What are the scientists doing last in order to piece together the instruction book for human biology? What are the arguments fo

Anchor: Tonight’s news: locating the 100, 000 genes that are the blueprint for humanity’s traits, defects, diseases and all that implies. Researchers are getting closer and closer to a core question: can those who discover it all patent and own? Out correspondent Thomas Rummel has been digging into the business of life and life of business.
Thomas Rummel, correspondent: It is Miracle One of modern medicine. Scientists every day take pure human DNA, the building block of life. They grow the DNA, and separate its parts so a computer can read its chemical sequence. It’s the human genome, the genetic spelling of man.
Dr. Francis Collins, Human Genome Research Institute: It’s our instruction book for human biology. And the notion that we could actually read that book in any of our lifetimes would have been considered unthinkable 20 or 30 years ago.
Thomas Rummel: Dr. Francis’ Collins, Chief of the government genome project, says we will read that book early next year, the codes for traits like height or intelligence, and most important, for human disease.
Dr. Francis Collins: Medicine will be transformed in ways that I think we can’t even quite glimpse. We’re gonna know why I’m at risk for one thing and you’re at risk for another.
Thomas Rummel: But Dr. Collins has a problem.
Dr. Francis Collins: "There’s a bit of a Gold Rush going on at it."
Thomas Rummel: Make that a "Gene Rush". Dr. Collins hates to admit it, but he is in a race to discover the human genome before this man does. And this man, Craig Venter of Celera Genomics, a private company, says he has a bigger computer than Dr. Collins does. Celera is one of several companies staking claims on the genome. Venter’s filed more than 6,000 patents on genes and even the pieces of genes that might cause disease, He plans to sell that information to drug companies, universities, whoever will pay.
Craig Venter: We’re trying to only file patents on those things that we know the pharmaceutical industry will take forward. We are not filing patents blindly across the genome.
Thomas Rummel: The right to own and to patent discovery has long been part of the American way. The profit motive fuels innovation. But in this particular competition, private entrepreneurs are winning patents to some of the keys to human life, and many believe that’s dangerous.
Dr. Debts Leonard, a scientist at the University of Pennsylvania, says gene patents are being abused. Her hospital cannot even use gene tests to diagnose Alzheimer’s or breast cancer, not because the patent holders invented any tests. They patented the genes themselves.
Dr. Debra Leonard: Breast cancer and Alzheimer’s disease are being monopolized by specific companies.  Clinical laboratories are being stopped from doing diagnostic testing.
Thomas Rummel: In the rush to prevent those patents, Dr. Collins has ordered government labs to make every new gene discovery public knowledge.
Collins favors patents for true genetic inventions but opposes private ownership of the code itself. Craig Venter meanwhile says he is misunderstood. He doesn’t want the gene, as he promises, he’s just assembling data scientists will need to buy.
Craig Venter: So competition is good, Competition is good and his information can’t come fast enough.
Thomas Rummel: And that’s where it stands. Everyday it’s robots versus robots, public computer versus private computer, a race to literally write the book of life, and in the process determine who owns it.