To the uninitiated, the idea of cashing in on the medical and genetic problems of the nation seems a little mercenary. The pharmaceutical industry is a source of most new drugs and medical treatments. These companies invest in medical research almost twice the amount invested by U.S. taxpayers. My company, Human Genome Sciences, invests all of its resources in research, as we have not yet developed products which are approved for human use. I believe that the current system, in which corporations develop drugs, is a highly efficient system and one that assures the maximum use of new technology for finding new treatments and cures for disease.
Patents are a social contract between inventors and society, meant to benefit society as a whole.
The fundamental principle of patents is that the ability to make and sell products that incorporate a new invention is protected for a limited period of time, if and only if the inventor shares the full details of his invention with the world. The information in a patent is not secret. The purpose of such disclosure is to allow others to use this information to invent new and still better technologies. The alternative to patenting genetic information of potential medical value is secrecy. No one can own a gene in its natural context.