Genetic Ownership Excerpts from a lecture by Jeremy Rifkin home |
| Genetic Ownership Excerpts from A lecture by Jeremy Rifkin The current genetic revolution started in the 1970's when two scientists from the Stanford University in California took slices of genetic material of two different organisms and recombined them. This development combined with two additional experiments is worthy of discussion. At the University of Pennsylvania a few years ago scientists took a human growth hormone and injected it into mice embryo. The mice were born with a human gene functioning in every cell of their body. These mice grew twice as large as any mice in history and they passed that human genetic information to every member of their offspring. You can't do that with classical breeding. We do see occasionally genes crossing biological boundaries with viruses and bacteria but not on this scale. The second experiment. Scientist took a gene from a firefly and injected that gene into the seed of a tobacco plant. The fully mature plant lights up 24 hours a day. In classical breeding you can cross close relatives because taxonomy is anthropocentric so you can cross a donkey and a horse and get a mule. But you cannot cross a donkey and an apple tree in classical breeding. Here we have a technology revolution that allows scientist and companies to bypass every single biological boundary in the plant animal kingdom. That's why it's both exciting from an investment perspective and terrifying from a social, cultural and environmental perspective. Finally cloned sheep. We all missed the story. The story wasn't Dolly; the story was Polly the second sheep. In the investment community that's the sheep they're interested in because they took a human gene and customized it into the sheep cell and then cloned the sheep. What was demonstrated to the banking community is that it is now possible to both customize and mass-produce identical copies of a living original with the same quality controls and design principles that we used on the assembly line with chemical products in the 20th century. That's why we call this genetic engineering not therapy. Now the issue at hand. Do we take these engineering standards that we applied to the industrial revolution and inanimate materials and apply them to the genes, chromosomes, cells, tissues, organs, organisms and Eco systems? We're promised new foods that will feed the world, medical advances to keep us alive forever and new sources of energy when oil runs dry. But what's never asked is will the artificial creation of cloned transgenic creatures mean the end of nature and a substitution of a laboratory conceived second geneses. Will the mass release of thousands genetically modified organisms mean spreading genetic pollution across our biosphere causing irreducible damage to our environment. What are the consequences to the global economy of reducing the entire gene pool to intellectual property owned by a handful of life science companies? What are the implications in genetically programming traits to sperm, egg and embryo before conception or after conception and growing up in a world where people are discriminated against based on their geno-type and genetic profile? What are the consequences of making a human baby by perfect design principles? Let's take a look at some of the issues. First, who's going to control all this? The name of the game is patents. Now as you know there was a big announcement, they have mapped the human genome. They only found 30,000 or so genes they think but interestingly enough now the rush is on to locate every one of those genes and the proteins they code for and then to secure intellectual property protection over it. If this goes unchallenged in less that 10 years a handful of life science companies will own the genetic blueprints that make up our species. That is unprecedented power! Allowing them to dictate the terms upon which we enter the age of biology in the 21st and 22nd century. Would you like to know what Dr. Wilmut's (Dolly the sheep) patent includes? Dr. Wilmut received a patent from the British government (this shows you how out of control this is); he received a process patent for the process of cloning. That's his right. But he also received a product patent, meaning any animal cloned using his process is considered his invention and there's an addendum. The British Patent Office granted Dr. Wlmut's company all cloned human embryos up to the last stage of development is now considered human inventions. Now regardless of where we may be on the right to life pro choice issue, we all have a gamut of views, I would think we'd all be shocked on both sides of the spectrum that now a company can actually claim an embryo as an invention. In the last century we fought the question of whether you can own a human being after birth and we abolished slavery. Now the technology's available to own a human being from conception to birth. It's going to be one of the great debates of the 21st century. If we allow the great gene pool to be enclosed as either political property owned by governments or intellectual property owned by life science companies, I guarantee you your children and grandchildren will have gene wars in the 21st and 22nd century. We fought wars over metals in the mercantile era; we fought wars over oil in the industrial era and a lot of human beings suffered as a result. You know, when a chemist isolated a chemical in the periodic table in the age of chemistry we allowed them process patents but we certainly didn't allow them a product patent. Can you imagine saying, you were the first scientist to isolate helium, oxygen or aluminum, we're going to give you a patent, this is your invention. The patent laws are clear. These are discoveries of nature it doesn't make any difference how exhaustive your search was; you can't claim a product of nature as a human invention. The genes, the cells, the chromosomes, the organs, the tissues, they are all exactly analogous. It's a one to one comparison. I believe our government has been violating it's own statues for years by extending intellectual property rights to the genes and the proteins they code for. Will our children be well served if they grow up in a world where they think of life, genes, and proteins as intellectual property? Is there even a reference point for future generations to understand the concept when life's reduced to sheer intellectual property? You're going to hear a new term in the next few years, "Genetic Pollution." Genetic pollution is very different than chemical pollution. Genetically modified organisms (GMO's) are alive so they're more unpredictable when you place them in the environment. They reproduce. Chemicals don't reproduce. Genetically modified organisms mutate, they proliferate, they migrate, and you cannot recall them back to the laboratory. There are currently 72,000 field tests going on in the United States. We have herbicide tolerant and pest resistant genes already injected into the code of our corn, soy and other products, other food crops. But you know what the scientists never took into consideration? Pollination! What happens when those genes flow, they always flow during pollination? You cannot stop it. You cannot put a refuge around pollination. The winds, the insects, the transmission, there's no way to have a guarantee. When your herbicide tolerant gene and your pesticide tolerant gene flows off site into an organic farm or a conventional farm and it contaminates that crop, whose going to be responsible? It's already happening. When those genes for herbicide tolerance and pest resistance tolerance flow out into the natural preserve and take up in wild weeds and the weeds then reproduce, how do we ever deal with that liability? How is the government claiming it's regulating the release of these GMO's when the insurance industry knows there's absolutely no methodology by which to judge the risk? |
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