Next (37 page)

JB: Hi, I’m Jonathan Burnham, publisher of HarperCollins, and I’m here interviewing bestselling-author Michael Crichton about his new novel,
Next
.

MC: Well, I think it is, in the sense that many of the books are. But for me what’s different about this book is that so much of it is real—or that so much of it is very thinly-disguised versions of actual events that have occurred. Genetics, which is the subject of the book, has advanced extraordinarily rapidly in the last 15 years or so and sometimes in directions that many people are troubled about, or disapprove of, and so it is a very interesting and hot contentious area.

JB: And have you been tracking the science of genetics for the last 15 years, watching it, seeing what’s going on, and building a portfolio?

MC: Actually, you know it’s odd, I was very interested in it at the time of
Jurassic Park
which now to my astonishment was 15 years ago, and I lost track of it a bit, so to return is to have this odd sense of coming into a world where so many things that were fictional 15 years ago are now taking place.

JB: You’ve chosen a very interesting and I think new form for this novel, which is to break down the conventional narrative into many different stores, some of which overlap, some of which are self-contained, and others which move forward and become the principle themes of the book. How did you conceive of this book, in formal terms?

MC: Well, I think there were two considerations that I had. One was that I was unable to overlook the structure of the genome as we are now starting to understand it, and how individual genes interact with other genes, or may seem to be silent, or we don’t really know what they do, or sometimes there are repetitions that are not clear to us, and it struck me as an interesting idea to try to organize the novel in that way, even though it’s not what one ordinarily does. The second thing that was driving me was the notion that there are a great many stories of interest in this area, and they’re all quite different in terms of the legal and ethical problems that are raised in the field, so I wanted to do a number of different stories.

JB:
Next
poses a large number of ethical issues to the reader. Do you personally have a strong position on these issues?

MC: Well, I do on some and not on others. The feeling in general that I have is that we have too little information, and the impulse in some quarters to ban things or prevent research or curtail it seems to me ill-advised and also not very practical. Whatever
research isn’t done in the United States will be done in Shanghai, so what exactly is being accomplished? I do think that there are some things that have been done in a business sense that are tremendously bad and dangerous and inappropriate, and among those are the patenting of genes. We have within our bodies, for the most part, identical genes, and many of these genes are millions or even billions of years old—they’re found in other animals, they’re found in microorganisms, and yet they’re being patented now—diseases are being patented: Hepatitis C is
owned
by somebody, Haemophilus Influenza is
owned
by somebody, the gene for insulin is owned - this seems to me to be very wrong on a number of levels and I hope that this will be changed and the book will be influential in starting a discussion.

JB: You’ve written about many frightening areas of science in your novels—how does genetics rate in the large field that you’ve covered, in terms of the elements of fear connected to reality that are built into it?

MC: As a person, I think I am myself not very fearful, and it may be that I get out all of these fears in my work. The first sort of genetics book that I did that addressed any of these things was
Jurassic Park
, and that was of course entirely fiction. What’s happened at this point is that many of these possibilities are real, and so you see because of the structure and the way that things are being done, when you hear for example, that scientists were reluctant to study SARS—the severe acute respiratory syndrome that was spreading across the world—a disease that had a 10% fatality and was suddenly in 24 countries—and scientists hesitated to study it because there was a conflict over who would own the genome—who would get the patent. That’s very scary—that business interest might put us all at risk for a pandemic—it’s kind of insane.

JB: How do you keep abreast of new developments in science?

MC: For the most part, it’s simply reading. I do visit occasionally laboratories, but not very often, and there are sort of two reasons for it: one is that when one goes to an individual laboratory, one spends time with someone who has a particularly strong interested in a very narrow area, which is usually not my area of interest, and the other thing is that to read is the equivalent of talking to people on the telephone—it’s just simply much faster, it’s a much quicker way, and the journals stack up in my office and I go through them as best I can.

JB: Your first goal as a writer I’m sure is to entertain, and you’ve done that brilliantly in this book, but in terms of asking readers to think about the issues that you’re exploring, what do you want the reader to take away from
Next
after they’ve finished it?

MC: What my experience was in working on this was a kind of combination of anxiety and excitement—the possibility of really wonderful things that might happen—the possibility that for example, certain genetic diseases might actually be cured, and people who might previously either were certain to die or could only be treated in fairly unsatisfactory ways—there now is the likelihood that you will be able to inject the gene and that person is cured—that’s
quite
extraordinary, and there are many other examples of new cancer treatments and other things that are just amazing. And then on the other side, there is this connection of law and business and academia which is very distressing in the directions that it’s going, and it involves a tremendous amount of secrecy and involves a tremendous direction which I think is against the public interest and which I think really ought to distress and frighten people.

JB: If you were in a position to create legislation, how would you being to reign in the “bad science”—the combination of science, business, and academics moving in the wrong direction as you see it?

MC: I think there are actually three or four things that would really transform the field. The first thing that I would do is I would make the testing of genes for medical diagnoses completely legal, irrespective of patents. I think that would do a great public service and also oblige scientists to start to look at the patenting business in a different way. The second thing I would do is I would require universities to follow federal guidelines for use of tissues in research. Federal guidelines are excellent—they give people a tremendous amount of control over the tissues that they donate—many universities, institutions of higher learning, are trying to break these rules, trying to go in another direction—they ought not to be allowed to, and I would change that. The third thing I would do is I would make sure people got the information that they needed to make informed decisions. There are some situations now where patients have died from gene therapy, and the institutions involved have said that they don’t want the deaths reported because they’re a trade secret. This is so insane that the mind boggles—this, whatever legislation is needed to stop that we ought to do. And the final thing is that in 1980 there was a law passed that was called BiDole—bipartisan law that enabled universities to sell their products to industry, and it was well-intentioned, but it has had the effect of creating this gigantic commercial consulation within universities that is very damaging, and so I would reverse that law.

