The Economist 20010217 SEARCH RESEARCH TOOLS Economist.com Choose a research tool... advanced search » Subscribe Activ Thursday March 29th 2007 Welcome = requires subscription My Account » Manage my newsletters LO » PRINT EDITION Print Edition February 17th 2001 Previous print editions Subscribe Science and profit When research is driven by profit, the result is often more and Feb 10th 2001 Subscribe to the prin better science … More on this week's lead article Feb 3rd 2001 Or buy a Web subsc Jan 27th 2001 full access online Jan 20th 2001 News Summaries Jan 13th 2001 RSS feeds Receive this page by Business this week More print editions and covers » The world this week Leaders Full contents Enlarge current cover Science and profit Past issues/regional covers Subscribe Business Dressing for the downturn NEWS ANALYSIS Indonesia’s divided leaders Reinventing Tata POLITICS THIS WEEK Napster Ireland’s euro-sins BUSINESS THIS WEEK And the band plays on Reforming the sisters OPINION Beef market Contaminated Leaders Educating Tony Blair Letters to the editor Face value Blogs Kallery Letters Man on the run Corporate governance in France WORLD On abortion, Vaclav Klaus, beer, the Philippines, Where’s the Michelin woman? 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Advertising Info | Legal disclaimer | Accessibility | Privacy policy | Terms & Conditions | Help Produced by = ECO PDF TEAM = Thanks xxmama About sponsorship Business this week Feb 15th 2001 From The Economist print edition Record breaking In a victory for the world’s record companies, an American court ruled that Napster, a free service for downloading music from the Internet, must stop allowing copyrighted material to be exchanged through its website. Napster vowed to continue the legal battle. Bertelsmann, a German media giant, said that its plans to fund Napster if it introduces a subscription and pays royalties were unaffected. See article: Napster loses another round The European Parliament passed a law that would make it illegal to circumvent copyright-protection technologies in consumer electronics. It is claimed that the law will make copyright protection stronger in the EU than in America. Schlumberger, an American oil-services company, agreed to buy Sema, an Anglo-French software firm, for £3.6 billion ($5.3 billion). Schlumberger also acquired a smartcard company from Groupe Bull, a French technology firm. Schlumberger hopes to strengthen its information-technology business in a bid to improve growth. Shares in Lucent Technologies, a telecoms-equipment maker, plunged after it was revealed that America’s Securities and Exchange Commission was investigating the firm over its accounting procedures. Coupled with recent poor performance, the news prompted leading credit-rating agencies to cut Lucent’s rating to just above junk status. Lastminute.com, once a high-flying online travel agent, revealed pre-tax losses for the three months to the end of December of £15.4m ($22.3m), over 60% up on the previous quarter. The company also said that subscriber numbers had not risen, but it insisted that more of its punters were making purchases. eBay, an American online auctioneer, was said to be in talks to buy iBazar, a French counterpart with a strong pan-European presence, for around $100m. QXL Ricardo, a British- based rival, also with European intentions, announced pre-tax losses for the latest quarter of £41.4m ($59.9m) compared with £67.7m in the previous quarter. Rick Belluzzo, head of consumer business at Microsoft, was promoted to president and chief operating officer of the company. Shares in Orange, France Telecom’s mobile-phone outfit, closed below their offer price on the first day of trading. Orange had been priced near the bottom of a range that had steadily fallen in the approach to the IPO. Other companies, including British Telecom and Deutsche Telekom, aiming to reduce debt by floating their mobile operations later this year, will not have been encouraged. Reuters, a British media group, abandoned plans to float Greenhouse Fund, its technology-investment fund, after the battering that technology shares have taken over the past year. Reuters said that it would consider outside investment in Greenhouse and that it still intended moving its own products to the Internet despite the recent downturn. Recycling drive Volkswagen, Germany’s biggest car maker, was reported to be setting aside DM1 billion ($470m) to pay for compliance with a European directive that will come into force in 2007 forcing car makers to pay for recycling their vehicles. New cars will be required to be 85% recyclable. FIFA and UEFA, the world and European governing bodies for football, reached a tentative agreement with the European Commission over a long-running dispute concerning players’ contracts. Clubs will no longer receive transfer fees for players older than 23 years. Nomura, a Japanese investment firm, won a battle to take over some 1,000 British pubs from Bass, a leisure group, for around £625m ($907m) after a rival bidder, Legal & General Ventures, pulled out. Nomura is also bidding for another 3,000 pubs owned by Whitbread. Rival descriptions of the human genome were published by Celera Genomics, a private company, and the Human Genome Project, an international government-backed consortium, in rival scientific publications. Many biotechnology companies have already paid plenty to acquire Celera’s information. See article: Can