Genetic patents counter spirit of scientific discovery

One of the things higher education is supposed to teach us is that knowledge is its own reward. We know, of course, that knowledge has other rewards, such as recognition and money. Private firms are interested particularly in the latter, and where firms deal in intellectual property, patents are one of the few means of guaranteeing compensation for the resources involved in gaining knowledge.

Most knowledge is a public good. It is, for the most part, nonexcludable (once knowledge is out there, anyone can use it) and nonrivalrous (one person's use of knowledge does not preclude another's use of it). Private entities usually will not produce public goods unless they are compensated in a manner that reflects the large benefit of their product to society. We use patents as one way of protecting private investments in potentially public goods such as knowledge. Otherwise, for example, once the chemical composition of a drug were published, anyone and everyone could use that knowledge to produce the drug.

What concerns me is that genetic research appears to be moving toward a trend of patenting facts--not innovations, but information. More biomedical research is conducted by private firms than government and nonprofit institutions, and these private firms are patenting gene sequences and viruses. Patenting their own genes and viruses would be understandable; synthetic genes or genetically engineered viruses that would infect our cells to replace defective DNA sequences are inventions. Companies are patenting facts to keep their competitors from using the information. How is a gene sequence different from a chemical formula? Certain nucleotides make up this gene. Certain elements make up this compound. The guy who discovered carbon didn't patent it. (The Onion mock headline, "Microsoft Patents 1s, 0s" doesn't seem so silly now.)

But perhaps chemical formulas are not the right model. Maps, maybe, are more appropriate, both in concept and terminology. Scientists are mapping the human genome, just as explorers of past centuries mapped unknown lands and waters. Cartography requires substantial temporal, intellectual and financial resources, which is why maps are more often sold and less often given away--even on the Internet, providers of mapping utilities sell marketing information and advertising time. Maps are copyrighted, a mechanism analogous to patents.

Nothing is inherently wrong with a firm's keeping hard-won information to itself or selling it dearly. Companies and the Department of Defense do it all the time in the interests of, respectively, free commerce and national security. But this isn't how science works. As a student of economics, I can't demand that scientists give away the knowledge in which they invested, but as a student of science, I cling to the perhaps romantic notion that scientific research is supposed to be about the science. Searching for the truth is the first priority, and we search in circles unless we tell each other what we learn.

I look at the Merck index or chemfinder.com and I wonder what would have happened if the scientists who discovered the properties of chemicals--the facts--had drummed their fingers together, smiled devilishly, and said, "This information is mine. I found it. No one else can use it unless he finds it out for himself!" In fact, if all science had progressed in such a manner, we'd still be lighting candles at night.

The science of the human body used to be public domain--we learned and published our discoveries because we wanted others to build on it. Why is genetic research different? Is it the magnitude of the resources required? Is it the magnitude of potential profits? Yes, the resources that must be poured into genetic research dwarf most other undertakings, but that justification for private possession of scientific facts could have been used for every scientific advance in civilization. It takes countless resources to determine how the world around us works. But through millennia of scientific discovery, the knowledge was shared. Chemists don't begin their research by determining the placement of elements on the periodic table. Sharing is how science and humanity move forward.

I'm wondering how quickly medicine would have advanced if, for example, early microbiologists discovering the nature of various infectious agents had kept the information to themselves or charged physicians a fee for use of the knowledge instead of just publishing for science's sake. Doctors still would be bloodletting as a matter of course.