High-tech Piracy
From one-eyed swordsmen to scientists in rubber gloves, looters once again are seizing the earth's riches
March/April 1996
By Special to Utne Reader--Andrew Kimbrell
RELATED CONTENT
Y2K Task Force Credits Strength to Member Diversity Web Specials Archives Karen Pirozzi Ameri...
Mapping the Territory The Human Genome Diversity Project searches for cures, not profits March Apri...
Are garage genetic engineering labs the next thing?...
The monumental work of the Human Genome Project, a 10-year struggle to identify and map all 50,000 ...
J. Craig Venter moves from mapping his own genome to creating his own life forms...
The brave new frontier of genetic engineering is extending humanity's reach over the forces of nature as no other technology has ever done. Scientists can now isolate, snip, insert, recombine, rearrange, edit, program, and produce biological and genetic material. In fact, scientists for the first time have the potential to become the architects of life itself, the authors of an ersatz technological evolution designed to create new species of microbes, plants, and animals that are more profitable for agriculture, industry, biomass energy production, and research than the ones nature gave us.
This biotechnology boom in the industrialized world has massively increased corporate demand for an unconventional form of natural resources: not the minerals and fossil fuels of the industrial age, but rather living materials found primarily in the Southern Hemisphere. According to the World Resources Institute, more than half the world's plant and animal species live in the rainforests of the Third World--and nowhere else on earth. Ironically, as industrial expansion and pollution reduce the number of species, we are witnessing a "gene rush" as governments and multinational corporations aggressively scout the continents in search of genetic material.
"Bioprospecting" is a potential gold mine for both science and business, since genetic material found in the developing world may yield cures for diseases as well as cash. But what also looms on the horizon, and in fact is already occurring in many parts of the developing world, is "biopiracy," where corporations use the folk wisdom of indigenous peoples to locate and understand the use of medicinal plants and then exploit them commercially. U.S. and European scientists hoping to find cures worth billions of dollars have even taken samples of the blood, hair, and saliva of indigenous peoples. Indigenous peoples' knowledge, their resources, and even their bodies are being pirated, and they receive little or nothing in return.
Page: 1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
Next >>