science live happily with profit? AstraZeneca, a large British drug company, announced a collaborative project with Orchid BioSciences, an American firm, that will use the information on the human genome to produce tailor-made drugs. The companies hope to overcome the problem of small genetic differences that can make standard drugs ineffective or produce unpleasant side-effects. An offer of $17.6 billion was made for De Beers, the South African diamond cartel on February 15th. The would-be buyer was a consortium consisting of Anglo American, a mining firm, the Oppenheimer family of South Africa and Debswana, De Beers’ joint venture with the government of Botswana. The deal would end the cross-shareholding between Anglo and De Beers that has depressed the shares of both firms. America’s downside Alan Greenspan was upbeat about America’s economy in testimony to the Senate Banking Committee. He said “downside risks predominate”, suggesting that the Federal Reserve would cut interest rates again, but maintained that the economy would come back swiftly from the current pause. Improvement was immediate: retail sales were up 0.7% in January, compared with no growth in December. Japan’s current-account surplus fell in December to ¥688.5 billion ($6.14 billion). The economic slowdown in America, its biggest trading partner, reduced exports and dear oil took their toll as well. Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. About sponsorship The world this week Feb 15th 2001 From The Economist print edition Architect of defence President George Bush announced that he wanted to create a “new EPA architecture” for defence by investing in new technologies and weapons systems, rather than tinkering with the old. He also declared “God bless NATO”, taking his listeners by surprise. See article: A radical new defence policy Mr Bush was due to visit Mexico, his first trip abroad as president. Outrage continued to swirl round Bill Clinton as he plunged into his post- presidential career. Under severe media pressure, he shifted his new office from swanky mid-town Manhattan to low-rent Harlem, a place with which he claimed long and heartfelt connections. Meanwhile, Congress said that it wanted to look into Mr Clinton’s pardon of Marc Rich, a fugitive financier. The US attorney in New York, Mary Jo White, said she would conduct a criminal investigation into the affair. See article: Bill Clinton, still in trouble At least 225 people, including 22 children and their teacher in one school, were killed in an earthquake in El Salvador, the second in the past four weeks. A 13-point deal was signed between Colombia’s President Andres Pastrana and the leader of the left- wing FARC rebels, Manuel Marulanda, renewing the life of a demilitarised zone controlled by the rebels and thus preparing the way for a ceasefire. See article: A deal of sorts in Colombia Mori in the rough Japan’s unpopular prime minister, Yoshiro Mori, became even less secure after he was criticised for continuing a game of golf after being told of an accident in which a Japanese trawler had been sunk by an American submarine, drowning nine people. See article: Japan’s leader in more trouble It was announced in Hong Kong that the financial secretary, Donald Tsang AP Yam-Kuen, would replace a champion of the territory’s autonomy, Anson Chan Fang On-sang, as chief secretary. A banker, Anthony Leung Kam- chung, would take over from Mr Tsang. Afghanistan’s ruling Taliban told the United Nations to close its political office in Kabul, the capital, after American officials closed the Taliban’s office in New York. Opposition fighters in Afghanistan seized Bamiyan, a town held by the Taliban. Senators in the Philippines examined a bank account said to belong to the deposed president, Joseph Estrada. More than $60m had allegedly been withdrawn before Mr Estrada was ousted last month, accused by his opponents of corruption. Thailand closed a crossing with Myanmar, after Myanmar’s soldiers were reported to be massing on the border and firing into Thai territory. Myanmar said it was shooting at rebels. Kohl’s fine Germany’s former chancellor, Helmut Kohl, accepted a fine of DM300,000 ($141,000) for accepting secret and therefore illegal contributions to his Christian Democratic Union. If he agrees to pay, criminal charges against him will be dropped, but a parliamentary inquiry into the affair will continue. Germany’s new farm and consumer-protection minister, Renate Künast, fiercely criticised the European Commission’s latest plan for culling more cattle in its effort to fend off BSE, or mad-cow disease. The Social Democratic prime minister of Sweden, Goran Persson, said he would not hold a referendum before the next general election due in 2002 on whether Sweden, one of the three EU countries not within the euro-zone, would join Europe’s single currency. Ireland was formally reprimanded by the European Commission for the expansionary budget it plans for this year, but the Irish finance minister, Charlie McCreevy, refused to change it. See article: Ireland's euro-sins Protesters on the streets of Ukraine’s capital, Kiev, continued to call for their president, Leonid Kuchma, to resign, while a leading critic of his, Yulia Timoshenko, a deputy prime minister in charge of energy, was arrested for alleged corruption. See article: Ukraine’s shaky president Jacques Chirac, France’s conservative president, disagreed with a plan of Lionel Jospin, its socialist