Genentech break-in to steal University of California invention

[James Love <love@cptech.org>]

Pretty good story by Justin Gillis.  

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/health/daily/may99/genentech.htm

Stolen Gene Haunts a Biotech Pioneer

By Justin Gillis
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, May 17, 1999; Page A1

SAN FRANCISCO - The men with
foreign accents trod carefully through
desolate hallways. They weren't
supposed to be there, but the University
of California at San Francisco had
something they wanted, and they knew
just where to find it.

It was an hour before midnight on New
Year's Eve and nobody was around to
see the deed unfold. The men took the
elevator to a ninth-floor laboratory. They
retrieved vials and beakers, hauled the
material downstairs, put it in their car and raced
south toward the offices of a tiny new company not far 
from the azure waters of San Francisco Bay.

A police officer pulled them over as they got to the 
doors of that company, Genentech Inc. They waved their 
employee badges and got past him. By the time the clock 
struck midnight on that evening two decades ago, Genentech's
laboratory was freshly stocked with genetic material from 
the university.

A few months later Genentech announced it had pulled off 
one of the most dazzling feats of modern science - inserting 
human genes into harmless germs and getting them to produce a 
precious and much-needed substance, human growth hormone. 
Genentech  was the first biotechnology company, founder of an 
industry, and  this feat more than any other demonstrated the 
potential of the new  science. Yet if testimony unfolding in 
federal court here is true,  that early milestone was tainted 
from the outset and the  biotechnology industry was born amid 
thievery and scientific fraud. Stolen Gene Haunts a Biotech 
Pioneer 

   [snip]  
  
-- 
James Love, Director, Consumer Project on Technology
I can be reached at love@cptech.org, by telephone 202.387.8030,
by fax at 202.234.5176. CPT web page is http://www.cptech.org