| 
Scott Menchin
Biologist turned Nobel laureate John Sulston is a champion of open source research. When the Human Genome Project was stumbling in the mid-1990s, Sulston proposed a network of labs to share data freely and tackle the problem in concert. Meanwhile, Celera Genomics, then headed by J. Craig Venter, jealously guarded its info as it tried to win the sequencing race. Sulston's latest book, The Common Thread, takes Celera to task for its hyperbole and for what Sulston characterizes as shoddy science.
WIRED: If The Common Thread can be said to have a villain, it's Craig Venter. SULSTON: The book is strictly factual. Craig is quoted frequently as the Celera spokesman. If there's a villain, it's an economic system that allows individuals to control information that belongs to everyone. The genome sequence is a discovery, not an invention.
Could genetic patents be a necessary evil? Venter has called them the best way to get drug company researchers to tackle certain diseases. Diseases are not neglected for lack of patients, but for a lack of markets. Malaria has a thicket of patients but no market, because the victims are mostly poor. Thus 90 percent of the world's disease burden receives 10 percent of the research effort. Commercial incentives offer no way of redressing this; global funds from governments and charities are necessary to do so.
You're pro data-sharing, yet you withheld data from Celera. How do you reconcile that? The Human Genome Project and Celera were not working toward a common goal, since only the former generated a public sequence. Like everyone else, Celera had free access to all our assembled sequence. But Celera also asked us for a personal transfer of individual nematode sequence reads. To comply would have been a major distraction from our work.
In the book, you argue that political pressure forced you to declare victory before you were really ready. Did Celera play a role in that pressure? In June 2000, both versions of the human sequence were incomplete – which we stated at the time. I guess the political pressure to announce came from the exaggerated statements of Celera. But the enduring version of the sequence is the public one, because it alone has been brought to a finished form. Celera's sequence plays no part in this version, because it has never been released. It has become irrelevant.
Are you jealous of Celera's early triumph? What early triumph, apart from their press releases? There's nothing to be jealous about!
| VIEW
| Cyberpunk predicted the digital revolution. What is current sci-fi telling us?
| Attacking Venter Capitalism
