Volume 4, Issue 2 
December 2009


Concerning the Near Future of Human Sciences

David Hegstad

Page 3 of 4

In 1993, Francis Crick assumed the position of director at the National Human Genome Research Project (NHGRP), [1] replacing James Watson, who resigned when confronted with the board’s decision not to patent its findings.  The projected fifteen-year public project was nearly three years in process at that time; and Watson’s departure set a precedent for non-affiliated private corporations to withhold new sequencing techniques in an attempt to patent selections of the human genome before the NHGRP.  Celera Genomics, [2] the most well known private contender, made use of “shotgun sequencing” (a practice that is nearly as visceral as the “Battleship” analogy used earlier in this essay) in attempt to attain not only patents but intellectual property protection on fully characterized important structures as well.  From a scientific perspective, private sector activities were largely confidential, but from an economic perspective, the overnight infusion of approximately $100 billion USD in NASDAQ was universally conspicuous.  The NHGRP’s continued commitment to publicize the human genome as free and public information was hailed by a continuum of scholars as an ethical contribution to human sciences; and the realization that this objective could be compromised by the private sector’s market interest created concern for the public sector’s ability to compete.

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Celera Genomics and an entire host of private corporations were preparing for patent application and publication on select sequences in early 2000 when President Clinton declared that the human genome sequence could not be patented; in the following two days, participating private biotechnology firms lost $50 billion USD in corporate stock.  A unique relationship h2\shared between Information Technology (IT) firms (an industry whose market potential was otherwise defunct following the Y2K hype) and private biotechnology firms dissolved.  Scores of the world’s leading geneticists operating in the private industry, including several who were central to discovering the structure of DNA, found their employers nonexistent in following weeks, as well as their cumulative research.

And therein, a singularity occurred:  the NHGRP proceeded to publish the human genome shortly thereafter, three years ahead of schedule, amidst the resignation of the field’s leading geneticist and external turmoil.  In contrast to the insular research universities I have visited in recent years, the NHGRP prided itself on open lines of communication among its international consortium, which spanned public institutions throughout the United States, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, New Zealand, United Kingdom, and Japan.  In contrast to the private sector, the NHGRP operated on a $3 billion USD fifteen-year budget, approximately 3% of the NASDAQ’s two-year interest in competing private corporations.  In contrast to visceral methods used by the private sector in an attempt to delineate the basic operations of particular sequences (thereby acquiring a critical mass for patenting), the NHGRP successfully published its own findings of complete sequences first, on numerous occasions, prior to President Clinton’s declaration.

THE PURPOSE OF THIS COMPARISONS IS not to propose that scientific research conducted by the public sector is superior in method or finding to the private sector; it is instead to recognize that a consistent scientific character, from observation to publication, promotes scientific results; and although open communication reduces the attributed success of an individual or affiliated body by association, results are potentially more timely and precise.  It is with these thoughts in mind that we consider Karl Popper[3]. Popper published “Conjectures and Refutations:  The Growth of Scientific Knowledge” [4] in 1963, which fast became a keystone to a 20th Century criticism:  the philosophy of science.  Central to Popper’s thesis was the term “falsification,” wherein he inadvertently applied many of Sigmund Freud’s [5] hypotheses on psychic apparatus to his own observations, thus identifying a natural tendency for scientists to accept an ad hoc hypothesis more readily than not. 

[1] National Human Genome Research Project (NHGRP) - Begun formally in 1990, the U.S. Human Genome Project was a 13-year effort coordinated by the U.S. Department of Energy and the National Institutes of Health. The project originally was planned to last 15 years, but rapid technological advances accelerated the completion date to 2003. Project goals were to:

identify all the approximately 20,000-25,000 genes in human DNA,
determine the sequences of the 3 billion chemical base pairs that make up human DNA, store this information in databases, improve tools for data analysis, transfer related technologies to the private sector, and address the ethical, legal, and social issues (ELSI) that may arise from the project.
http://www.ornl.gov/sci/about.shtml October 26, 2009 3:37PM EST

[2] Celera Genomics - a healthcare business that uses knowledge of human variability to provide new tests and services to personalize disease management.

https://www.celera.com/celera/about  October 26, 2009 3:51PM EST

[3] Karl Raimund Popper – (b. 1902, d. 2004), is generally regarded as one of the greatest philosophers of science of the 20th century. He was also a social and political philosopher of considerable stature, a self-professed ‘critical-rationalist’, a dedicated opponent of all forms of skepticism, conventionalism, and relativism in science and in human affairs generally, a committed advocate and staunch defender of the ‘Open Society’, and an implacable critic of totalitarianism in all of its forms.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/popper/  October 27, 2009 12:18PM EST

[4] Conjectures and Refutations: The Growth of Scientific Knowledge - written by philosopher Karl Popper and published in 1963 by Routledge, this book is a collection of his lectures and papers that summarized his thoughts on the philosophy of science.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ October 27, 2009 3:27PM EST

[5] Sigmund Freud – (b. 1856, d. 1939), physiologist, medical doctor, psychologist and father of psychoanalysis, was an influential thinker of the twentieth century. Working initially in close collaboration with Joseph Breuer, Freud elaborated the theory that the mind is a complex energy-system, the structural investigation of which is proper province of psychology.

http://www.iep.utm.edu/freud/  October 27, 2009 3:30PM EST

 

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