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Story: Google accused of bio-piracy

Posted by: Joel Bellenson (Monday 3 April 2006, 7:07 PM)

The biopiracy accusation against Google is ill-informed, but still serves to stimulate a necessary discussion.

The original article about the Google genome project referred to the individuals being analyzed and published as having consented.

The 100,000's and soon millions of people with the skills - bioinformaticists - to utilize this data are actually in non-profit, public and private universities, research institutes and medical clinics.

In fact, there are over 1000 public genetic and protein databases already in existence with varying quality and focus. One of the main bioinformatics tasks that goes on in Big Pharma is integrating these constantly proliferating public databases.

The private database businesses of Celera, Incyte and Human Genome Sciences were initially quite successful, but with the proliferation of public databases, the for-profit business model of selling access to genome databases was seriously undermined as a big business, although it will come back in new forms.

The SNP and Gene and Protein Expression software which is the key mechanism for mining this data is dropping in price consistently; and they currently run less than $1,000 for non-profits.

Genetic Anonymity, however, can not be guaranteed long term.

The cost for acquiring genetic data from an original source is dropping at a rate of 100X per decade.
Whole Genome DNA Sequencing of a human is expected to drop to $7,000 within the next 2 years via any one of three new technology companies - Solexa, 454 Biosciences, Helicos.
http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/forward_dna.asp

NASA even has a contest in place to drive forward the $1,000 genome of new species by 2015.

To know 100,000 genetic variation points for any individual already costs much less than $1000. It will drop to $10 - $100 by 2010.

Therefore, the GATTACA scenario where someone gets a hair or flaked off skin from someone that they know, analyzes the DNA and searches the databases for pattern matches could easily be here within 10 years.

The solution is to set up legal safeguards for the consequences of this knowledge beng public on healthcare insurance coverage, employment, citizenship, marriage, organ transplant, paternity, prefertilization and prenatal screening, adoption and many other spheres.

Genetic information, by the planeload, of varying degrees of quality, will become available worldwide eventually.

Don't Panic! Let's make sure the knowledge and skills are democratically distributed and our rights protected.