Deal on Publishing Genome Paper Criticized

The prestigious journal Science is on the verge of striking an unusual bargain: In return for the right to publish a path-breaking paper on the human genetic code, it would allow the paper’s biotech company authors to make their supporting data accessible only to those who promise not to use them for commercial or certain other purposes.

To its critics, the agreement appears at odds with science’s long-held view that the free exchange of ideas is the best route to discovery and the advancement of knowledge. They also charge that the deal would amount to a deep new incursion of the profit motive into scientific enterprise. They say it would collide with Science magazine’s own policy that results be publicly available for use, and also with public promises by the authors’ company, Celera Genomics of Rockville, Md., to provide the material to the scientific community with no restrictions other than a ban on copying the data and reselling it.

“I believe that the editors of Science are about to make a major mistake that will ... seriously compromise a major field of scientific research,” said Cambridge University biologist Michael Ashburner, who is spearheading an effort to persuade the magazine to reverse itself.

Officials with both Science and Celera scoffed at critics Wednesday and asserted that their agreement strikes a fine balance between researchers’ need for access and the company’s desire to protect its investment.

The firm generates and sells genetic information to drug companies, universities and others. It won extraordinary praise at a June White House event for having lighted a fire under the drive to decipher the human genetic code, and for having tied its public counterpart, the Human Genome Project, in the race for the code.

Celera has repeatedly said it would make its data available but also protect its investment, “and that’s what we’re doing,” declared Paul Gilman, the company’s director of public policy.

“This is important science and needs to get out there,” said former Stanford University President Donald Kennedy, who assumed the editorship of Science this year. “I don’t see any problem.”

Notably silent in the dispute Wednesday were leaders of the public project, who said through spokesmen that the issue of publication and data access should be worked out between Science, Celera and the general scientific community. Project officials must decide soon when and where to submit their own scientific paper. Kennedy acknowledged in an interview that Science’s decision to allow Celera to keep the data for the scientific paper it is submitting for publication on its own computer Web site, rather than depositing it on the publicly managed Genbank Web site, is not ideal and represents a change in the magazine’s practice.

“There’s a good argument that in the best of all possible worlds, all the data would be in one place,” he said. But Kennedy said that the benefit of a single repository for the genetic code is offset by Celera’s willingness to make data public that it might otherwise provide only to paying subscribers.

However, many scientists viewed the trade-off quite differently.

“For two decades, the policy of requiring submission of sequence data to Genbank has been a tremendous success and has been critical for much of the progress we’ve seen in genomics,” said David Lipman, director of, the National Center for Biotechnology Information, which manages Genbank.

What the magazine is doing “is a step back from having the data fully available and from having it in one place,” said John Salston, the retiring director of the Sanger Centre, England’s premier genome sequencing facility. “I strongly believe that it is going to be to the detriment of science and medical research.”

This is not the first time that Celera and its flamboyant chief executive, J. Craig Venter, have been the center of controversy. Venter has repeatedly angered the research community by insisting he could reach scientific goals faster and cheaper than his more sedate counterparts, and could do so for a profit.

For example, when he joined PE Corp., Celera’s parent, in forming the genomics firm in June, 1998, he all but declared that the public Human Genome Project--which had by then been underway for more than a decade-should step aside and let him finish the job. And he did so despite having received millions of dollars of funding from the public project. PE recently changed its name to Applera Corp.

In touting his company, Venter has made both himself and the effort to crack the human genetic code central players in a larger debate about the proper role of publicly funded science and commercial research. In being so aggressive and in engendering such outrage, he helped put the public and private decoding efforts on a collision course.

But under pressure from leaders of the scientific community and the White House, the two sides reached an unexpected detente in June and pledged to simultaneously publish their finding late this year or early next. The truce was blessed by President Clinton, who portrayed the work of both as a milestone in human history.