Decoding life/Genome project will shed new light - and competition

0 Comments | Gazette, The (Colorado Springs), Dec 31, 1999

The recent news that scientists working on the $3 billion international Human Genome Project have mapped virtually an entire human chromosome is exciting and potentially important, beyond even the natural human desire to know more and to reach toward the impossible goal of knowing everything.

In the excitement over mapping one of the 23 pairs of chromosomes that make up the human genetic pattern, or genome, that contains the chemical instructions for life, few have paused to appreciate the constructive role competition from a private company has played in speeding this fundamental research.

The Human Genome Project consists of government centers and universities in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Japan and Sweden, working cooperatively to map the entire human genome - more than 3 billion pairs of chemicals that make up the DNA - the chemical map or instruction book for human life, which determines almost every physical facet of our lives, from brain function to hair color.

The most important immediate benefit expected from the project is information that could lead to cures or treatments for genetic illnesses or disorders. Genes on chromosome 22, whose mapping was announced earlier this month, may have implications for heart defects, immune system disorders, some cancers, schizophrenia and mental retardation.

The Human Genome Project was launched by government agencies and scientists in 1990 with the then-ambitious goal of mapping the entire human genome by 2005. In 1998, however, one of the scientists involved in the project, John Craig Venter, director of the Institute for Genomic Research in Maryland just outside Washington, D.C., proposed that a private venture conduct some of the research using new analytical equipment that made a faster technique possible.

Getting little response - in fact, raising some hackles - Venter formed a joint venture with Perkin-Elmer, maker of the new equipment, to finish the entire human genome mapping project in three years. Perkin-Elmer executives estimated it could be done at a total cost of $200 million to $250 million, compared to $200 million per year through 2005 the government project is costing U.S. taxpayers. The new company, Celera Genomics Group, set up shop in Rockville, Maryland.

Making genetic maps user-friendly

Government scientists in the Human Genome Project simultaneously downplayed Celera's chances and responded to the challenge. They announced in March of last year that the deadline for completing the project would be moved up to 2003 from 2005 and that a "working draft" of the entire project would be available in 2001 and maybe sooner.

In response to criticism that the Celera project could amount to a private company trying to license or patent a natural phenomenon, Venter and his associates announced that they would post their results on the Celera Web site, available for free to anybody. In October they made available about 1.2 billion base pairs of human DNA, having begun the project September 9.

The company still expects to make money from the project (though to date it has poured about $400 million into the venture and received little revenue). As a Sept. 27 Washington Post report put it: "They foresee Celera doing for genetic information what Bloomberg LP has done for financial news or the Lexis-Nexis database service has done for general and legal news. The mere existence of public information, they say, does not mean the information is easy to search or easy to put into useful form. They see their future as making genetic information easy to use, giving researchers around the world powerful tools to compare genes, display them and understand their function."

Perkin-Elmer spokesperson Lyn Christenson has said the company's mapping project is still on schedule and it expects to complete mapping the entire human genome sometime in 2001.

Some researchers claim Celera's super-fast technique (which "shreds" an organisms's genetic material into tiny pieces, analyzes them, then reassembles the resulting information in a process involving billions of computer calculations) might sacrifice some accuracy. The company's main advantage seems to be that it has more of Perkin-Elmer's analyzing machines (which the Human Genome Project also uses) than anybody else and is committed to the faster technique.

A race is the fastest way to get somewhere

Whoever wins the race that neither side will acknowledge in public, the public will benefit. A completely mapped human genome is expected to jump-start the battle against cancer, AIDS, Alzheimer's and other ailments. It is important to understand that this information will be available sooner because of competition.

It is fashionable to criticize competition as simply another unhealthy expression of unpleasant human characteristics like greed and selfishness. But competition in the economic sense is different from the the popular view of the athletic model, in which there is only one winner and the rest are losers. Open competition simply means no artificial barriers exist to entering a contest. In economic competition, a company placing 17th in the marketplace can still make a comfortable living and a contribution to society.