A splice of mice: Mickey isn't the only mouse trying to wriggle out of the clutches of the masters of code. [Animation World Network].
Canada last week refused to grant a patent for a genetically modified mouse.
Unlike the US, EU and Japan, Canada denies that Harvard's scientists
invented anything when they manipulated mouse genes. Its Supreme Court
says the university doesn't deserve a patent - at least not until the
politicians have had a chance to think the ethics of biotech over. [National Post].
As with Mickey, business concerns slam into public concerns here.
It doesn't make much business sense for patented genes to be freely
accessible. After all, you don't want your rivals rummaging through
your research work.
This isn't just a standard big business line. As biotech develops,
smaller firms, entrepreneurial boffins often, universities even, are
entering the market as niche developers. Like artists, writers,
coders and other intellectual property creators, they want to
safeguard their work so they can be properly rewarded.
Fine, but when it comes to biotech, sole ownership of this kind of
information isn't in the public interest. Charging for
access is likely to discourage research. Ideas develop most rapidly,
most fruitfully through free exchanges of information. And it goes against common sense, moral sense, for private groups to have monopolies over such fundamental knowledge.
Think eugenics here. Think perfect blue-eyed, blond-haired babies. Think the Boys from Brazil.
Scientists as scientists tend to agree that science should be open to all, should be open
source. According to Michael Morgan, formerly executive director of
research at the Wellcome Trust, research and competition were enhanced
when the results of the Human Genome Project were immediately made
public - for free - over the Internet. [Globe and Mail].
Business
argues, however, that open source can sit alongside proprietary code.
An academic institution, like Harvard, can apply its expertise to
become a business and generate wealth for the good of its staff and
students, for the greater good.
Perhaps. But GM mice, unlike Mickey or Windows XP, scamper through the
real world. Clicking through standard intellectual property arguments
when faced with invention at such a fundamental level, at a time when the news is one long brave new nightmare, isn't enough.
Corporations are exercising property rights over their biotech
creations. How morally right is this? To enclose a creature's genetic
code? To turn such fundamental information, the stuff of
life, into something that can be bought and sold?
Like much else in life, as the public debate over patenting life
splutters on in parliaments and in the media, the business of business
happens quietly in the background. The corporations are shaping the
biotech agenda. In universities even.
Canada's politicians may ponder long and hard. They won't be able to
ignore the pressure from corporate lobbyists. Canada has to play the
same free trade rules as the rest of the world. Patent law there, as
everywhere else, will be reinvented for the 21st Century.
Meanwhile, challenging the idea of minting money out of minting life is
left to the scientists. The Canadian decision came the day after the
publication of the draft complete mouse genome. Scientists from 27
institutions in six countries took part in the £87m Mouse Genome
Sequencing Consortium. [Independent].
The consortium is in the public sector. All its data is in the public domain.
Real or cartoon, mice or men, code of all sorts will cheer loudly.
