单项选择题

Intellectual property (IP) rights are as important as our rights in castles, cars and corn oil. IP is supposedly intended to encourage inventors and the investment needed to bring their products to the marketplace. In reality, patents (专利权) often restrain invention rather than promote it: companies buy up the patents of potential rivals in order to prevent them from being turned into products. Moreover, the prices charged are often grossly in excess of those required to cover costs and make reasonable profits.
IP rights are beginning to permeate (渗透) every area of scientific endeavor. Even in universities, science and innovation, which have already been paid for out of the public purse, are privatized and resold to the public via patents. The drive to commercialize science has overtaken not only applied research but also "blue-skies (纯理论的) " research, such that even the pure quest for knowledge is overturned by the need for profit.
The fruits of science and innovation have nourished our society and economy for years. We need to consider how to balance the needs of science as an industry with the plight (困境) of those who desperately need the products of science. It would be remiss (疏忽的) if we failed to recognize the importance of science as an industry and investment in research to national and regional economic development but against these economic concerns (individual, corporate and national) an overriding (高于一切的) consideration must be the interests of the public and of humanity present and future. Science as an industry may be booming, but the benefits of science need to be more efficiently and more cheaply placed in the service of the public.
For science to continue to flourish, it is necessary that the knowledge it generates be made freely and widely available. IP rights have the tendency to stifle (阻碍) access to knowledge and the free exchange of ideas that is essential to science.
The Manchester Manifesto, produced by an international group of experts, explores these problems and points the way to future solutions that will more effectively protect science, innovation and the public good. It calls on all interested parties to find better ways of delivering the fruits of science where they are most needed.

According to the passage, the first thing about science we should consider is （）

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