High-tech Piracy
(Page 4 of 5)
March/April 1996
By Special to Utne Reader--Andrew Kimbrell
Despite the growing number of patents, biopirating the genetic material of indigenous peoples is only in early stages, and scientists are making plans for expansion. Starting in 1991, an informal consortium of scientists in North America and Europe launched a campaign to take blood, tissue, and hair samples from hundreds of "endangered" and unique human communities throughout the world. The initiative is called the Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP), and the samples it gathers will be used to create "transformed" cell lines of each community.
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Many indigenous communities have condemned the HGDP. In February 1995, leaders representing indigenous nations throughout Canada, the United States, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, and Argentina issued a statement opposing the HGDP and noting that it "opens the door for potential widespread abuse of human genetic materials for scientific, commercial, or military purposes. . . . The proposed research holds little or no benefit to the donor populations, but could be highly profitable to various researchers, patent holders, and corporations, which may find commercial application [from collected material] such as the production of pharmaceuticals."
"This project is another form of the extremely racist process by which indigenous lands and resources have been pirated for the benefit of almost everyone except indigenous peoples," says Jeanette Armstrong, an Okanagan from British Columbia.
Biodemocracy
To reverse the rapidly increasing biopiracy that is sweeping the globe, it is imperative that the current regime of bioimperialism be replaced by international structures based on biodemocracy: recognition of the intrinsic value of all life forms and preservation of their genetic integrity. Biodemocracy recognizes the contributions and rights of source communities and requires that nation-states renounce the patenting of life and the international trade structures--such as GATT--that support patenting.
Biodemocracy also requires that there be an immediate moratorium on the genetic engineering of the permanent genetic code of plant and animal species. Until a sophisticated means of predicting the effects of gene alterations on the environment is established and adequate regulations are enacted, the genetic engineering must stop. Collection of cells and blood from indigenous peoples through projects that violate all legal principles of informed consent and represent a threat to their dignity and survival must end.
As people in the North struggle to halt biopiracy, the South must also stand behind the principles and policies of biodemocracy and refuse to allow its resources and its people to become commodities of the North.
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