Sorry if this is old news:
NIH Considers Paying to Use Private Database
Eliot Marshall
Officials at the National Institutes of Health are negotiating terms under which NIH scientists can have access to the controversial genome database offered by Celera Genomics of Rockville, Maryland. If the talks are successful, some NIH scientists may soon have their own Celera accounts, at an initial cost of up to $15,000 per user per year.
Some NIH staffers are flabbergasted that such a deal might be in the works--partly because NIH is funding genome sequencing projects that are releasing data free of charge through GenBank, a public database NIH runs. Several NIH scientists have requested access to the Celera database, however, and NIH officials say they've received complaints that academics using Celera's data have "scooped" intramural researchers on discoveries.
National Cancer Institute director Richard Klausner confirms that NCI staffers ran an informal evaluation of the Celera database. "A variety of intramural scientists who are expert" in this field "felt that the database that they were looking at was very useful and very powerful, and that it would add value" to public data, he says. The reviewers, according to members of the team, included NCI staffers J. Carl Barrett, Neal Copeland, Michael Dean, Dean Hamer, Nancy Jenkins, David Munroe, Stephen O'Brien, and Louis Staudt. Klausner says he doesn't know how many other institutes might be interested, but "whatever we do will be available across the NIH."
Celera spokesperson Heather Kowalski declines to comment on the reported negotiations. But she says the current rate for an academic subscription to the genome database--which includes mouse and human sequences and gene-reading software--is $7000 to $15,000 per user per year, although the term "user" is not well defined. In contrast, pharmaceutical companies pay $5 million to $15 million per year.
Klausner says he isn't aware of any legal barrier that would prevent NIH scientists from becoming Celera subscribers, nor does he see a problem in spending public money to get access to data that may be freely available through GenBank. "We would [only] do this if it is cost-effective and valuable to enhance the public research," Klausner says. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also says his scientists should "have access to all scientific resources that the extramural people" can use. Steven Hyman, director of the National Institute of Mental Health, agrees: "If any of my scientists were to ask, I would sign up without compunction." Like Klausner, Hyman sees no problem in paying for the data twice: "We do it all the time" with scientific journals, he argues: "We pay for the research, we pay for publication costs, and then we pay for the journal subscription for our scientists. We do it without complaining. ..."
Insiders say it's impossible to guess how or when the negotiations will end. At present, the company is trying to answer 15 detailed questions from NCI scientists about fees and access. The company's responses, according to one NCI scientist, could make or break the deal.
Jan 12 2001 issue of Science
Volume 291, Number 5502, Issue of 12 Jan 2001, pp. 223-225. |
