Designing Our Descendants: The Promises and Perils of Genetic Modifications

19 To Market, To Market: Efiects of Commerce on Cross-Generational Genetic Change

c h a p t e r n i n e t e e n To Market, To Market Effects of Commerce on Cross-Generational Genetic Change Mark S. Frankel, Ph.D., and Michele S. Garfinkel, Ph.D. In this chapter we explore the potential effects of commerce on human inheritable genetic modifications (IGM),whereby interventions are made that affect the inheritance patterns of future generations. We are interested in how market forces will influence their development and use. It is our thesis that forces driving the market, including perceived investment opportunities and projected public demand, are more likely than other factors to be determinative. Specifically, we will argue that enhancement applications more than medical uses will determine the scope, direction, pace, and acceptance of IGM research and applications. We also discuss a series of issues that must be carefully assessed if society is to lend its support to a market-driven approach to the development and use of IGM. The Forces of Commercialization in Science As others have observed,we live in the age of “Homo Economicus,”1 in which science is increasingly an object of commerce. In the past decade, we have witnessed on a routine basis newspaper headlines such as “University Research Is Increasingly Commercial,” or “Wall Street Makes It Official: Biotech Has Arrived .”2 What must be considered a fundamental shift in the way science is considered is that the economic value attributed to scientific discovery is no longer just in the products that may be forthcoming. It is also linked to the pure knowledge generated by research. A new paradigm is emerging, one that treats knowledge as a valuable currency in the marketplace. This is clearly reflected in the rush to patent all sorts of newly discovered genetic findings without, in many cases, a clear connection to a useful application.3 It is also manifested in the efforts of large pharmaceutical companies to invest in academic research in order to obtain exclusive marketing rights to new knowledge that may or may not lead to marketable products.4 The companies obviously believe the investment is worth the gamble. Knowledge is increasingly becoming the global currency of the twenty-first century.5 In the United States, the emergence of this new paradigm can be traced to the early 1980s, when concerns about lagging industrial growth and increased global competition led government officials to urge scientists“to lower the barriers between academic and industrial research.”6 Both Congress and the executive branch supported policies designed to foster closer collaboration between universities and industry. The centerpiece of those policies was the Bayh-Dole Act of 1980 (P.L. 96-517), which gave universities the rights to patentable inventions produced with federal funds. This made the universities attractive partners to industry, providing “powerful economic incentives for the commercial exploitation of science and sent a signal to researchers and their institutions that it was acceptable, indeed encouraged, for them to market their discoveries .”7 The effects of these policies are reflected in data showing U.S. colleges and universities claiming significant royalties from inventions licensed to industry. From 1998 to 1999 alone, royalties for such institutions increased 10 percent, the rate of patent filings by 17 percent, and the number of licenses to industry executed was up by 7 percent.8 Not everyone embraced this new entrepreneurial role for academic scientists . Some saw it as a development that began “to alter the ethos of science”9 in a way that would be inconsistent with the true mission of the universities. Others were more blunt, referring to these new university-industry partnerships as the “prostitution of science to profit.”10 Nevertheless, major research programs now under way would either not exist or would lag far behind in their contribution to useful knowledge without industry support. Examples include stem cell research, somatic gene transfer research, and the Internet. Few would 312 Mark S. Frankel and Michele S. Garfinkel turn back the clock to the pre–Bayh-Dole Act era, and many acknowledge the benefits to society from such partnerships. Nevertheless, there continue to be concerns that such collaborations foster secrecy over openness; lead to skewed research priorities that favor the potential for profit over more pressing public needs; encourage pursuit of research opportunities more on the basis of available capital than on...