JB: In spite of the serious message of the book and the profound issues you’re tackling, there is a lot of fun in this book. There are many jokes, there are many very amusing passages and stories,
and there are a number of ideas—concepts—that perhaps are true or perhaps are fictional. Is there anything in the book that you would like to be real, that perhaps isn’t real—that would improve your life?

MC: Interesting question…I don’t know how to answer that…I guess what I feel is that whatever I might imagine is probably right around the corner anyway.

JB: Absolutely.

• The Earth revolves around the Sun.
  
• The speed of light is a constant.
  
• Apples fall to earth because of gravity.
  
• Elevated blood sugar is linked to diabetes.
  
• Elevated uric acid is linked to gout.
  
• Elevated homocysteine is linked to heart disease.
  
• Elevated homocysteine is linked to B-12 deficiency, so doctors should test homocysteine levels to see whether the patient needs vitamins.
  

A
CTUALLY, I can’t make that last statement. A
corporation has patented that fact, and demands a royalty for its use. Anyone who makes the fact public and encourages doctors to test for the condition and treat it can be sued for royalty fees. Any
doctor who reads a patient’s test results and even thinks of vitamin deficiency infringes the patent. A federal circuit court held that mere thinking violates the patent.

All this may sound absurd, but it is the heart of a case that will be argued before the Supreme Court on Tuesday. In 1986 researchers filed a patent application for a method of testing the levels of homocysteine, an amino acid, in the blood. They went one step further and asked for a patent on the basic biological relationship between homocysteine and vitamin deficiency. A patent was granted that covered both the test and the scientific fact. Eventually, a company called Metabolite took over the license for the patent.

Although Metabolite does not have a monopoly on test methods—other companies make homocysteine tests, too—they assert licensing rights on the correlation of elevated homocysteine with vitamin deficiency. A company called LabCorp used a different test but published an article mentioning the patented fact. Metabolite sued on a number of grounds, and has won in court so far.

But what the Supreme Court will focus on is the nature of the claimed correlation. On the one hand, courts have repeatedly held that basic bodily processes and “products of nature” are not patentable. That’s why no one owns gravity, or the speed of light. But at the same time, courts have granted so-called correlation patents for many years. Powerful forces are arrayed on both sides of the issue.

In addition, there is the rather bizarre question of whether simply thinking about a patented fact infringes the patent. The idea smacks of thought control, to say nothing of unenforceability. It seems like something out of a novel by Philip K. Dick—or Kafka. But it highlights the uncomfortable truth that the Patent Office and the courts have in recent decades ruled themselves into a corner from which they must somehow extricate themselves.

For example, the human genome exists in every one of us, and is therefore our shared heritage and an undoubted fact of nature. Nevertheless 20 percent of the genome is now privately owned. The gene for diabetes is owned, and its owner has something to say about any research you do, and what it will cost you. The entire genome of the hepatitis C virus is owned by a biotech company. Royalty costs now influence the direction of research in basic diseases, and often even the testing for diseases. Such barriers to medical testing and research are not in the public interest. Do you want to be told by your doctor, “Oh, nobody studies your disease any more because the owner of the gene/enzyme/correlation has made it too expensive to do research?”

The question of whether basic truths of nature can be owned ought not to be confused with concerns about how we pay for biotech development, whether we will have drugs in the future, and so on. If you invent a new test, you may patent it and sell it for as much as you can, if that’s your goal. Companies can certainly own a test they have invented. But they should not own the disease itself, or the gene that causes the disease, or essential underlying facts about the disease. The distinction is not difficult, even though patent lawyers attempt to blur it. And even if correlation patents have been granted, the overwhelming majority of medical correlations, including those listed above, are not owned. And shouldn’t be.

Unfortunately for the public, the Metabolite case is only one example of a much broader patent problem in this country. We grant patents at a level of abstraction that is unwise, and it’s gotten us into trouble in the past. Some years back, doctors were allowed to patent surgical procedures and sue other doctors who used their methods without paying a fee. A blizzard of lawsuits followed. This unhealthy circumstance was halted in 1996 by the American Medical Association and Congress, which decided that doctors couldn’t sue other doctors for using patented surgical procedures. But the beat goes on.

Companies have patented their method of hiring, and real estate agents have patented the way they sell houses. Lawyers now advise athletes to patent their sports moves, and screenwriters to patent their movie plots. (My screenplay for “Jurassic Park” was cited as a good candidate.)

Where does all this lead? It means that if a real estate agent lists a house for sale, he can be sued because an existing patent for selling houses includes item No. 7, “List the house.” It means that Kobe Bryant may serve as an inspiration but not a model, because nobody can imitate him without fines. It means nobody can write a dinosaur story because my patent includes 257 items covering all aspects of behavior, like item No. 13, “Dinosaurs attack humans and other dinosaurs.”

Such a situation is idiotic, of course. Yet elements of it already exist. And unless we begin to turn this around, there will be worse to come.

I wanted to end this essay by telling a story about how current rulings hurt us, but the patent for “ending an essay with an anecdote” is owned. So I thought to end with a quotation from a famous person, but that strategy is patented, too. I then decided to end abruptly, but “abrupt ending for dramatic effect” is also patented. Finally, I decided to pay the “end with summary” patent fee, since it was the least expensive.

The Supreme Court should rule against Metabolite, and the Patent Office should begin to reverse its strategy of patenting strategies. Basic truths of nature can’t be owned.

Oh, and by the way: I own the patent for “essay or letter criticizing a previous publication.” So anyone who criticizes what I have said here had better pay a royalty first, or I’ll see you in court.

The New York Times
OP-ED Section
Sunday, March 19, 2006