Return to this forum's introduction.
Questions
answered in this forum:
 |
What exactly can scientists patent? |
|
Should we limit people's right to patent discoveries? |
|
How do you balance the need for long-term research versus the need for profits? |
|
Do politics affect scientific activities? |
|
What are the underlying economic and institutional issues? |
|
Viewer Comments. |
NewsHour Coverage
February 24, 1997
Scientists clone an adult mammal for the first time.
January 1, 1997
Paul Solman reviews a banner year for gene research.
Browse the NewsHour's coverage of the Science.
OUTSIDE
LINKS
Biotechnology Industry Organization
Science Online
|
Susan Thomas of Mauldin, SC, asks:
Too often one indication of change is mistaken for coverage of an entire
change phenomenon, and that seems abundantly to be the case in discussions
of changes to the domains in science and business being reduced to issues
of patents and profits. Can and will you lend greater insight into the
larger global, institutional and economic basis of both the underlying and
emerging issues in these regards?
Prof. Eisenberg of the Univ. of Michigan replies:
It is impossible to do justice to your big question in this forum given
time and space constraints, but I think your suspicion that current
tensions over patents and profits in science are a manifestation of larger
changes is well-founded.
A number of factors converge to make these issues particularly salient in
the current environment, including a blurring of boundaries between public
and private in research science, growing political pressure to use the U.S.
research enterprise to enhance the competitive position of U.S. firms in
world markets, a political climate of skepticism toward government funding
as a solution to problems, a financial climate that makes firms impatient
to see quick returns on investments, and increasing pressures to hold down
costs in areas such as health care that feed into the research enterprise.
I agree with your intuition that any efforts to address problems raised by
patents and profits in science need to take these larger forces into account.
Dr. Bloom of Science replies:
This is a very far ranging question that goes well beyond my own
experiences as a scientists and editor. I am most impressed with the broad views being stated by such import ant economists as Professor Thurow of
MIT, as noted in his paper in the current issue of the Harvard Business
Review. He asserts that a new form of intellectual property rights rule is
needed to offer some protection for the discovery of new ways to share
information, and the intellectual content within a gene or a genome that
goes well beyond the specific information that such a discovery provides
today, and into the future connections of that information as the data base
of genetic (or other) information gets more and more complete.
Viewer Comments.
|
