Sequence repositories are important for medical research. Credit: © GettyImages

Databases of genetic information could be run like libraries or radio stations to keep them available to all, researchers suggested this week.

The ethics committee of the Human Genome Organisation (HUGO) released a statement calling for all genetic information in databases to be freely accessible in perpetuity. Such databases, which hold DNA sequences or related biological information such as protein interactions, are proliferating.

These records could lead to medical treatments, so they can be financially valuable. Some are already in private hands - famously the human genetic sequence produced by US company Celera Genomics.

The HUGO committee hopes to forestall a situation in which databases are commonly privatized. "The impetus should be to give people knowledge rather than gaining money," says bioethics researcher and committee member Abdallah Daar of the University of Toronto, Canada.

At the same time, the committee acknowledges that researchers deserve recognition when they put information in a database, plus recompense for their costs. One compromise would be a subscription website, run by the government or university, with a token fee for access, Daar explains.

Contributors could receive a portion of the fees based on how much their data were accessed - much like royalties paid for songs played on the radio.

Geneticists hope to avoid controversies similar to those that plague the patenting of gene sequences. In one case, European laboratories are fighting Utah-based company Myriad Genetics over its patent of DNA sequences, and a test for, breast-cancer susceptibility genes.

Delegates at this week's HUGO meeting in Cancún, Mexico were less clear about how to implement the recommendations, which hold no legal weight. But the document's primary goal is to encourage researchers to produce data for public benefit rather than for profit. "It's an aspirational statement," says Daar.

The impetus should be to give people knowledge rather than gaining money Abdallah Daar , HUGO Ethics Committee

In one concrete step, the committee is sending a letter to the European Union recommending a change in database access laws that could force widespread access if it came to the courts.

Under current European law, if a private genetic database held information that could be used to treat a disease such as severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) or HIV, but withheld it from the research community, it would be difficult to force the owners to allow access, says lawyer Joshua Bovenberg of Leiden University in the Netherlands.

The HUGO committee recommends the introduction of a clause allowing compulsory licences to access databases under certain conditions, such as a public-health emergency. The 1997 European Union database law that controls this is currently under review.