A researcher conducts a gene therapy experiment at an NIH lab

The Worth of the Gene
So how much is this worth, anyway? That's the billion-dollar question, and nobody's taking any chances. In the race to cash in on the human genome, companies have begun filing patent applications as fast as new genes are discovered — and sometimes faster. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has issued more than 1,800 patents on full gene sequences. Most of these have been for plants, but the past few years have seen a tremendous increase in applications for human gene patents. And now that the Patent Office allows patents on the gene fragments known as Expressed Sequence Tags or EST's that give a broad but often incomplete map of a particular gene, researchers all over the world are rushing to patent offices before they have any idea of what the sequence they've mapped actually does.

The real money, at least for now, seems to be in bioinfomatics companies like Millennium Pharmaceuticals that use massive databases to find genes and determine the functions of their proteins more quickly and accurately than conventional methods.

But who should own the gene? The scientist who discovered it? The company who financed the research? Or all of mankind? Can you really patent a part of the human body? Ultimately, who (if anyone) rakes in those billion-dollar rewards will probably be decided in the courts, rather than Wall Street.

from TIME and FORTUNE
What Will Replace the Tech Economy?
Get ready for bioeconomy, which will supplant our infotech economy. Bioec will give new meaning to the smell of money
MAY 29, 2000

Hatching a DNA Giant
From FORTUNE: It used to take years to find a single gene. Now Millennium Pharmaceuticals, a leader in the booming field of genomics, is identifying disease-associated genes--and targets for new drugs--by the hundreds.
MAY 24, 1999

Engineering the Future of Food
From FORTUNE: A revolutionary blurring of foods and drugs is transforming the industries that make them and promising to help us age gracefully.
SEPTEMBER 28, 1998

Why Biotech Stocks Are Cheap
MAY 18, 1998

Bearish On Biotech
Laymen should stay away lest they get fleeced.
MARCH 10, 1997

The Real Biotech Revolution
From FORTUNE: Biotech's real power lies in reading the book of life, not blindly copying it.
MARCH 31, 1997