'Genes for sale. Genes for sale. Hurry, hurry, get access to your own genes, patented by private company, with its and not your interest in mind."
It is hard not to translate the political scientific news of the past few days into this kind of cynical peddlers' cry. On Tuesday, U.S. President Bill Clinton and British Prime Minister Tony Blair issued a joint statement saying that it was in the interest of humanity that scientists -- both public and private -- make their sequences of the three billion chemicals that make up human DNA publicly available.
They pointed out that publicly funded scientists do this within 24 hours of discovery. The announcement followed hard on the news that an effort to ensure just this kind of democracy of information had broken up over disagreements as to how and when private companies should release their sequencing data.
A nervous biotech market interpreted the news to mean that politicians were against gene patenting, but that's not what was going on at all. Politicians were really saying that the sequenced human genome -- the proper ordering of all genetic chemicals that human beings collectively share -- should be in the public domain.
What does raw, sequenced DNA tell you? Nothing about what genes actually do, or the diseases they may produce. A sequenced human genome is roughly akin to a book written in an alphabet you can read but in a language you can't understand. The genes that make you susceptible to heart disease or help you get the "joke" in jokes remain a mystery.
It is this raw material -- the genome's letters, not its words -- that the politicians, the scientists and, at least to judge by their words, the private companies say should be released. In the wake of Mr. Clinton and Mr. Blair's statement, two big U.S. genomics companies have declared themselves 100 per cent behind the free data idea.
This is because, as Craig Venter, head of Celera Genomics, has long been saying, they are not in the patenting business, but the information business. That is, their long-term strategy is to create software that analyzes myriad genetic data and suggests what genes may be linked to what other genes. They don't want to patent genes, but a gene-searching technology.
But there is another dynamic at work. In 1993, a public consortium of the world's scientists announced that they would sequence the human genome by 2005. Mr. Venter believed he could do it much faster using a different approach. The public program, known as the Human Genome Project, entered into a race with Mr. Venter and other private companies. This summer -- nearly five years ahead of schedule and driven by competition with private companies -- a largely complete sequencing map will be released by the HGP.
Mr. Venter says his company will release what it has sequenced, and hasn't already published, in the fall. Thus, rather than impede the progress of possible genetic medicine, impatient private initiative has pushed humanity closer to genetic understanding much faster than public initiative thought possible.
Finally, it is true that the genomics companies have sold early peeks at their data to drug companies looking for genes. It is true that the genomics companies or their licencees can patent genes when they know what they do. But heretofore, the only real commercial success of gene patenting has been the devising of tests to tell people that they do, indeed, carry often incurable defects. Gene therapy, putting working genes inside defective bodies, hasn't worked. Moreover, it is not clear scientists are going to find out how it does work within the 20 years of a patent's coverage.
Some suggest that pharmaceutical companies pouring billions into gene research may not get a return on patents before they expire. To forestall economic ruin, biotechnology firms will be forced into becoming engines of the fastest medical application possible.
The genetic hawkers' cry that should be going through our minds at the latest news is more like: "Genes for sale. Genes for sale. Buy 'em before somebody else gets 'em for free."