X-Message-Number: 7652 From: (Thomas Donaldson) Subject: Re: CryoNet #7637 - #7646 Date: Wed, 5 Feb 1997 11:25:57 -0800 (PST) Hi again! To Bob Ettinger: I don't know about just how the leak happened, but however it happened it's not clear to me that those who RECEIVED that information have been unethical. Sure, if they had a role in causing the leak, but not if they simply received the information. Furthermore, as I understand it, Saul Kent has been funding Mike Darwin to look for new cryoprotectants, and one major reason so many people became very skeptical is that BEFORE Visser appeared, Mike had tested the same chemical and excluded it because it was too toxic. As for using information which you receive but in no way caused to leak, it seems to me that (considering the subject) it would be impossible to avoid that. Information cannot be made to disappear or turned in to the police in the same way that a stolen diamond might be: you learn it, you're stuck with it. Furthermore, just knowing the composition of Visser's solutions, even assuming that they work perfectly and always, doesn't injure them in any way. If they work and are patented, anyone could read the patent --- but the Vissers would still have control over whether and how their solution was USED, including financial control. Without further information it's not even obvious that there was a leak: the referees of her paper sent to CRYOBIOLOGY would ALL know the composition. Referees are not supposed to (and it would be unethical for them) quickly write up a paper and claim the discovery as their own. But they cannot reasonably be prevented from using the information in other ways: say, setting out some NEW experiments based on the new discovery. (Yes, that can be on the edge if there is a long delay in publication! --- those not referees would not be able to use information the referees found out earlier -- yet it isn't forbidden). Finally I don't really claim to have the truth here. If you know something more incriminating, or know anything at all about the details of what happened, then I'd certainly like to hear of them too. If my construction of events is wrong, I will say so in another message on Cryonet. And of course I don't insist that you reply on Cryonet -- you know my private email address, after all. Long long life to all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=7652