Fight Racism! Fight Imperialism! No. 124, April/May 1995
Biopiracy – the new way to plunder the third world that exceeds the dreams of El Dorado of the raiders of the past. Go to an exotic area; take whatever genetic resources you can lay your hands on – plants, animals, micro-organisms; breed them conventionally or using genetic engineering to produce new varieties or cell lines that you can reproduce ad infinitum; patent whatever you can; and sell the new seed strains, animal breeds or resulting products such as pharmaceuticals back to the plundered countries at a ransom. And, while you sit back and rake in the profits on your booty, sue anybody who tries to copy you for infringement of your ‘intellectual property rights’. ZOE GREEN writes on this new form of imperialist plunder.
More than 90 per cent of the world’s remaining biodiversity is located in Asia, Africa and South America. The global seed industry, dependent on the genetic resources of these countries, is worth $15bn a year. Third world plant species are worth $30bn a year to the pharmaceutical industry alone.
Stealing from the poor
In the 1950s, a system of International Agricultural Research Centres (IARCs) was set up by such US-dominated organisations as the World Bank to generate higher yielding crops. These centres helped produce the improved crops of the so-called Green Revolution. The IARCs built up large collections of crop varieties in seed banks that became essential to crop breeders and hence extremely valuable. Crop breeders could freely use these seed banks, develop new varieties and sell seed at great profit. Genes from the centres incorporated into the US rice crop boost its value by $200m a year, Italy’s durum wheat crop is upped by $300m a year, and Australia has benefited by $2.2bn over 20 years in increased grain yields. Not a cent has gone to the mainly third world countries that supplied the original seeds. Genetic engineering further increases the value of the seeds to breeders. New improved crops can be quickly developed by incorporating genes for desirable traits from one species into another. These crops can then be patented and sold for vast monopoly profits.
The bitter struggle over the Biodiversity Convention has been on this question: would the multinationals and their ‘intellectual property rights’ triumph over the rights of the poor nations who supply the raw materials of biodiversity? It remains to be seen how much of the $15bn a year in global seed sales will go to the countries that provided much of the genetic resource.
Patenting life
Patents play an important role in the capitalists’ grip on bioscience. Patents give the holder exclusive rights to sell their inventions for up to 20 years; no one else may make use of the technology without paying a licence fee set by the patent holder. Anyone using a patented idea, knowingly or not, can be sued for patent infringement if they do not hold a licence. Thus once one organisation gains a patent, other organisations abandon research in that field for fear of being sued or having to pay punitive licence fees.
With patents, companies have an enshrined monopoly and can charge what they like for their products. Profits on sales of pharmaceuticals are typically 80 per cent, something even the free market evangelist Clintons are wanting to cap. Even for pesticides, profits on this scale are not unusual. And this is for products made using conventional technologies. With advances in genetic engineering, even greater profits are up for grabs.
Take the case of the gene for human erythropoietin (EPO). EPO is a natural hormone that stimulates the production of red blood cells and is used to treat kidney dialysis patients with anaemia and patients undergoing chemotherapy for AIDS or cancer. The world market is worth $1bn a year and one company alone earns $587m a year from the drug simply because it holds the patents in the US and Europe on EPO and the methods for producing it. Such is the potential for other companies to profit from selling this drug in countries not covered by the patent that cells genetically engineered to produce human EPO were recently stolen and offered for sale at $300,000.
The high value of patents leads to races to be the first to file for a patent. In order to beat the competition, even huge multinational conglomerates see the need for cooperation on their terms. Rhone Poulenc Rorer has set up a ‘gene superclub’ to share data and technology on gene therapy. This technique could be used to repair or block faulty genes that cause diseases such as cancer, heart disease and nervous system disorders. Members of the club share their diverse approaches and have access to all the necessary techniques, but RPR has the right to delay publication of results from any of the members while it claims patents on their discoveries and inventions.
To exploit a patent fully, applicants try to cover as broad an area as possible. Stanford University holds a patent that covers all genetic engineering, based on a method that its researchers developed for inserting genes into bacteria. Researchers who use this method must hold a licence from the University. One company, Mycogen, holds a patent covering any plant carrying a gene inserted using a particular, but now commonly used, bacterium and another that covers any plant that contains a gene for insect resistance. A patent application has been made for a test to identify one of the genes that predisposes women to breast cancer; the patent covers not just the gene that they have found but all possible mutations, including those yet to be discovered and even yet to occur!
