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Human gene

data to be

made public

WASHINGTON: The US and Britain has responded to concern that private companies would exploit human gene technology by supporting calls for research data to be freely available to scientists everywhere.

In a joint statement on Tuesday, the UK Prime Minister Tony Blair and the US President Bill Clinton said free access to the Human Genome Project (HGP) would reap massive medical benefits.

"Unencumbered access to this information will promote discoveries that will reduce the burden of disease, improve health around the world and enhance the quality of life for all human kind," the statement said. It urged other privately-funded scientists around the world - mainly in America - to adopt the same policy.

Clinton said that profits of human genome research should be measured in human life and not in dollars.

Clinton and Blair stressed that companies should still be able to acquire patents for inventions derived from the raw data.

The companies, however, claimed that without patent protection they could not guarantee to earn back the money invested in the research in the first place.

The US and Britain, and leading partners in the non-profit Human Genome Project, plan to publish a full genetic map on the Internet by 2003. This information would be free to all researchers, the sources said.ÑPPI