inuwolf - 2:41 pm on Mar 31, 2006 (gmt 0)

I have experience with genetics and there are a number of fishy things about this article. Maybe it's poor wording by the article's writer, but some things here just don't sound right or make sense at all. Let's walk through them:

Biopiracy refers to the "monopolisation of genetic resources" according to the show's organisers

"Genetic resources" either refers to DNA or, more likely, the information it codes for (ATGC). In the latter case, having Google make genetic information public would in no way consitute monopolization.

"Google, in cooperation with Craig Venter, are developing plans to make all of our genomes Googlable to facilitate the brave new world of private genetically-tailored medicines," the site claims.

How do they think making genetic information public would lead to private genetically-tailored medicines? These people are trying to attack Google on two contradictory fronts, (1) that Google risks the privacy of the individual and (2) that Google will result in the privation of genetic studies.

So Google is partnering up with J. Craig Venter. This man is almost universally disliked in the scientific community for coming up with a more efficient gene mapping technique, whole-genome shotgunning, and trying to sell it to pharmaceutical companies so that they could get the jump on researchers from less evil corporations. But he couldn't patent the technique, so now everyone has it. By contrast, his partnership with Google to make this data publicly available seems charitable.

The real threat to the future of genomics is genes being copywritten by corporations, not genetic information being released to the public. And, contrary to this article's claim, if Google places genetic information in the public domain it will be harder for corporations to copyright them. Yes, having one's own genome released to the public would be a pretty big violation of privacy, but it's highly unlikely this will happen to anybody anytime soon. It took years to map just one human genome, and this was done in hundreds of different labs and using the DNA from several individuals. The only realistic danger Google poses in serving up genetic information is to the big corporations, namely pharmaceuticals, that would like to patent them.