There is also a race to ‘bank’ genes themselves — the codes to life — by listing their DNA sequences. The Human Genome Project, an international collaborative venture by which research scientists aim to sequence the entire human DNA, was at the point of collapse recently when US National Institutes of Health filed for patents on 6,000 DNA fragments and the British Medical Research Council (MRC) retaliated by applying for patents on 1,100 fragments. The MRC also prevented its researchers from publishing their work in the meantime, since knowledge in the public domain would not be patentable. Previously, research establishments had collaborated, with scientists having free access to all the data from the project. This new gold rush was brought to an end by the ruling that DNA fragments cannot be patented when their biological function is not known.
One company, Human Genome Sciences, has gone ahead and ‘banked’ details of DNA strands that could identify more than one third of all human genes thought to exist. Anybody wishing to use the information for academic research may do so but HGS has rights to negotiate a marketing contract on any commercial products developed. Since they will only be able to identify and patent 100 genes a year, issuing contracts to other researchers could lead to marketable products that HGS could not find alone. Thus HGS could gain a large proportion of the human gene product market simply by sitting back and letting others make developments from their information.
This profit-making formula has been taken to its logical parasitic extreme by some companies: they exist solely through owning patents and suing for patent infringement. They produce nothing, not even research results or the patents themselves. Knowledge has been redefined as intellectual property and is simply another tradeable commodity.
Technology – for use or profit?
So what has biotechnology produced after all this frenzied effort? Low water quick fry potatoes, tomatoes with a longer shelf life and better ketchup-making qualities, fruit that doesn’t discolour when processed and, shortly, perhaps, ice cream-flavoured bananas. All that McDonalds needs now is a chicken genetically engineered to lay Golden McNuggets.
Genetic engineering of crops has been directed, not surprisingly, towards the benefit of the oppressor nations. Tropical crops are being engineered to grow at higher latitudes so that they can be produced closer to the northern hemisphere markets, robbing the third world of its meagre income from cash crops. Effort has been concentrated on improving food quality, not quantity, to meet the demands of Sainsbury, Safeway, Waitrose et al. Far from feeding the world, genetic engineering is feeding the idle fancies of the rich and pushing the prices of new seed varieties and their growing techniques even further beyond the reach of third world farmers.
In medical biotechnology, there have been many advances, but again they have been focused on the needs or wishes of the multinationals. A major target of biotechnology companies is cystic fibrosis, a disease con-fined to white Europeans and their descendants. There is now a test for HIV, but no effective treatments or vaccines. The preliminary vaccines that have been developed are for a strain of HIV common to North America; they would be useless in African countries such as Uganda with a high incidence of HIV but of a different strain. Tuberculosis is widespread in underdeveloped countries yet was virtually eradicated elsewhere due to comprehensive immunisation programmes. Research into TB was abandoned until recently when drug-resistant TB started to spread rapidly in cities such as New York. Malaria kills three million people a year, most of them children in sub-Saharan Africa, and 500 million more suffer from the disease, yet existing medication against the disease is expensive, has many side effects and is at best 40-60 per cent effective. The development of a vaccination against malaria is being led by a biochemist in Bogota.
Rinderpest is a disease that kills 50-80 per cent of cattle in the Horn of Africa. An eradication programme in the 1960s used a live vaccine that was difficult to administer in remote areas without the necessary refrigeration. An epidemic broke out again in the 1980s but lack of funds, vaccine production facilities and trained veterinary staff have prevented containment of the disease using the original vaccine. A new genetically engineered vaccine that is easy to administer and produce has now been developed by an Ethiopian vet.
Determined to find a solution to the disease that was crippling his country, he persuaded a biotechnology company in the US to teach him molecular biology techniques as payment for work he had done. After fighting for research funding, he developed a vaccine in a year. It took five more years of battling with international regulatory authorities before being allowed to carry out trials in Africa. With the advances in biotechnology directed to line the coffers of the multinationals, it took the dogged determination of one man to produce a solution of major importance to the destitute countries of Ethiopia, Sudan and Somalia.
Humanity has the tools that will enable it to eradicate or cure many of the world’s major diseases. It has the tools to engineer crops with better yields, greater resistance to fungal and insect attack and ability to grow in hostile drought-stricken regions. It could ensure that everybody is fed and healthy. But the tools are in the hands of the multinationals; preventing deaths is no concern of theirs.
