
Crispr: Nobel prize for gene-editing technique at risk over patent dispute - mudil
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/crispr-scientists-hopes-to-win-nobel-prize-for-gene-editing-technique-at-risk-over-patent-dispute-a6677436.html
======
gmisra
This article from last week suggests that the patent may not be that
important. A team has recently discovered a second protein that can be used to
power the crispr process, and they believe that more such proteins may exist
[1].

...but patenting proteins still feels ridiculous. This is information that all
of humanity has, basically, equal access to. Finding something in this pile
"first" and planting a flag in the ground seems like a pretty terrible way to
share knowledge. There is a somewhat forced analogy here between genetic
exploration and global exploration in the colonial period, but I think most
historians would agree that the "I got here first" model of "rights" ended up
exacerbating existing gaps between haves and have-nots.

[1] [http://www.wired.com/2015/09/war-genome-editing-just-got-
lot...](http://www.wired.com/2015/09/war-genome-editing-just-got-lot-
interesting/)

~~~
JoeAltmaier
I'm not sure proteins have to be 'found'. They can be invented. Then they are
a lot more like a copyright and not a patent.

~~~
88e282102ae2e5b
You could then still have the distinction between synthetic proteins and
natural ones, and only permit patents on the synthetic ones.

~~~
comrh
What if you make a synthetic protein and then find it in nature? What if you
build bacteria to make the synthetic protein? The difference between synthetic
and natural seems like it would be very murky.

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greydius
I don't understand what patents have to do with it. The prize is for
scientific discovery, not practical use of said discoveries (i.e. inventions).
I mean that's sort of the point, right? Inventions already have a financial
incentive: profit from selling/licensing.

~~~
T-A
Big money is (or is believed to be) on the line, so being seen as taking sides
in the food fight over patents would inevitably cause the "slighted" party to
be less than pleased with

[http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/prize_award...](http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/chemistry/prize_awarder/committee.html)

in particular and with Swedish academia in general. Displeasing either the
University of California or MIT is not an attractive use of the
disproportionately powerful tool for making friends and influencing people
which Alfred Nobel unwittingly deposited in the lap of tiny Sweden's academia.

IIAOPSW's suggestion below (shared prize for Zhang, Charpentier and Doudna)
would be a typically Swedish compromise. But they could also just wait, at the
modest cost of being seen as less timely.

------
mudil
An editorial in Nature recently described CRISPR as "the biggest game changer
to hit biology since PCR." [polymerase chain reaction]. PCR is used
everywhere: from forensics DNA analysis to pathology tests. CRISPR in the near
future might be used to "fix" genes in a variety of conditions: from Duchenne
muscular dystrophy to cancer. Really, it's that big!

[http://www.nature.com/news/crispr-the-
disruptor-1.17673](http://www.nature.com/news/crispr-the-disruptor-1.17673)

~~~
lvs
The hype is just out of control on this. It's a new tool in the lab that is of
some use, but none of these other fantastical claims are anywhere near the
real world, and they may never be. This method suffers the same risks as viral
therapies that have also been very difficult to bring to real patients.

~~~
mudil
Maybe. Maybe not. Viral therapies suffer from one problem: viruses. (They
might be infectious, or not. They might be attacked by the immune system or
not.) CRISPR technique does not need an external vector.

~~~
gww
CIRSPR requires a method to deliver the nuclease complexes to cellular targets
in a living organism. I believe the only methods tried so far used
adenoviruses.

~~~
pcrh
A few recent papers have shown that it can be done by directly introducing the
required proteins.

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hliyan
Seems like there's a question whether the patent should have been awarded in
the first place:

    
    
       It is not possible to patent a natural process, and both Crispr
       and Cas9 are natural, at least in bacteria. Putting both together
       and showing how the molecular complex can be used in mammalian
       cells was the key “inventive step” that the Broad Institute 
       believes swayed the US patent office – but not before the 
       institute instigated a “fast track” patent application to the 
       chagrin of Berkeley’s patent lawyers.

~~~
coldcode
To me this is no different than patenting combining anything with a computer
like booking hotels on a computer or reading news with a computer. I also
still think that combining two things that themselves are not patentable
should not be patentable. When it comes to discoveries in a university setting
none of the work should ever be patentable at all.

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acomjean
"Feng Zhang of the Broad Institute in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and his
colleagues found that they could replace the Cas9 enzyme that has proved so
good at snipping the DNA of genes with another bacterial enzyme called Cpf1. "

They'll be more alternatives soon , making tis whole patent thing moot
(hopefully).

One wonders if NIH money was involved in this, and if it was shouldn't
everyone get to use it?

Off target effects are still a problem with this technique.

~~~
jjoonathan
> if NIH money was involved in this, shouldn't everyone get to use it?

