There is a very good chapter in The Backroom Boys: the Secret Return of the British Boffin by Francis Spufford which covers a similar area, with a dastardly, self-publicising arse of an American scientist who tried to derail the Human Genome project to his own ends so he and his company could copyright and patent every discovery then make huge amounts of cash from it.
It has a nice ending though - the plucky British boffins say, not on our watch and blow the American teams out of the water thanks to enormous funds from the world's biggest medical charity who thought the Human Genome should be available to all medical researchers and not just the ones in countries able to pay fees for the info. Of course, it hasn't stopped some companies trying to patent actual parts, such as specific genes, despite the US patent office objecting to this.
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There is a very good chapter in The Backroom Boys: the Secret Return of the British Boffin by Francis Spufford which covers a similar area, with a dastardly, self-publicising arse of an American scientist who tried to derail the Human Genome project to his own ends so he and his company could copyright and patent every discovery then make huge amounts of cash from it.
It has a nice ending though - the plucky British boffins say, not on our watch and blow the American teams out of the water thanks to enormous funds from the world's biggest medical charity who thought the Human Genome should be available to all medical researchers and not just the ones in countries able to pay fees for the info. Of course, it hasn't stopped some companies trying to patent actual parts, such as specific genes, despite the US patent office objecting to this.
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