There's an OpEd piece in the July/August 2003 Technology Review: Seth Shulman, "Thinking like a virus", p. 74 (I don't know if it's online???).
Shulman argues that the reason we've come so far so fasr with SARS is that all the scientists cooperated instead of competing. He contrasts the international cooperation on SARS with the international competition in the discovery of AIDS.
The researchers could easily ahve delayed
things by seeking patent rights.... ...researchers at the British Columbia Cancer Agtency, a
Canadian government lab in Vancouver, who sequences the genetic
code of the virus... posted it on the Web at dawn on a
Sunday morning so collaborators wouldn't lose
a day of research time.His "net" is that cooperation (via secure real-time internet links, of course!) gets better results than "pride, prestige, and profit" (patents, etc.), when the stakes are really high.
...I... vote for global collaboration
as the decisive factor. With all the emphasis on providing
incentive for individual innovation, I think we often
discount the power of synergistic effects that can come from
spreading innovation around. When fighting a threat like
that posed by SWARS, it helps to study the enemy's
tactics. Let's hope we can continue to
spread our ideas at least as rapidly and widely as the
most opportunistic virus. (loc.cit.)So, Harry, let people have a free market in inventing new widgets if that turns them on, and also for new "fifth wheels", but let's have government funding of open research when that killer asteroid (or SARS-2, etc.) heads our way.
\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED] ----------------------------------------------------------------- Visit my website ==> http://www.users.cloud9.net/~bradmcc/
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