THE pharmaceutical giants in the industrialised world are seriously hindering
progressive research by refusiDgto share
significant scientific data with the academics. They are jealously keeping
information - garnered by their
individual R&D units - to themselves in
a bid to prevent the rival companies
from cashing in on it. For example,
Genome Therapeutics Corporation
(GTC) of Waltham, Massachusetts,
us, put in just six months work to
chalk out the genetic blueprint of
H.Pylori, a bacterium linked with the
development of stomach ulcers and
gastric cancer.
Researchers are eager to get the
details as they are convinced that this would speed up the development
drugs and vaccines. But GTC, instead of
making the data public has sold it ofle
Astra, a Swedish pharmaceutical company for us $22 million. It is now A
Astra to decide whether to make sclea.
ed data available to academics and V
what terms. Said an Astra spokespersoix
"We are simply protecting our comme
cial investment."
Glaxo-Wellcome, the British dq
firm which independently analysed
the bacterm in's genome, is also It
about sharing its know Ott
the scientific community. no
researchers are furious. "I can undc
stand people trying to make money be
a lot of these projects are based on
knowledge, insight and goodwill com
ing from the public sector," fumes
Stewart Cole, head of the Pasteur
Institute in Paris.
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