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Cloning sheep - and corporate ownership of all life?
Thought this might be of interest... P. Dines
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From: Jim Davis, INTERNET:jdav@mcs.com
To: Patricia Dines, 73652,1202
Sender: o-imap@CHUMBLY.MATH.MISSOURI.EDU
Date: Sat, Apr 5, 1997, 4:24 AM
Subject: Cloning sheep: converting life forms into corporate property
CLONING SHEEP: CONVERTING LIFE FORMS INTO CORPORATE PROPERTY
By Jonathan King
[Editor's note: The writer is an internationally known professor
of molecular biology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
He has long been concerned with developing science and technology
for human liberation rather than for profit.]
The same articles reporting the production of Dolly the sheep
outside of normal sexual reproduction also reported that a small
British pharmaceutical firm had already applied for patents on the
cloning process and the animals created through it. The growing
contradiction between technological advances and private
exploitation is beginning to be recognizable.
Though the cloning of mammals and the possibility of cloning
humans has grabbed the headlines, the underlying motion is the
conversion of living creatures into corporate property. Since the
medieval period, individuals and corporations have owned herds of
cattle, flocks of poultry and fields of wheat. But they have never
owned the species cow, or chicken, or wheat, never been able to
prevent others from raising cows, poultry or wheat.
The mechanism of this transformation has been the extension of the
patent laws to cover living creatures, their components and their
genes or blueprints. Such patents provide a 20-year practical
monopoly, since patents enable one to prevent other individuals,
corporations or groups from utilizing the subject of the patent.
The U.S. patent laws, written by Thomas Jefferson, historically
excluded living creatures. With the development of genetic
engineering technology, a product of 40 years of public investment
in basic biomedical research, it became possible to modify the
genes -- the blueprints -- that control the cells of all
organisms. In the early 1980s, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the
Chakrabarty case that genetically modified microorganisms could be
patented. This opened up the floodgates, and since then thousands
of patents on genes, cells, and even entire organisms have been
granted by the patent office.
The transformation of the organisms that have evolved over
millions of years into corporate property represents a qualitative
leap in the concept and character of corporate private property.
It represents a potential theft equivalent to having our water
and atmosphere become private property, for sale to the highest bidder.
The development of biomedical technology continues to open up
possibilities for the alleviation of disease, the repair of
damaged limbs and tissues, the development of new crop plants, and
the remediation of hundreds of years of overexploiting the
environment. But these potentials cannot be realized, or are being
severely distorted, as biomedical innovation is privatized.
Consider the implications for our food supply. The W. R. Grace Co.
holds patents on genetically modified cotton and soybeans. The
patents mean that they control the use and growth of these plant
varieties. A farmer purchasing the plants cannot take the seeds
and plant them again, or give them to a neighbor. At present, this
does not seem serious, since there are a large number of varieties
of soybeans which are not patented.
But the long-term strategy of the industry involves the
replacement of the natural strains by the patented, genetically
engineered strains. This is easy if, for example, the patented
strains are resistant to some pest or pesticide. Either the fear
of these threats or their actuality leads to the widespread
replacement of the natural strains by the engineered strains. The
long-term result is the development of corporate control not just
of the distribution of food, but of primary production. These are
the conditions needed to sharply increase the price of food,
creating superprofits for the corporations and hunger for millions.
A related process drives the pharmaceutical industry. Insulin for
diabetics has been produced for decades by cutting the pancreas
out of the carcasses of cattle and hogs, dicing them up, and
extracting the insulin. With the advent of genetic engineering,
the gene for insulin was spliced into bacteria. Now a single Eli
Lilly factory in Indianapolis produces enough human insulin to
provide for all diabetics needing it in the United States.
The bacteria synthesizing the insulin are grown in giant tanks,
like those used to make beer. It is produced at very low cost, but
sold at high prices. This ability to extract superprofits comes
from the extension of the patent system to organisms and their
components. The patents enable Lilly to prevent other
institutions, including non-profits, from producing insulin. If
the production was publicly owned, insulin would be available at a
far lower cost.
Even more important, the profit extracted from the sale of insulin
depends upon millions of people getting sick from diabetes. As
long as the profit system drives therapy, powerful forces are at
work to keep modern biomedical science from discovering or
revealing the true causes of the disease, which would allow us to
prevent diabetes.
The discovery that mutations in the two recently identified
"breast cancer" genes increase susceptibility to cancer might have
led to a sharply increased effort to identify the carcinogens in
the human ecosystem that are causing these mutations. But the
monopoly profits available through the extension of the patent
systems to genes depends on selling people the patented product.
Myriad Pharmaceutical, which owns the patents on the "breast
cancer" genes, is marketing a screening test for $2,400 that
provides a limited amount of information of limited use to women
as to whether some damage has already accumulated in these genes.
The generation of an adult sheep from one cell of another adult
opens up the specter of human cloning: producing individuals not
from the union of the egg and sperm, but from transplanting an
adult cell into an egg lacking the egg's original instructions. If
the manipulated egg grew into a full human, it would be
genetically identical to the donor of the cell. Such cloning
transforms humans into commodities, and devalues the relationship
of humans to each other and their culture.
To be human is not the simple summation of genetic, biochemical or
physiological processes. Consciousness and knowledge do not exist
in our genes; they emerge out of the interaction between
individuals and human society. Humanity has left behind the stage
in social development -- chattel slavery -- in which humans were
treated as commodities.
The corporate pressure to patent life forms needs to be reversed.
In Europe, India and South America, significant social movements
have slowed the process. Tens of thousands of Indian farmers
demonstrated against the granting of patents on the Neem tree, an
important local food source, to W. R. Grace Co. The European
Parliament has resisted pressure to accept gene patents. Here in
the United States, a small but significant campaign is developing
to call upon Congress to return to the original sense of the
patent laws, and exclude living creatures, their parts and components.
[For more information and copies of the "No Patents on Life"
petition, contact the Council for Responsible Genetics, 5 Upland
Road, Cambridge, Massachusetts 02140.]
[Jonathan King is available to speak through the People's Tribune
Speakers Bureau -- email speakers@noc.org]
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This article originated in the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition),
Vol. 24 No. 4 / April, 1997; P.O. Box 3524, Chicago, IL
60654, pt@noc.org or WWW:
http://www.mcs.com/~jdav/league.html
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