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]
This article originated in the PEOPLE'S TRIBUNE (Online Edition),
Richard Wolfson, PhD
Campaign to Ban Genetically Engineered Food
Natural Law Party
500 Wilbrod Street
Ottawa, ON Canada K1N 6N2
Tel. 613-565-8517 Fax. 613-565-6546
email: rwolfson@concentric.net
NLP Website: http://www.natural-law.ca
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