prime minister, for devolving powers to Corsica. More peace talks Leaders of several of the countries and rebel factions involved in Congo’s civil war met for peace talks in Zambia. But the presidents of Rwanda and Uganda stayed away. Some 250,000 refugees remained trapped by fighting between the Guinean army and rebels encroaching from Sierra Leone and elsewhere. Ruud Lubbers, the new United Nations high commissioner for refugees, visited Guinea and Sierra Leone to arrange emergency aid and the evacuation of refugees. Israel’s military killed a senior Palestinian security official in a AP rocket attack. A Palestinian bus driver drove into a queue at a bus stop, killing eight Israelis and injuring 17 others, and raising tensions still further. See article: Aid for Palestinians evaporates People flocked to the polls in Bahrain, an authoritarian Gulf emirate, to vote on a new constitution that would institute a partially elected parliament and grant women political rights. Iraq’s national airline resumed scheduled international flights for the first time since the Gulf war, in apparent defiance of UN sanctions. Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. About sponsorship Science and profit Feb 15th 2001 From The Economist print edition ONCE upon a time, pure and applied science were the same. Sir Humphry Davy discovered seven chemical elements, and invented the miner’s safety lamp. Louis Pasteur investigated the properties of molecules, and worked out how to stop milk spoiling. Everybody thought that was admirable. Somehow, things have changed. Today the feeling is widespread that science and commerce should not—must not—mix. There is a queasy suspicion that the process of discovery is in some way corrupted if it is driven by profit. This week saw two things that reflect this suspicion, which for many people is hardening into unshakeable conviction. One was the unease that greeted publication of the sequence of the human genome (see article). The other was a report by Oxfam, a British charity, on the plight of people in the third world, too poor to buy the western medicines they need to stay healthy. The cases may seem unconnected, but they are not. The underlying issue is the same, and goes to the heart of the debate over science and profit: what are the terms on which scientific knowledge can be owned? Performance bonus In the case of the genome, two groups have been in contention: one funded mainly by taxpayers, dedicated to the public good; the other funded privately, dedicated to the pursuit of profit. The race was acrimonious—with one side charging that the genome is the heritage of mankind, and the other seeking to establish commercial rights over it. The Oxfam report thumps away in more traditional style, denouncing western capitalism and complaining that drug companies concentrate on treatments for rich- world diseases, leaving the poor to fend for themselves, and that they keep their prices too high. In both cases, it is alleged, the ignoble search for profit distorts and corrupts. These accusations are ill-conceived. Needless to say, not all science should be, or can be, driven by profit. Some fields of research are done to satisfy man’s spiritual, rather than material, appetites. They seek answers to the sorts of “how did we get here?” questions which earlier generations confronted with religion. Another kind of knowledge may be useful and practical, yet too diffuse to be owned. This constitutes what economists call a pure public good. Pure public goods, when costly to produce, are nowadays funded by taxpayers and provided by governments—because, for the most part, they have to be. That leaves the rest: a fabulous vista of scientific, and commercial, opportunity. The problem with the genome is that when it moved from the second category to the third, it took the scientists in the public project by surprise. The founders of Celera Genomics found a way to profit from the genome—or, to be more accurate, from carefully annotated and ingeniously packaged descriptions of bits of it, which drug companies are happy to buy (see article). As a result, they got a move on. They did their work faster and in some ways better than their public-sector rivals—who would probably still be plodding towards their goal had they not had the spur of competition. The public researchers complain that Celera drew on public knowledge in order to advance their private goals. So it did—that is what public knowledge is for. However, the genome remains a common heritage. Celera’s activities do not stop other people using that public knowledge—and even packaging it for sale in other ways than those done by the firm. Genomes are not inventions and cannot be patented. Celera has no proprietary rights over the human genome per se, just over its version of that genome. In short, Celera’s pursuit of profit has been good for science, and for man. Difficult technical questions about the design of patents for particular genes (which are allowed) still need to be resolved. Any company seeking to assert ownership of scientific knowledge needs to be held to the traditional tests: advances should be original, non-obvious and useful. This standard has not always been rigorously applied. But none of this alters the basic fact that, in genome research, science and profit have mixed very productively. The question of third-world drugs is undeniably more vexed—but impugning the profit motive is a fatuously