바이오인

Tension is increasing between fairly new and pervasive policies and practices governing data and materials sharing and intellectual property in science (‘proprietary structures’), and norms of openness and free exchange. While intellectual property rights (IPR) can bring private investment into areas underfunded by governments and help bridge gaps between scientific invention or discovery and useful technologies, some new and emerging policies and practices risk slowing innovation in research and development (R&D) and skewing attention toward large markets, to the disadvantage of small markets, such as those for rare diseases and in some emerging economies. This is of concern, as one central goal of the life sciences is to improve global health: our shared humanity and the potential for biological knowledge to benefit all people create this obligation. Further, the selfregulatory structures within scientific communities, as much as the legal institutions we consciously erect for science, should be responsive to this goal.