As much as I've enjoyed Crichton's sci-fi novels over the decades, I've also
come to realize he can be a total fuckwit on a variety of issues, the
"ownership of human pathogens" being one of them, global warming another (he
wrote a book a couple of years ago that tried to convince the reader that man
played no role in global warming).

For decades scientists trying to understand how to attack and destroy HCV had
no in-vitro models to work with. A company finally solved that problem;
they're entitled to recoup their development costs and make money as well...

Cheers

/greyhackles