[Ip-health] ABC on "Open Access Biotechnologyl

[James Love]

http://www.abc.net.au/science/news/stories/s999733.htm


Push to free up biotech tools for all
Anna Salleh
ABC Science Online


Monday, 1 December  2003

Richard Jefferson thinks "open access" biotechnology could help all
scientists
Scientists anywhere in the world, including developing nations, should
have free access to the scientific tools of modern biology and genetics,
says an Australian geneticist.

Dr Richard Jefferson, founder of the non-profit organisation CAMBIA
based in Canberra, is urging the global biotechnology community to
support a new program to promote this "open access".

The new program is called Biological Innovation for Open Society (BIOS)
and Jefferson will announce it at the World Economic Forum to be held in
Davos, Switzerland next January.

Jefferson said the tools of innovation were being withheld from the
public and from innovators themselves, stifling competition, fair play
and creativity.

"For example, access to the fundamental tool used to transfer a gene
into a plant, Agrobacterium transformation, is controlled by a handful
of large companies," he said.

Jefferson called for a "democratisation of innovation" based on "open
source genetics". Central to this concept was a distinction between the
tools of innovation and the products of innovation.

Tools of genetics and modern biology should be made freely available
just as computer programming tools were shared in the open source
software movement, he said.

"CAMBIA is developing an alternative technology that's equally as
effective [as the Agrobacterium transformation] but will be made
available to anyone who wants it."

Another technology, developed by colleague Dr Andrzej Kilianm, called
DarT, was a powerful gene mapping technology already being made
available under the open access regime, said Jefferson.

"The open source revolution in information technology has proven itself
rock solid as one of the greatest innovations in the history of
creativity. If you decentralise the group of tool creators and make sure
people are bound to a public good ethos, it works and makes money for
people," he said.

"With Linux and all the open source innovations, you're not seeing the
death of Microsoft, you're seeing Microsoft work harder to be a better
company so that it can stay afloat."

The scientific tools under BIOS would be licensed under a similar
agreement as the general public licence of the Linux computing
community, Jefferson said.

"That licence will say you will agree to share improvements in the core
technology. You can make your own applications as proprietary as you
want; you can patent your invention. But the tools to do that must be a
public good."

He said the current domination of biotechnology innovation by "large
monolithic corporations with high capital" was not serving the public at
large, including developing nations, and had led to a "legitimate unease
by the public about biotech".

"I don't think that multinationals are necessarily evil, but I do think
they have to be complemented by alternative technologies," he said.

"Biotechnology, the way it is right now, is needed in the developing
world like a screen door on a submarine," said Jefferson. "What it
really needs is what good science can do in biology, in biotechnology.
And that means a different agenda and a different group of innovators.

"We'd like to use the tools of modern genetics, some of which will be
molecular markers, some of which might be transgenic, to improve the
spectrum of what we can offer as a tool."

He added such tools could also help us understand and improve
agricultural management systems such as organic approaches. An example
of this would be the development of new "bioindicator" plant varieties
that would tell farmers about their soil nitrogen levels.

But most importantly, BIOS would offer a choice to farmers at the local
level: "We have a 3D philosophy: democratise, decentralise and
diversify," he said.

CAMBIA's main funding comes from technology licensing and the
Rockefeller Foundation in the U.S.