Human Genome Project Objects to Rival’s Science Journal Deal
Leaders of the publicly led drive to crack the human genetic code have quietly refused to submit the research paper describing their findings to the same scientific journal as their private-sector rivals, puncturing a truce announced with great fanfare in June by President Clinton.
The move revives one of the fiercest rivalries of modern science, which pits the publicly led Human Genome Project against biotech upstart Celera Genomics. It is all but certain to provoke new controversy over unprecedented conditions the prestigious journal Science only recently has agreed to let Celera impose on access to supporting information for the paper it hopes to publish.
Science’s readiness to accept some limits on use of published research results has fueled the latest skirmish in a long-running war for the soul of American science. At stake, according to some scientific leaders, is whether science remains fundamentally an untrammeled search for knowledge or becomes a commercial race for profits.
“We are concerned that Science has now set the precedent of permitting authors to impose new restrictions on those wishing to see the results reported in a published [scientific] paper,” Human Genome Project leaders wrote in a letter to Science editor Donald Kennedy. “We have repeatedly asked Science to clarify . . . this bold new policy, but have received no clarification to date.”
As a result, they wrote, “we regret to say that we do not feel comfortable submitting [our] paper to Science.” Instead, it sent its paper to Science’s chief competitor, the British periodical Nature.
The Human Genome Project’s letter was signed by Dr. Francis S. Collins, an official of the National Institutes of Health who heads the project, as well as other project leaders, including Eric S. Lander, Dr. Robert H. Waterston Jr. and John Sulston.
Word in June that the public and private efforts had decided to bury the hatchet and declare the race for the genetic code a tie prompted a White House media event that caught front-page news around the world.
Celera Chief Executive J. Craig Venter and Human Genome Project leader Collins were featured on the cover of Time magazine over the headline, “Cracking the Code! The inside story of how these bitter rivals mapped our DNA, the historic feat that changes medicine forever.”
But the only practical result of the hoopla was an agreement that the two sides would simultaneously publish separate papers describing their discoveries. Although it was never explicitly stated, it was almost universally assumed that the papers would appear back-to-back in the same journal--Science. That was before Celera’s demand for restrictions on the use of its data became known.
The genetic code is the sequence of 3 billion chemical letters in human DNA that constitute the operating instructions for every cell in the body.
The publishing agreement appears to be foundering on what has become an increasingly contentious issue in recent years: whether the open exchange of ideas that many believe is the cornerstone of science can be preserved while the financial interests of the growing ranks of commercial researchers are protected.
Kennedy, former president of Stanford University, said Tuesday he thought he had struck a fine balance between the demands of the two sides. “We thought we had found a good compromise,” he said.
So, it appeared last week, did members of the nation’s scientific elite. But the tide appeared to turn against the deal Tuesday as several prominent scientific figures announced serious objections to elements of the bargain.
“I am not comfortable with what has been done,” said Dr. Harold Varmus, a Nobel Prize winner who headed the NIH for much of the 1990s and is now president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York. He worried that the agreement would set a dangerous precedent.
“My sense is that this experiment is not going to work,” said Bruce Alberts, president of the National Academy of Sciences. “It’s going to leave out too many people.”
Under Science’s agreement with Celera, the firm may keep the genetic code that backs up the scientific paper it has submitted on its own protected computer Web site. That departs from the magazine’s past practice of having authors deposit DNA sequences on the publicly run Genbank Web site.
In addition, anyone seeking to see more than one mega-base, or about .03% of the entire code, must formally agree to use the information only in certain ways. Kennedy and Celera executives have said that this provision is intended to prevent competitors from repackaging the firm’s data and reselling it. But the documents appear to prohibit considerably more than that.
For example, commercial researchers apparently must agree not to keep genetic code obtained from Celera on their own computers, even for their personal use. “It effectively excludes half the scientific community,” said Alberts, the National Academy president. “It’s not satisfactory.”
Nature, the journal to which the public project has submitted its scientific paper, does not permit similar restrictions. The publication does not insist that authors place the material on a public Web site, according to Richard Gallagher, the British publication’s biology editor. But the publication demands that contributors provide “full and unrestricted access to data by any user.”
