on 20/3/00 1:51 PM, Michael S. Lorrey wrote:
> Timothy Bates wrote:
>> "The government" have gotten about as far as
>> Venter, arguably further, as PE Corp has a bunch of fragments
>> which they _may_ assemble first, no one knows.
> a) the government project has been at it for ten years.
10 year sin which the sequencing machines which now run at high speed were
developed. That argument is like "proving" Apple is dumb because 10 years
they had machines running at 32 MHz and today Venter has a supercomputer.
>ago Venter started
> two or three years ago and has already sequenced the fly genome, which
> shares about an 80%+ commonality with the human genome
The 80% commonality is:
a) not known (no one knows what the true overlap is until the single
nucleotide resolution genome is known)
b) irrelevant. As Venter himself acknowledges coyly, he is happy to give
away the 99% overlapping part of our genome, as long as he can keep patent
rights to the critical 1% or even .1% of differences that make a difference.
No one cares (well I do, but most people don't) about the enormous repeat
crap about how to build basic building blocks of life.
The valuable part is the part that codes for your IQ of 140 versus Jane's IQ
of 100.
the part that codes for your schizoprhenia vulnerability versus Jill's
invulnerability.
These are miniscule when counted as base pairs. So base-pairs are a useless
metric for genomic value.
> and will finish
> the human genome one or two years before the government project, and at
> a cost that is a small fraction of what the government has spent. I'd
> say thats beating the pants off of them.
That is because he
a) is taking the government work as a base.
b) is not doing a whole genome nucleotide sequence
Depends what your goal is. At any rate, it is clear that all progress is
selectively made at the end of period, not in the middle. We are now towards
the final third of the genome-sequencing-machine-speed sequence. It is
rising exponentially, so a new start up (say you and me and two rich
friends) could catch up to Venter in a few months. Does that make us beat
the pants of Craig?
>> Point B: In my humble opinion Venter is being granted ownership to
>> information which is not for sale. I own it already. And so do you. I am not
>> selling. Therefore I do not want the government (who is trying via their
>> patent officers) to steal my ownership rights and give them to Craig Venter.
> The human genome is something that I do agree all human beings share an
> equal ownership in. The government apparently has no intention to give
> Venter any patent rights at all,
He already HAS patent rights.
He has THOUSANDS of patents pending.
So too do several other companies, some of which are being even smarter
about grabbing single nucleotide differences that matter by selectively
sampling the expressed (as opposed to unexpressed) genome on a dynamic
(correlated with the phenotypic expression) basis.
> and is pretty pissed that he's making them look like idiots.
I think he is the idiot, but that is irrelevant.
> Considering that any government information that
> isn't classified for defense purposes is required to be made available
> to everyone freely, the government is breaking its own law by refusing
> to provide Venter (who is one of us) with any of their own results.
Completely wrong. We already have access to all of the "government" (HGP)
results. What Venter wanted was exclusive access. In other words, the exact
opposite of what you had taken him to mean. He is very economical not to say
Clintonesque, with his use of words.
Pay attention to the exact phrases because your honest and open mind hears
what I hear (the reasonable interpretation) while he is speaking a highly
limited legal meaning.
Think
"I did not have sexual relations with that woman"
compare
"I will share the vast majority, even 95% of the sequence information"
> Not
> only that, but they are trying to get Venter to share his results
> without any sort of propreitary use agreement. When he balked at this,
> they got all huffy and started making him look like the bad guy.
I don't think "they" much care what Venter does. they are going to give away
the genome project regardless. Plus, the vastly more important collaborative
SNP project is contractually in the public domain.
> So far as I know, all Venter is interested in doing with the genome
> information is to package it and sell it to other researchers.
What does "package mean" It is already packaged. You just download it.
He is interested in patenting the functional sequences.
> The fact
> that he added value to the information by actually sequencing it
The information is the sequence. I don't understand you here?
> is the
> value and investment he has a right to a return on.
Along with all the other people who care to sequence it later on. That tis
like saying the first person to map a territory has a right to force all
subsequent land-owners to use and pay for his survey, rather than making
there own.
> He has no problem
> with other companies doing their own sequencing and selling that
> information.
False. he wants exclusive patent ownership of the sequence.
> What he has a problem with is other companies getting for
> free his results that the government wants him to provide to them. As
> far as I am concerned, he is totally justified.
He can keep his data secret as far as I am concerned. What I care about is
that he wants to stop me from sequencing the genome too.
>> He is not patenting innovative medicine, or proteomic interventions, or even
>> _functional_ variants on the genome.
> he isnt trying to patent anything that I have heard.
Then you have not been listening. I can give you some online refs if you
want, but a simple internet search of his radio and TV interviews is easily
grabbed for yourself.
>> Instead, he has filed patents on thousands of _fragments_ of code. Raw code.
> Since when?
Basically as the data come in they stream it to the patent office. I am not
sure if they are only patenting sequences which are associated with a
function or if the patents pending are simply of the sequence per-se`.
Someone who knows can say please ....?
tim
"I think one characteristic I have always had is that I knew whether I knew
something or did not, whether I understood something or did not understand
it. And I wasn't always happy if I didn't understand something."
Linus Pauling 1993
http://www.service.com/PAW/morgue/news/1994_Aug_24.PAULING.html
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