but it was considered a violation of the patent for a physician to use that better test because once he got the results, he would have to think about the patented medical fact: that the patient might have vitamin B deficiency. The Federal Circuit - the court that hears all patent appeals after the trial court - held that a laboratory induced infringement of that patent (and thus was liable for more than $2 million in damages) based on the publication of an article for physicians about this law of nature - the relationship between levels of homocysteine and vitamin deficiency. Astonishingly, the Federal Circuit effectively held that physicians would infringe the patent merely by thinking about the relationship between homocysteine and vitamin deficiency.

Whatever such an opinion means for the world of biotech, it brings into the public eye the question of whether certain industry practices have gone too far. The biotech industry needs to weigh in with a view - or even multiple views - about which, if any, of the behaviors of researchers and companies in the actual cases cross some ethical or legal line. Conflicts like the Catalona case seed distrust, deterring people from donating their tissue for research, and hence depriving the biotech industry of the raw material needed for the discovery of genetic sequences and related products.

Crichton’s oeuvre offers an intriguing thought problem to jump-start such a discussion. In the writer’s first wildly successful techno-thriller, The Andromeda Strain, the Department of Defense launches Project SCOOP, a secret mission to collect potential vectors for germ warfare from Earth’s upper atmosphere. What they unwittingly capture and bring back, however, is a pathogen that turns blood to powder, wiping out all but two residents of the small desert town where the returning satellite touches down. Five intrepid scientists collaborate, at great personal risk, in a race to understand the extraterrestrial microbe and to find a cure before all humanity perishes. If The Andromeda Strain were placed into today’s research milieu, would the five university scientists charged with saving the world accomplish their mission? Or would they each keep information from the other to preserve their competitive advantage, then try to patent the organism?

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