Fred Sanger on Gene Patenting
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Gene Patenting (Fred Sanger)
Fred Sanger Biography
Recorded: 16 Jun 2005
Well it's a pity in a way, but one can understand it. But in a way it's necessary, isn't it, because people have got to have some reward for working on something that is maybe uncertain, and if you have the patent you get a reward for it, for your research. I think it would be difficult to get people to do research if there wasn't this—I mean, its rather repetitive research and rather dull. I mean, when I was doing it, you know, I was interested in it because it was sort of new and there were rewards for it that you could get. But if you are in the business and doing all the repetitive work, which is very expensive, then you do need to have a patent, I think. I can't see that it can be avoided. I watched some talk recently wasn't there about the question of Alzheimer's disease and whether it could be treated with, I think it was curry. They said that nobody would work on that because there wasn't any patent on curry. It would be very expensive to do a repetitive sort of review on testing out curry.
Frederick Sanger, OM, CH, CBE, FRS (born 13 August 1918) is an English biochemist and twice a Nobel laureate in chemistry. In 1958 he was awarded a Nobel prize in chemistry "for his work on the structure of proteins, especially that of insulin". In 1980, Walter Gilbert and Sanger shared half of the chemistry prize "for their contributions concerning the determination of base sequences in nucleic acids". The other half was awarded to Paul Berg "for his fundamental studies of the biochemistry of nucleic acids, with particular regard to recombinant-DNA".
He is the fourth (and only living) person to have been awarded two Nobel Prizes, either wholly or in part.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_Sanger
Research at Cambridge University and the Medical Research Council's Laboratory of Molecular Biology
Influential Colleagues
Mentoring Young Students
Brian Hartley and Aaron Klug
Conducting an Experiment with Sydney Brenner
George Brownlee
Interaction with Max Perutz
Working with Alan Coulson
Working with Albert Neuberger on Amino Acid Metabolism
Working with Francis Crick
Critical Moments in Research
Developing Methods for Determining Nucleotide Sequences
Development of the Field of Protein Chemistry
Identifying Amino Groups in Insulin
Sequencing Phage x174, 1982
Since 1975: The Dideoxy Method for DNA Sequencing
The Chain Termination Method: Sanger Sequencing
Large-Scale Sequencing Strategies: The Human Genome Project
Reaction to the 2003 Announcement of the Completion of the Human Genome Sequence
A Hands-On Approach to Biology
SCIENTISTS SPEAKING ABOUT GENE PATENTING
Bruce Alberts
David Botstein
Elbert Branscomb
Aravinda Chakravarti
Francis Collins
Philip Green
Eric Lander
Peter Little
Maynard Olson
Ari Patrinos
Matt Ridley
Bruce Roe
Nicoletta Sacchi
Nicholas Wade
Bruce Alberts Michael Ashburner David Bentley David Botstein Elbert Branscomb Aravinda Chakravarti Francis Collins Charles Delisi Ian Dunham Richard Gibbs Philip Green Eric Green Leroy Hood James Kent Aaron Klug Eric Lander Peter Little Maynard Olson Ari Patrinos Ulf Pettersson Matt Ridley Bruce Roe Gerald Rubin Nicoletta Sacchi Fred Sanger Hamilton Smith John Sulston Nicholas Wade Robert Waterston James Wyngaarden