Labs for Fun or Profit?

Harvard's Biological Laboratories have made some major contributions to the world of science. City Councilor Alfred E. Vellucci wants contributions of another sort, however--tax dollars. And he's already pushed a motion through the City Council ordering an investigation of the labs' tax status.

Vellucci charges that private firms are bankrolling lab investigations "with the hope of securing patent rights" and hence profits. "They are tax-exempt only because the building is used for educational purposes," Vellucci said early last week.

Harvard officials are willing to admit that private funding is used for research, although Geoffrey P. Pollitt, director of the Bio Labs, said yesterday that such funding is "unusual." University records show only three instances of private funding for research, one from UpJohn Corporation, one from Biogen, who is helping to pay for the insulin experiments of Walter F. Gilbert '53, American Cancer Society Professor of Molecular Biology, and one from the Campbell Soup Corporation, which sponsored mushroom research earlier this decade.

Officials say, however, that private funding has no effect on the labs' tax status. "There is no way to argue that a contract with a company is any different from a government or foundation grant," Stephen H. Atkinson, executive secretary of the University's office of patents, said yesterday.

Daniel Steiner '54, general counsel to the University, said yesterday that because of the small amount of private funding and its similarity to government and foundation money, "there is not any legitimate question as to the labs' tax-exempt status."

Atkinson contends that precedent as well as federal tax law backs up his case. "Look at any of the big ones-- University of Wisconsin, Stanford, Cal Tech, MIT--as far as I know, they have never been challenged," he said.

He added whatever the source of research funding, Harvard often licenses a new invention out to a private corporation for development "in order to get it on the market for the public good."

"Any income from royalties off patents has to be used for science education and research," Atkinson said, adding "we can't just build a new swimming pool with it."

Cambridge tax assessors will examine the labs' funding soon, according to city manager James L. Sullivan. What they find will determine how much the labs will contribute, not to the world in general, but to Cambridge in particular.