Roadblock to Research
Private money is coming to play an increasingly prominent role in science research, making the independent-arbiter role of scientific journals more necessary than ever. Few organizations have championed the free exchange of ideas as consistently as the prestigious journal Science. Last week, however, editors at the journal disclosed a deal at odds with a healthy collaborative spirit.
Under a proposed contract, Science would win the rights to publish a major paper on the human genome by Celera Genomics, a leading biotechnology company. In return it would agree not to disclose the DNA information supporting the paper to Celera’s potential competitors--or actually, to anyone who didn’t make a pre-disclosure agreement.
One key reason why gene research has spurred so many medical innovations in recent years is that GenBank--a publicly managed Internet archive that contains every DNA sequence published--allows researchers to freely browse through the so-called code of life. The Science deal could undermine this spirit of discovery by allowing Celera to keep its data off GenBank, stashing the information on a proprietary Web site.
Celera says that it would make gene sequences accessible to researchers who promised not to use them for commercial purposes. But that restriction would inhibit good science, putting researchers in legal jeopardy if they found, even unexpectedly, a way to use the sequences to create a new medical cure.
Celera is near the forefront of a frenzied race to patent as many human genes as possible. The Rockville, Md., company has filed patent claims on at least 6,500 gene sequences in the last year alone. Each time a biotech company wins a patent on a gene it claims to have discovered, it gets broad rights to determine how that gene is used by scientists.
The journal Science can’t, of course, be blamed for these flaws in the patent system, which will have to be corrected by reforms at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office. Patent reforms could, for example, encourage cross-licensing agreements, which ensure that companies get a share of profits when genes they help discover are used in medical inventions. At the same time scientists who experimented with these genes would be protected from legal reprisals by companies claiming ownership.
However, scientific journals can be part of the solution too by strengthening disclosure policies and rejecting compromising commercial ties.
The journal Science is hardly the only publication to suffer from such conflicts. A study published last month in the Journal of the American Medical Assn. found that biotechnology companies are increasingly requiring the researchers they fund to delay publication to give them time to file patents. The JAMA study recommended that universities and scientific journals draw up tighter rules to prevent such conflicts of interest. Also last month, a study in the New England Journal of Medicine concluded that only 43% of scientific journals require researchers to even disclose their commercial funding sources.
Transparency is as important in medical research as it is in economics. The secrecy inherent in the Science deal is a threat to discovery.
