Path: utzoo!attcan!utgpu!watmath!uunet!murtoa.cs.mu.oz.au!murdu!ucsvc!wehi!tony
From: tony@wehi.dn.mu.oz (Tony Kyne, Walter and Eliza Hall Institute)
Newsgroups: bionet.general
Subject: Re closure of BIONET
Message-ID: <330@wehi.dn.mu.oz>
Date: 16 Jul 89 21:54:44 GMT
Organization: Walter & Eliza Hall Institute
Lines: 54

Dear BIONETer's

	May I add my few comments on the demise of BIONET. Given David
Kristofferson's recent mailing, it would appear that the problem is that from
a strictly legalistic point of view that BIONET was getting its funding from an
incorrect source. But then this raises the question that I am sure has yet to
be solved satisfactorily in any country at present. It is certainly an issue
in the politics of science funding in Australia at present. The question is how
to fund an essential scientific infrastructure facility that is required across
a wide spectrum of science. Sequence support is required across medicine, basic
science disciplines, veterinary science, forestry science, marine science,
Antarctic science, agricultural science etc etc... And all these areas have 
their own funding bodies all of whom agree that a national facility is required 
but are willing only to fund a part of it - that percentage being set by their 
perceived role in the scheme of things which usually is at wide variance from 
what the other bodies consider to be a fair percentage. If the US scene is 
anything like here at present, I can imagine questions being asked at NIH 
along the lines "Why should we be funding .... (insert your favourite non 
health area of science) with our over stretched dollars?" It seems to me that 
it is crazy to consider throwing money at major genome projects, if the basic
infrastructure support for the collection, analysis and dissemination of the
information involved is not well established.

	In the interim there appear to be sections of the BIONET facility that 
could be kept going. From Australia, the most beneficial parts of BIONET for
local scientists were the co-ordination of the bulletin board system and
facilitating electronic communication to largely US scientists who did not have 
network access via other means. Is there any chance that a US research 
establishment could keep the bulletin boards going a la sci.bio or comp.os.vms 
(using USENET names) - as I understand it all it requires is some site to host 
the news group, or if I am not wrong, since they exist as USENET groups, can
they not continue to exist (90%+ of Australian scientists who read them have 
access to the BIONET newsgroups as a result of the USENET feeds into ACSnet). 
Even though the news traffic on BIONET has been light compared to other news 
groups the contributuion it has made to lessen the isolation of Australian 
sequence computing support facilities cannot be underestimated. The potential
loss of email links to US scientists dependent upon BIONET for email links
to the world will effect international scientific collaboration - sheer
madness. Until common sense prevails, one hopes that they can find friendly 
establishments that will give them accounts on systems with network access
so that those valuable contacts can be maintained.

			Best wishes and good luck, Tony Kyne

================================================================================
Dr. Tony Kyne, Head, Computer Sciences Unit,
               The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research,
               P.O. Royal Melbourne Hospital, Victoria, 3050, Australia.
Phone: International +61-3-345-2586       FAX: International +61-3-347-0852
            National 03-345-2586                    National 03-347-0852
Email: ACSnet: tony@wehi.dn.mu.oz        UUCP: uunet!munnari!wehi.dn.mu.oz!tony
     Internet: tony%wehi.dn.mu.oz@uunet.uu.net
      PSIMAIL: PSI%0505233430002::tony
===============================================================================