How a bland statement sent stocks sprawling
Marshall, E.
Science 287(5461): 2127
2000
ISSN/ISBN: 0036-8075 PMID: 10744525 Document Number: 517747
On March 14, the stocks of genetic research companies plummeted following a bland statement by the British Prime Minister Tony Blair and President Bill Clinton. The 2 heads of state urged all labs to provide "unencumbered access" to raw DNA sequence information. The clear message of their statement, which simply affirmed support for a 1996 research policy calling for the immediate release of raw sequence data, became tangled in the stories of rivalry between privately and publicly funded genome scientists over human genome data control and resulted in confusion in early news reports.