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Openness and Biosecurity: Can They Co-exist?
Our growing ability to decode and re-encode genomes has enabled rapid responses to emerging diseases, but also potentially empowers would-be bio-terrorists. It is urgent that we develop national and international policies to regulate this dual use technology to ensure its benefits and minimize its risks.
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Posted by Michael Anissimov on 06/07 at 10:29 PM
No, they can't.
Some openness advocates have spent so much time traveling, consulting, and giving talks that they don't have the chance to read up seriously on the risks of synthetic biology.
After all, airplanes don't have wi-fi.
Posted by Hervé Musseau on 06/08 at 04:55 AM
Although I agree with the risks of unrestrained publication of dangerous genomic sequences, I don't see how it links to the other part of the article about gene patenting.
Gene patenting, particularly of the human genome, is not a good thing: it does hinder research, creates monopolies on genetic treatments, and prevents access to best medical procedures.
Posted by Athena Andreadis on 06/08 at 06:18 AM
Exactly as Hervé pointed out, the answer to biosecurity hardly seems to be to make genetic/genomic information, "natural" or "made", private property of pharma or other for-profit concerns.
When Venter was still at the NIH, he proposed a blanket patent whereby his ESTs (expressed sequence tags) would cover not only the ESTs themselves, which are pieces of genomic coding regions, but also the entire genes they code for and the proteins they express. It's like someone saying that they built a variant on an oil drill, and hence want to own all the drill equipment, all the wells and all the oil. The non-US partners started to close down their databases but the head of the NIH and its lawyers were made to see reason. They didn't issue a patent on the ESTs and the databases remained open and freely available to researchers.
If anyone thinks that patenting information makes it secure, they're either unclear on the concepts or willfully blind -- and bioconservatism has nothing to do with it.
Posted by Athena Andreadis on 06/08 at 11:18 AM
There is a recent article that documents the severe problems that arise from the bizarre practice of gene patenting, for both research and medicine:
http://www.doublex.com/section/health-science/enough-patenting-breast-cancer-gene
Patenting genes is like patenting gravity or oxygen. Contrary to the assertions of this essay, surveys show that genomic patenting has a powerful chilling effect on both basic and applied medical research. This also held for bona-fide inventions such as surgical procedures, for which it finally became necessary to stop the patent nonsense.
Posted by randy on 06/08 at 04:59 PM
Several points of clarification
1) I am linking patents, openness, and biosecurity showing that the ETC Group is saying opennnes is great except for when it isn't. Thus the irony.
2) There is a perception and emotional reaction to DNA patenting, but not much in the way of rational arguments aginst it.
Effects of Research Tool Patents and Licensing on Biomedical Innovation
limk to NAS study
http://books.nap.edu/openbook.php?isbn=0309086361&page=285
John P. Walsh, University of Illinois at Chicago and Tokyo University
Ashish Arora,Carnegie Mellon University
Wesley M. Cohen, Duke University
ABSTRACT
Over the last two decades changes in technology and policy have altered the landscape of drug discovery. These changes have led to concerns that the patent system may be creating difficulties for those trying to do research in biomedical fields. Using interviews and archival data, we examine the changes in patenting and licensing in recent years and how these have affected innovation in pharmaceuticals and related biotech industries.
We find that there has in fact been an increase in patents on the inputs to drug discovery ("research tools"). However, we find that drug discovery has not been substantially impeded by these changes. We also find little evidence that university research has been impeded by concerns about patents on research tools. Restrictions on the use of pat
3) Venter ran a lab at NIH. He would not personally benefit financially from any EST patents, NIH would. Besides a quote from Venter's recent book that i am using in another article.
Reid Adler, the head of NIH's Transfer Technology Office approached Venter and told him that NIH was obligated under The Bayh-Dole Act to try to patent his ESTs (Venter 2007 130).
4) So, who is the bad guy; scientists doing their work within the law or the government's inadequate policies?
Randy Mayes
Go Blue Devils
Posted by bloggerbob on 02/04 at 01:31 AM
Openness all the way!