inadequate answer. If not for the lure of profit, the drugs that Oxfam wants sent to developing countries would not exist in the first place. Now that the drugs have been developed, it is often argued, the cost of manufacture is, in most cases, much lower than the price charged. This is gouging, the indictment goes on: drug companies could make money even if they sold the drugs much more cheaply. Again, because of profit, the benefits of science are being withheld. Nonsense. Developing drugs is expensive. If companies are to keep trying, they must expect to make enough profit to meet the cost of developing not only the drugs that work, but also the ones that do not. Consider another point. Presumably, as good profit-maximisers, firms would be willing to increase their sales in the third world, even at knock-down prices, if they could maintain their profits in the West. They suspect, with reason, that demands would soon arise for prices to be cut there too; “grey” re-importing would increase, as well. These concerns deserve to be taken seriously. The case for much more generous provision of life-saving drugs to the developing countries is irresistible both morally and as a matter of economics. But it is naive, wrong and in the long run counter-productive, to expect the cost of this aid to be met out of drug-company profits. Instead, rich-world taxpayers should pay. It would be much better to spend aid money on drugs for developing countries than it is to waste it in the usual ways. Far from compromising science, profit in both these cases—the development of new medicines and the elucidation of the genome—has animated it, and directed it towards meeting pressing human needs. It is a happy marriage. Davy and Pasteur would surely have approved. Copyright © 2007 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights reserved. About sponsorship Dressing for the downturn Feb 15th 2001 From The Economist print edition As America’s economy slows, business casual is proving rather too casual ONLY a year ago, the suit and tie seemed headed for extinction— along with other old-economy anomalies like profits, proven products and payment in cash. In the new economy, workers would wear whatever clothing best got their creative juices flowing, without unduly restricting freedom of movement while playing table football and engaging in other activities de rigueur in the modern cutting-edge working environment. This sartorial revolution started, inevitably, in Silicon Valley, but by last spring it had stormed even the most sober and traditional banks, consultancies and law firms of Manhattan and the City of London. One by one, they all went “business casual”. A charity was established to redistribute suits to the unemployed—not that a jacket and tie were any longer going to help anybody get a job. Now, it turns out, the vision of an open-neck future was but a mirage. Suits are back. According to the Doneger Group, a “style consultancy”, sales of suits and dress shirts bottomed in the third quarter of last year, and have since rebounded sharply. The evidence is clearest in New York, where many a suit has been rescued from the wardrobe, with chinos and polo-shirts relegated to the weekends. Only workers who never come face to face with customers or senior managers can still fearlessly wear jeans and T- shirts—with the notable exception of technical staff, of whom nothing smarter was ever expected in the first place. Even America’s congenitally casual west coast is going conservative. The new vogue is “dressy casual”. At a minimum, The Economist has found, shirts are once more being tucked into trousers. New-economy trendsetters such as Bill Gates, Michael Dell and Larry Ellison have all been seen looking dapper. When Steve Case, boss of AOL, wore a tie at the announcement of his firm’s purchase of Time Warner a year ago, it was interpreted as a gesture to reassure Time workers. With hindsight, it seems Mr Case simply had a feel for fashion. George Bush, sure-footed in his first weeks in the White House, has banned jeans from the Oval Office and wears a suit almost everywhere except on the ranch. The time has surely come to replace the old “hemline theory” of economic cycles with a new theory of suits. Back in the 1920s, George Taylor, an economist at the University of Pennsylvania, argued that hemlines on women’s skirts were a useful indicator of economic activity. They moved higher in good times, because women could afford to wear, and show off, expensive silk stockings. In hard times, they moved lower, as modesty required that less expensively clad legs be covered. Sure enough, skirts were short in the roaring twenties, and long in the Great Depression. A turn-up from trousers Now that women have more to think about than their stockings, the wearing of suits may be a more reliable guide to economic trends. In any case, many female executives have abandoned hemlines altogether in favour of trousers. The suit is the perfect attire for hard economic times. It speaks of seriousness of purpose and self- discipline. It speaks of dullness, too, which is a welcome contrast with the anarchic creativity of the dotcoms. A suit saves time, because it requires no thought and still looks all right—a crucial competitive advantage in the labour market that men long enjoyed over women. How foolish it was to throw that away. If you want to show you are more than new-economy flotsam, get yourself a smart three-piece.