tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post9054076280823239456..comments2023-07-15T04:39:59.759-07:00Comments on Genomics, Medicine, and Pseudoscience: Myriad Genetics CEO Claims He Owns Your DNASteven Salzberghttp://www.blogger.com/profile/16549957293973146438noreply@blogger.comBlogger5125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post-74281805475076213312013-06-06T07:56:47.914-07:002013-06-06T07:56:47.914-07:00Thanks for the answer!
I certainly believe in the...Thanks for the answer!<br /><br />I certainly believe in the motivations of individual scientists to do great things. But I also believe in the incentive structures of large organizations. I know that a lot of universities now encourage patenting and licensing of inventions as a way to supplement government funding (along with more partnerships with private companies) (this obviously has both negative and positive implication). And I foresee that there will unfortunately be continued downward pressure on government funding in the next few years (e.g. sequestration). <br /><br />So, while it might be okay to depend completely on public funding for this kind of work, I'm not sure that as much of it will get done as would get done if there was private incentive structures. <br /><br />I get that people have an instinctive aversion to the idea of patenting genes when we all have them: this is a legal/moral question, and I'm somewhat agnostic about it, but this is separate from the incentive question. I also understand that profiting off of breast cancer detection seems wrong, but our society seems to have decided it is ok to profit off of, for example, developing drugs to cure cancer (and those are also often developed in university-private partnerships): so my question is how is, say, determining the BRCA1-breast cancer linkage different than, say, patenting the use of taxol for chemotherapy? Maybe there is - I can certainly see that it would be odd to say that you can't sequence your whole genome, and then do a search for whether BRCA1 is somewhere in there - but then there would an incentive differential between working to develop patentable cures and non-patentable gene-disease linkages. There are parallels here with digital copyright issues... some people will happily write open-source and/or DRM-free software/music/books, but it does reduce incentives compared to a world where free software copying didn't exist...<br /><br />-MMM<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post-48093056027012392812013-06-05T16:17:59.982-07:002013-06-05T16:17:59.982-07:00As a scientist working directly in this field, I c...As a scientist working directly in this field, I can tell you that scientists are incredibly motivated to find the genes that cause human disease. We don't do it for the money - it's why most of us went into science, to have an impact on something that matters. This might sound very idealistic, but it's true nonetheless. Scientists are also motivated by the approval of our peers, and being the first to discover a new gene-disease linkage is a very big deal. Skolnick was competing with others in a race to find the genes linked to breast cancer, and the others weren't doing it for a private company but were at universities or at NIH.<br />Steven Salzberghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16549957293973146438noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post-20922647735702856982013-06-05T11:47:44.704-07:002013-06-05T11:47:44.704-07:00It would be nice if this essay addressed somewhere...It would be nice if this essay addressed somewhere the most potentially legitimate claim towards allowing patenting of genes, which is the question of incentives: e.g., what is the incentive for a private company to attempt to find a gene-disease linkage, if they can't profit off of it? A patent-free process would mean that the only work on this would be done by the public sector and NGOs/charities. It is also worth noting that Skolnick was both a founder of Myriad as well as a key researcher at the University of Utah, which you carefully omit in your paragraph attempting to distance Myriad from any of the science work. <br /><br />Having said that, I can see that there can be plenty of good arguments that we shouldn't patent genes (for legal, moral, or practical grounds), but if you omit key arguments for the other side, I have less confidence in the impartiality of your conclusions. <br /><br />-MMM<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post-64499213875015902002013-04-28T16:42:10.201-07:002013-04-28T16:42:10.201-07:00Unbelievable!
It's time to for some innovatio...Unbelievable!<br /><br />It's time to for some innovation in how the legal system works. Science is being ignored and often trumped by legal loopholes and emotional arguments. No matter how eloquently pseudoscience is presented it still ain't science.<br /><br />It's time to have some oversight by real scientists on such cases.Janet Camphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03645361065385918800noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8211371452778645597.post-61604103650702665912013-04-22T11:13:29.220-07:002013-04-22T11:13:29.220-07:00This is brilliantly written and covers in detail t...This is brilliantly written and covers in detail the absurdity of the legal foundation behind the patent on BRCA1.<br /><br />To those who believe in "slippery slope" possibilities, it seems like we're racing downhill pretty fast from the original Diamond v. Chakrabarty ruling in 1980.<br /><br />It appears that the patent system has strayed considerably away from the Constitutional purpose of promoting the useful arts and sciences. Sometimes it seems like the Patent system has become one of many tools for the support of a new aristocracy and the extraction of rent from the general population.<br /><br />What can one do as an individual when those making the laws and sitting as judges in court are too ignorant to even understand why their positions are harmful?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com