Scientists Discover by Sharing

A wealth of recent scientific papers on the early diagnosis of Alzheimer's disease is announcing groundbreaking discoveries, thanks to an unprecedented initiative by key players in public, private and academic sectors: a collaborative effort to find the biological markers that show the progression of Alzheimer's disease in the human brain. The key to this Alzheimer's project was an agreement as ambitious as its goal: not just to raise money and do research on a vast scale, but also to share all the data, making every single finding public, immediately available to anyone with a computer anywhere in the world. No one would own the data. No one could submit patent applications, though private companies would ultimately profit from any drugs or imaging tests developed as a result of the effort. The collaboration is already serving as a model for similar efforts against Parkinson's disease, such as a $40 million project to look for biomarkers for Parkinson's.

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