The latest scam: patents on genes
The biggest scam in history is happening under our noses:a genetic goldrush that threatens our human heritage.
Julian Cribb voices his concerns in a new article about a genetic goldrush that is threatening to strip us of our human heritage.
One of his opening paragraphs:
“Something that belongs to the entire human race is being quietly filched from beneath our noses with the aim of selling it back to us at much inflated prices at some future point. It’s the biggest real estate scam in history.”
Gene theft?
What is being filched, according to Julian, are our genes and those of anything else that is living on this planet. There be gold in them thar organisms, and the gold is in the form of a patent.
Julian has two key concerns. The first that it defies basic human morality that we allow people to wander the planet patenting things that occur in nature claiming they are ‘inventions’ because they been removed from their natural environments. The second is that the majority of the gene prospecting and patenting is being done by a handful of wealthy corporates, mainly in the US and Europe.
I tend to agree with Julian Cribb on this. I am unable to fathom how a gene that is produced by nature can be patented. Even, as the case is in Australia, that the gene first has to be isolated and reproduced and have a function ascribed to it to be patentable. See previous TechNyou blog
But as I mention in that blog, it is a complicated issue that seems to me to be bogged down in legal semantics. It is this discrepancy over legal terminology that is allowing companies and research institutions to exploit this patenting of life. So, in effect they are doing what we are allowing them to according to the law – if you interpret the law they way they do anyway
Public opinion
It is certainly a key issue when people talk about GM crops. For many the debate has moved beyond whether the crops will kill me, though it still gets attention. Nearly all people I speak to, including all seven women at a rural women’s forum we held in Shepparton, Victoria, two days ago, now raise the issue of corporate ownership of the technology or genes that are then used to create our food.
There is an Australian Government Senate committee looking into this issue of gene patents and should be due to report on it soon.
Not the last word…
If nothing else, Julian’s unwillingness to pull punches make it an interesting read and I can guarantee this won’t be his last word on the issue.