Editorial - Winter 2002
NO PATENTS ON LIFE !
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The Columban General Assembly 2000 invited Columbans throughout the world to give priority to education and action on the issue of Patenting of Life. This special issue of Vocation for Justice focuses on patenting in relation to food and health from the standpoint of the poor of our world. Copyright on books and trademarks are among the many forms of patenting offering protection to the person who creates or invents. The issue has rarely been controversial for most people. Why then should Columban missionaries and people interested in promoting the Faith and Justice agenda raise alarm bells now about patenting? Sean McDonagh, my Columban colleague, whose writings this issue draws heavily on, has this to say: "What is happening in the latter part of the 20th century is a new and more invidious form of colonialism. The goal this time is not to conquer new lands, but to colonise life itself. Many of the agribusiness, pharmaceutical and biotech corporations involved in this enterprise are larger financial entities than the average nation state." The concept of patenting was radically transformed in 1980 when its scope was extended to include living organisms. Coupled with this are the awesome possibilities arising from radically new developments in genetic engineering, which enable the movement of genes between species. As I write this I am looking at a Guardian Review, which has pictures of a pig with jellyfish genes, Dolly the sheep, a featherless chicken and a mouse with a human ear growing on its back. My first missionary work in 1969 was with a rural community of tenant farmers in The Philippines. The unjust circumstances within which they lived were a significant factor in premature deaths of both adults and children. Elena, Lucio and others with whom I am still in touch represent the 830 million people who are victims of hunger in today's world. They have good reason to fear the new developments in patenting and genetic engineering because the logic is control by patent holders of their food supplies. Also, there is interference with and the claiming of ownership of their native plants and animals. Transnational corporations are claiming that their use of patenting and of genetic engineering will ensure food security and quality of life for the Elenas and Lucios of our world. These latter see it differently, as simply another and more devastating mechanism for transferring the fruit of their lives and labour into the hands of biotechnology and agrochemical companies, such as Monsanto. Piracy, once a word reserved for the high seas, has a modern denotation - biopiracy - whereby patents are put on staple food crops such as rice, maize, wheat, and plants used for traditional medicines. In 1996 Christian Aid estimated that biopiracy cheated Third World countries out of US $ 4.5 billion a year. Dramatic new developments in patenting, biotechnology, and the consequent control of research and resources at all levels of life call for a new and massive ethical, environmental and religious investigation involving peoples of all faiths. In 2000, nine patent applications were filed on 38 genes in the human eye, and there were more than 9,000 applications on human body parts. It is in our own interests, too, not to allow life to be reduced simply to the level of a commodity. There is opposition to life patenting in scientific quarters as well. On 7 October, Cambridge-based Sir John Sulstan was one of three scientists awarded the 2002 Nobel Prize for medicine. A leading player in the human genome project, he believes passionately that it is wrong to patent human gene sequences. "Mousetraps are in one category, human genes are in the other!" says Sulstan. Success in addressing the challenges of genetic engineering and the recent spate of patenting of life will surely depend on each of us informing ourselves, no matter how technical the issues seem at first sight. Outlines of four Meeting Agendas in the centre pull-out, and The Patenting Puzzle, are aids to this process. We urge you to work through the meetings in groups. This issue of Vocation for Justice is also a clarion call to join arms with our sisters and brothers in the developing world and together become a critical mass to reverse the current tide of PATENTING OF LIFE. |
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