Only free and unfettered exchange of scientific information can ensure that enlightened societies stay ahead in the arms race with potential bio-terrorists. Restricting this exchange will breed increasing elitism and set us up on a downward spiral toward totalitarianism and the decay of our thriving intellectual society. This development is already rearing its ugly head. More and more restrictions are already placed on law-abiding US researchers, which begin to lose their competitiveness compared to nations where no such, or less, restrictions exist. This will of course do nothing to increase "bio-security", all it does is hinder scientific progress. And yeah, it serves politicians to cover their butts ("God knows, we've tried everything in our power...") Haven't we learned from countries like Germany, how ill-conceived laws (Thank you, Green Party) against recombinant DNA technologies in the 70's, 80's and 90's have stifled and almost killed the biosciences there. They are now waking up, loosening their restrictions, while the US is tightening them. It doesn't make sense.
The poliovirus synthesis mentioned above is a far cry from being a blueprint for bio-terrorists. People who claim this are not only fear-mongering, but also ill-informed. Every molecular biologist with half a brain, and this would include scientists to whom terrorist would have easy access to, knew that this could be done. But since it was rather laborious to do at the time, nobody bothered to actually show it. Wimmer's poliovirus synthesis was a much needed wake-up call. They didn't put the information out there, it was there long before. They just drew attention to the fact that it is now easy enough to do for them, and by extension, for a whole lot of other people. Where then in this logical chain of scientific advances would you draw the line of what can and cannot be published?
Perhaps the finding in 1958 (!) that naked poliovirus RNA is infectious should not have been published? (Alexander et al. Infectivity of ribonucleic acid from poliovirus in human cell monolayers. J Exp Med. 1958 Oct 1;108(4):493-506. PubMed PMID: 13575680; PubMed Central PMCID: PMC2136898.
Perhaps the genome sequence of poliovirus in 1981 should not have been published? ( Kitamura et al. Primary structure, gene
organization and polypeptide expression of poliovirus RNA. Nature. 1981 Jun 18;291(5816):547-53. PubMed PMID: 6264310.)
Perhaps the fact that poliovirus complementary DNA (or cDNA) is infectious in should not have been published? (Racaniello VR, Baltimore D. Cloned poliovirus complementary DNA is infectious
in mammalian cells. Science. 1981 Nov 20;214(4523):916-9. PubMed PMID: 6272391)
Or perhaps technology allowing the synthesis of short single stranded DNA molecules (oligonucleotides) should never have been allowed to be developed (Caruthers MH. Gene synthesis machines: DNA chemistry and its uses. Science. 1985 Oct 18;230(4723):281-5. PubMed PMID: 3863253.) Interestingly, all these works where considered groundbreaking achievements (as can be judged from the prestige of the journals publishing them). And it's these four principles that form all the necessary basis for the poliovirus synthesis.
In other words all the knowledge and technology needed for the synthesis of the artificial poliovirus by Wimmer's group was available in the early 1980's. The rest was "busy work"
Perhaps nothing should ever be published, because "Hey you never know where it might lead to..." Where does it begin, where does it end???
Just as an aside, the group around Eckard Wimmer and Steffen Mueller at Stony Brook University now uses this same methodology, for which they were originally scolded, in order to create new vaccines. See the following links:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2754401/?tool=pubmed
http://ms.cc.sunysb.edu/~smueller/
Bio-security and Bio-terrorism are nothing but hot-buttons words; figments of politicians' imagination.
We cannot really protect ourselves from bio-terrorism. We can only respond. The more we think about it, and the more possible scenarios we anticipate, the better and quicker we can respond in case it does happen. Other than that "bio-security" is a non-starter.
In addition bio-terrorism is probably the least effective, and thus the least likely form of all terrorism. Why?
1. Once unleashed (such as with a "killer" virus), it's hard to control, least of all by resource-poor terrorists. In other words, it would come right back to their own backyard, and killing their brothers and sisters, more so than their intended targets in medically advanced societies. Bad PR for would-be bio-terrorists!
2. Even if they succeeded to unleash an bio attack, it's hard to claim responsibility. Who would believe you? Millions of people die each year of infectious diseases. A few more from virus X, so what? If I claimed, I released the swine flu virus in Mexico causing the 2009 pandemic, would you believe me? Terrorists must have the satisfaction of a demonstrably human act in order to terrorize. A bio-terrorist attack may not give them that satisfaction.
In conclusion, if anything it may be the bio-anarchists (wreaking havoc for the sake of havoc) and not the bio-terrorists we should be worrying about.
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