Washington

Last week's hearing on genomics, organized by the science, energy, and environment subcomittee of the US House of Representatives science committee (see above), was intended to educate committee members about progress in the field. But it ended up by politicizing the issue.

The hearing opened with a Republican denunciation of President Bill Clinton's recent remarks on gene patenting, whereas Democrats supported his remarks. It closed with a show of Republican support for the biotechnology industry in general, and Celera Genomics in particular.

James Sensenbrenner, (Republican, Wisconsin), chair of the House Committee on Science, blasted Clinton for making remarks about access to raw sequence data. Clinton's comments upset the biotech stock market last month, as some initially interpreted them as an attack on gene patentability.

Sensenbrenner said public officials should be careful about issuing such statements. “These events highlight the need for increased sensitivity on the part of government officials to the well-being of the high-tech sector,” he said. But Jerry Costello (Democrat, Illinois) applauded the policy.

In closing, Ken Calvert (Republican, California) said that government's role is to initiate research on which private sector companies can capitalize, pointing to Celera Genomics as a prime example. He endorsed the way that Celera is incorporating the public Human Genome Project's data into its own database, adding its own sequence information, providing annotation tools, then selling it.