepathy between cells or something similar, wouldn't it? If not this, then how else is the process controlled? Why doesn't the creature end up as a bib blob of identical cells? What mechanism controld their differentiation and where is its program stored if all cells are identical?
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