The Evolution Of Open Source Biotech - From Liberty To Justice

The COVID-19 pandemic has prompted a resurgence of interest in “open source” approaches to biotechnology development. Like the open source software projects that inspired them, early open source biotech efforts sought to free researchers from the constraints imposed by intellectual property and corporate nondisclosure agreements, thereby enabling an open and broadly collaborative research environment. Benefits realized by users of the products of this research were recognized but they were not the primary focus of the open source approach. More user-oriented proposals that sought to harness open source development to promote social justice through broader access to biomedical products emerged later, and gained significant public attention with the emergence of COVID-19 and the inequitable distribution of vaccines and therapeutics around the world. These inequities have led to new development efforts that invoke open source principles to differing degrees. This chapter traces the trajectory of open source biotech and its evolution from an endeavor focused on the liberty interests of individual researchers to one that primarily seeks to promote social justice in the area of drug development and access While there is a rhetorical resonance between the concept of “open source” development and the achievement of social justice goals, it is not clear that the free and open source approaches that originated in the software industry are always well-suited to achieving these goals in the context of biomedical research. Accordingly, advocates of a more humanistic approach to drug development and the equitable distribution of biomedical products need not adhere to a traditional model open source development but should allow their practices to evolve to fit the needs and goals of equitable biomedical research.