At 4:37 AM -0400 21/10/2000, Jeff Fairman wrote:
>The patents exist for 17 years.
>
>This is a nice thought, but unworkable in practice. It takes 7-10 years for
>an small molecule drug or biologic (protein based therapy) to go from basic
>R&D to approval by the FDA. . .
. . . currently. But how much has the length of time shortened between the
beginning of R&D and FDA approval for more common chemical drugs? I would
imagine it's a lot faster now than 20 or 40 years ago, yes? Honestly, it
sounds rather absurd to me in general. Did anyone ever have to patent the
intestine, or the potato? There must be another way of organizing this
whole process, I'm sure. From what I'm reading about the early history of
patents, they were damn ineffective at the beginning in the US, and
regardless activity flourished in areas where there was interest.
One of the worst things we can do is set laws in stone that eventually
become so antiquated they need to be changed, but won't be because it is in
the financial interests of whoever holds the patents (on GENES) that the
duration remain longer than sensible. One thing we don't need is
competition that merely prevents other players in the field from having
access to a particular gene or sequence when they might be wanting to
explore something wholly different from what the first group is patenting.
What I'm personally concerned about regarding the patenting of genes is
that average people who don't have access to this kind of more informed and
disillusioned [1] discussion will probably tend to read other things into
the whole idea of "patenting" genes, possibly resulting in more anxiety,
more tension, and more backlash against gene-related research and
technology in the short run . . . I mean, no luddite could ever have
manufactured a more strikingly corporate-frankenstein-sounding thing as far
as most people are concerned; the old myths of science as "hubris" and
"playing god"; the whole involvement with huge business and thus by (at
least) imaginative association with the already sketchily-regarded drug
companies; the whole sense in which nature has again been made a subsystem
of economy when in fact economy needs to be redefined as a subsystem of
nature. All of these are things that are kicking around in the common
consciousness of not just oppositionalist-minded thinkers, but people like,
I dunno, Uncle Bob and Aunt Lucy -- though they may not articulate it in
the same way.
[1] By disillusioned I mean several things: (1) there aren't so many
illusions about what science is and does here, which is infectious because
it someties gets backed up by good explanation by real scientists who are
not also poisoners of wells. (2) there are less illusions about the real
purpose of patenting, which is outright safeguarding of R&D investments and
thus in the long run merely profit, not some twisted conspiracy to
manufacture an uber-race or to commodify human beings as individuals or
whatever.
