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Jul. 27th, 2006 01:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
brynndragonI just realized another side of the stem cell research (SCR) thing that makes me really pissed off: patents.
The current state of affairs is that stem cell research is happening and is privately funded. Sure, some portion of that is charity donation, but another chunk of it is venture capital or side projects in large pharma corps. Furthermore, since nothing bought with public funding can be used for SCR, it's really hard for someone who gets a lot of public funding (i.e. non-profit academic institutions) to, say, separate out the bill for lab space or pipettes or other common lab equipment. They have to spend the money to buy all new stuff and all new space just for SCR, *and* show that they're not paying for the water, electricity, etc used for SCR with public funds. That's pretty damn unlikely to occur - only places like Harvard are rich enough to be capable of doing that. So the vast majority of organizations that are doing it are for-profits.
Which leads to the obvious question: where's the profit? The long-term answers are obvious (I'm sure a cure for Parkinson's would make many someones very rich), but what about the short term? The way to make money is to patent everything they find about how to use stem cells for research and how to work on stem-cell-based treatment and license it out to others. They'll probably patent the stem cells and any cell lines they make from stem cells as well - if you think they'll end up in the ATCC bank, you're kidding yourself. These are the same people who have patented 20% of the human genome, they're not going to pass up the opportunity to be *the* owners of embryonic stem cell lines.
The next time someone talks about baby farming and/or calls SCR murder, find out who is lining their re-election coffers. I bet you'll see some big pharma names in there. . .
The current state of affairs is that stem cell research is happening and is privately funded. Sure, some portion of that is charity donation, but another chunk of it is venture capital or side projects in large pharma corps. Furthermore, since nothing bought with public funding can be used for SCR, it's really hard for someone who gets a lot of public funding (i.e. non-profit academic institutions) to, say, separate out the bill for lab space or pipettes or other common lab equipment. They have to spend the money to buy all new stuff and all new space just for SCR, *and* show that they're not paying for the water, electricity, etc used for SCR with public funds. That's pretty damn unlikely to occur - only places like Harvard are rich enough to be capable of doing that. So the vast majority of organizations that are doing it are for-profits.
Which leads to the obvious question: where's the profit? The long-term answers are obvious (I'm sure a cure for Parkinson's would make many someones very rich), but what about the short term? The way to make money is to patent everything they find about how to use stem cells for research and how to work on stem-cell-based treatment and license it out to others. They'll probably patent the stem cells and any cell lines they make from stem cells as well - if you think they'll end up in the ATCC bank, you're kidding yourself. These are the same people who have patented 20% of the human genome, they're not going to pass up the opportunity to be *the* owners of embryonic stem cell lines.
The next time someone talks about baby farming and/or calls SCR murder, find out who is lining their re-election coffers. I bet you'll see some big pharma names in there. . .
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Date: 2006-07-29 05:26 pm (UTC)