Sir

Noel Harris is right to protest the refusal of many researchers to respond to requests for clones, especially having signed away their right not to do so by publishing in journals such as Nature (Nature 398, 102; 1999). But, rather than ‘outing’ such workers, it is much more effective simply to clone the gene yourself and then do better work, faster, than those who tried to slow you down (driven by the incentive of revenge?!).

Given the speed with which known sequences can now be isolated, refusal to part with clones is just plain silly — the cost in terms of ill-feeling, with or without ‘outing’, far outweighs the few weeks' benefit gained over competitors. The ‘refusers’ are already losing out.