Here Is a Human Being by Misha Angrist

7 “It’s Tough to Guard Against the Future”
    T hanks to the late, great, and supercheap Skybus Airlines, Ann and I could afford to bring the kids to what had become, after only one visit, my favorite meeting: Advances in Genome Biology and Technology, in Marco Island, Florida. As I intimated in chapter 5, AGBT is to DNA sequencing what Macworld is to all things Apple: a highly anticipated annual unveiling of sleek new toys, replete with the requisite back-channel discussions, competitiveness, fire hoses of data, and more than a little showmanship, all at the plush Marriott resort right on the beach.
    AGBT could be counted on for theatrics (Pacific Biosciences, still more than two years away from launch, sponsored fireworks over the Gulf) and rumor-mongering (“So and so’s new machine is having problems”). But by 2008, the next-generation sequencing field had gotten more crowded, 1 with Illumina having overtaken first-to-market 454 and ABI trying to play catch up after launching only a few months prior to the February meeting. 2 Half a dozen other companies claimed to be “close”
    to bringing instruments online. Attendees heard big-picture, crystal-ball talks about “the future of DNA sequencing” and more narrowly focused presentations with sexy titles like “Respiratory Bacterial Pathogens Utilize Polyclonal Infections and a Distributed Genome as Population-Based Chronic Virulence Traits.” I confess I skipped that one for some quality time in the Tiki Pool and a few drinks with umbrellas in them.
    George was not there in the flesh, but certainly was in spirit. On a late afternoon inside a rented suite at the Marriott stood his lab’s crowning technological creation (at least for the moment): the Polonator. I had already seen the hastily assembled marketing piece, which was adorned with a picture of a large blue box that had been slightly warped in kind of a Daliesque way, a nice design touch and appropriately Churchian. The splashy-cum-nerdy brochure announced the machine’s arrival:
    Dover, in collaboration with the Church laboratory of Harvard Medical School, introduces the Polonator G.007, a revolutionary approach to second-generation sequencing. The Polonator G.007 is a completely open platform, combining a high performance instrument at a very low price point … [Users] are totally free to innovate; all aspects of the system are open and programmable… .
    [The Church lab’s] vision, as expressed in the Personal Genome Project, the development of the Polonator, and their recent formation of the PGx team [that will compete for the X Prize], is quite simple: to deliver the benefits of second-generation sequencing to the largest possible base of potential users, as quickly and efficiently as possible.
    … For those intrepid souls willing to slip into the driver’s seat, the Polonator is completely open and at your disposal. Beyond buckling up, our only request is that you respect the open nature of the Polonator system, and promptly publish (or better yet communicate immediately via our user community forums) any enhancements that you might develop. It is through your creativity that the Polonator system will evolve. 3
    The Polonator would be more than just a sequencer; it would be a philosophy—a way of life. Like the PGP, this thing was not for the timid. Why this approach, George? “For anything you do on government grants,” he said, “open-source is a good idea. Also, I survived the Applied Biosystems monopoly; I always felt it was too hidden and it was too stifling. I always felt like, ‘Gee, if somebody had the resources, wouldn’t it be great to just have all this stuff in the open?’ I think that feeling comes from having benefited from open-source software myself. And it also seems to be consistent with what we’re doing with respect to the ELSI [ethical, legal, and social issues] aspects of the Personal Genome Project. We are trying to be transparent in every way.” 4
    Applied