The only chance we really have in this country for protection is protection against misuse of that information. So I think that's where the focus has to be. Celera has patents on about two dozen genes. Other companies have many more. But Collins ducks philosophical challenges to this utilitarian calculus.
Venter is even more evasive.
Venter and Collins, like President Clinton, tout similarities within the human genome. To a racist, however, the denominator is irrelevant. Likewise, racists don't care that there is more genetic variation within each ethnic group than between the average genomes of different ethnic groups. Again, Collins and Venter duck the moral question by trading in their visionary proclamations for sudden skepticism. According to this line of reasoning, complexity won't deter companies from figuring out how to stop 10 different kinds of diabetes, but it will deter them from figuring out how to raise IQs.