On Wed, Jun 30, 2010 at 4:10 PM, Mr. Puneet Kishor <[email protected]>wrote:
> > On Jun 30, 2010, at 9:47 AM, Jonathan Gray wrote: > > > "A survey of 1,000 businesses finds that they're keen on open data > > initiatives from the government - but unwilling to follow suit" > > > > > http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2010/jun/29/business-data-sharing-unwilling > > > > Makes sense. Speaking for myself, public's data should be public. Private > users and creators of data should have the freedom to make their private > data public or keep it private without any censure or judgment from others. > I take a different view. I've worked in the pharma industry trying to design drugs and it's desperately ineffective. Much of the problem is that we do not have the appropriate knowledge on which to take decisions. But much of that knowledge resides - fragmented - within the industry. And it occurs multiple times. The first consequence is that the whole industry is less effective that it could be (this is a personal judgment but I can defend it). I believe that by raising the pre-competitive level and publishgin basic data that benefits everyone, then everyone benefits. It's almsot a classic prisoner's dilemma but with an added act of faith and a less clear benefit for defecting. If it were simply that the industry is less profitable that's a pity for the shareholders. But it's worse than that because it leads to bad drugs. Most drugs have serious problems - they don't work for some people, they are toxic to others, etc. And the culture of secrecy inevitable leads to suspect practices (some may even be unconscious). So IMO there is a public interest in pharma companies being more Open. To their credit Merck started this my making their ESTs public ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expressed_sequence_tag, ) - see http://www.abrf.org/abrfnews/1997/june1997/jun97mining.html . ... The initial success of the NIH group spawned additional large scale EST projects, both in industry and academia. Biotechnology companies, such as Human Genome Sciences and Incyte, were founded on the power of large scale EST sequencing and its potential value for drug discovery. Many of these large industrial efforts took a proprietary approach to EST data, eventually leading to the Merck-sponsored EST project at Washington University described below (3). The Merck and other academic EST projects have produced an excellent public database of short cDNA tags which currently represent approximately 55,000 unique human genes (4). This database is a powerful resource for the identification and study of human disease genes. It further provides effective tools for mapping, complete sequencing and comprehensive analysis of the human genome. Historians will argue what would have happened to the genome projects if the companies had kept it all to themselves. I've copied in Tim Hubbard who will be able to give chapter and verse. There is now a movement within the pharma industry to start raising the pre-competitive level. They recognise the prisoner's dilemma. It's early days and mechanisms are yet to be worked out but I hope we will start to see a freer and therefore more innovative approach to knowledge-driven drug discovery. And it's certain that to be effective that knowledge must be Open. -- Peter Murray-Rust Reader in Molecular Informatics Unilever Centre, Dep. Of Chemistry University of Cambridge CB2 1EW, UK +44-1223-763069
_______________________________________________ okfn-discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.okfn.org/mailman/listinfo/okfn-discuss