In principle, yes, but the Bayh-Dole act gives away any government stake in IP
rights.

Some people see Bayh-Dole as an obviously corrupt and terrible idea. Those
people typically haven't gone through the struggle of trying to justify the
value proposition (or lack thereof) in an academic career. We (the US) are
getting worse and worse at funding academia and this is one of the creative
alternative "funding" sources used to prop up the increasingly shaky system
(another important one: green cards). I suspect that if you asked most people
involved in day-to-day research they'd rather take extra cash in exchange for
letting the government keep some of the IP, but they aren't the ones who get
to choose.

------
IIAOPSW
Up to 3 people and two different works can share a Nobel prize. Seems to me
there's an obvious way out of this mess. At least from the Nobel committees
pov.

------
natrius
Intellectual property is a local maximum as far as progress goes. It's clear
that society should reward all three of these researchers for their work, but
our laws and our currency don't allow this.

Currency might seem like a tangent, but it's not. Currency is what we use to
decide who to reward. It signifies a debt owed to you by society. When someone
sells you goods or services or provides their labor to you as an employee,
they're rewarding you for work that you've done in the past.

It sounds like society should reward all three of these researchers. They
should be able to walk into a grocery store (or a Tesla dealership) and say,
"Hey, I helped invent a way to edit genes in living cells. Can you reward me
for that?" We want the answer to be yes, but we also don't want Tesla and the
other people who make things the researchers want to be on the hook for the
rewards themselves. The obligation should flow through society like money.
Tesla should be able to say, "Hey, we made an awesome car for someone who
invented a way to edit genes in living cells. Can you reward us for that by
giving us supplies or labor?"

Not everyone will want to reward the CRISPR folks, but there's a pretty
straightforward response to that: don't reward the people who don't reward the
CRISPR folks. It might sound unwieldy to have to keep track of this
information when you're trying to trade with people, but that's why we make
software. You'll pick an app that implements the reward policies you prefer,
then you won't have to think about it on an ongoing basis.

This is merit capitalism. It requires a common historical record of who has
done what for whom, which we can now build thanks to blockchains. Intellectual
property is a better tool than nothing, but we're getting fewer of the
inventions, discoveries and works of art than we could be getting because it's
such a cumbersome tool for incentivizing progress. Let's try something else.

[http://meritcapitalism.com/](http://meritcapitalism.com/)

~~~
nickff
Does this proposal not suffer from the economic calculation problem?[1]

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_calculation_problem)

~~~
natrius
Good question. It does, but public goods always have this problem. We
currently address the problem by granting temporary monopolies on intellectual
property so prices can be established for it. This is replacing one market
failure with another.

Think about it this way: when humans invent new ways to live healthier lives,
we limit the access to these inventions for at least 20 years. Isn't that
crazy? Everyone could be living with the benefits of those ideas twenty years
earlier, but in order to incentivize the creation of those ideas, we
explicitly delay progress.

Instead, we could just pay for intellectual property as a society. This
introduces a new problem of deciding the price to pay, which is what merit
capitalism solves. An individual picks her own price, then decides how much
others have to pay to remain part of her society of people she rewards. That
is, if you don't pay her minimum contribution, then she won't do work for you
or sell you products, nor will she work for people whose justification for
their reward is that they've rewarded you in the past. Your rewards are cut
out of her economy, which makes rewarding you less valuable for every other
human. There's one less place for other humans to go to get rewarded for
rewarding you.

Does this lead to the optimal price of public goods? There's no proof that it
does, but I don't think such a proof is possible. Intellectual property leads
to the price that monopoly power achieves, which clearly isn't an optimal
price. In merit capitalism, society will iterate until their prices achieve a
level of progress they collectively find desirable.

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jamessb
"the committee is notorious for two things; its obsessive secrecy and an
institutional aversion to controversy"

The committee is certainly secretive, but as this makes it difficult to see
exactly what candidates were considered and how decisions were made, it is
hard to tell whether the committee has actively tried to avoid controversy.

Regardless of the committee's intent, its decisions have been the subject of
many controversies: see the long list at
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nobel_Prize_controversies)

~~~
dekhn
Agreed. The committee specifically awarded Prusiner (solely) the prize for the
discovery of prions, because the committee for medical prizes (which turns out
to be a bunch of structural biologists) was 100% convinced he was right, and
they specifically told him that they were awarding him the prize to give him
money to continue his research, because they knew his funding had been denied.
(Memories of Madness, Prusiner).

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Amorymeltzer
Is this the kind of thing that the America Invent Act of 2011 made worse? I've
long felt that moving to a FItF system opens the door to disputes like this,
or at least exacerbates already-existing and potentially confusing timeline
disputes.

