Opinion Biopiracy By DOUGLAS LUMMIS	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
生物に関する知的所有権 先月、筆者が参加した経済サミットでは、ある物理学者が知的所有権の問題について発表した。先進国の企業が、発展途上国に対して知的所有権という概念を認めるよう圧力をかけているのだが、この学者は、その概念自体に疑問を投げかけている…。

As I wrote in my last column, I spent June 20-22 in Denver at The Other Economic Summit (TOES). TOES is held every year alongside the Economic Summit of the G-7 (now G-8) to protest the idea that this small group of rich males is the appropriate body to plan the world's economy.

One of the most powerful speakers at this year's TOES was Dr. Vandana Shiva, a physicist who abandoned her career with India's nuclear power industry to become an environmental researcher, writer and activist. She spoke on the notion of "intellectual property rights."

Recently the rich countries have been pressuring the Third World to accept the principle of intellectual property rights. Actually it isn't the countries that are putting on the pressure, but a coalition of transnational corporations (TNCs). What they want is the right to patent anything they say they have invented. In the age of biotechnology, this means the right to patent life forms so they can sell them as commodities under their brand names. (One of Dr. Shiva's books shows on the cover a butterfly with a bar code on its wing.)

For example, the TNCs want to be able to patent seeds they have produced through biotechnology. Traditionally farmers have used the seeds produced in their own fields (e.g. rice seeds). This means a farmer who bought the patented seed could supply herself with it the following year. The TNCs hope that with their new patents they can sue such farmers for "patent infringement."

Dr. Shiva points out that biotechnology does not create new genes, but only relocates them. "It is as if I brought an extra chair into this room, and then said: `Now I own the room,' " she said.

Aside from biotechnology, the TNCs also sometimes take the knowledge that indigenous people have had for centuries, simply translate it into the language of modern science, and then say they have "invented" it.

An example Dr. Shiva used is the neem tree, native to India. For 2000 years the people ― mostly the women ― have prepared medicines and pesticides from neem oil. More recently small businesses have used it to manufacture products for sale. These were not patented because the techniques were considered common knowledge. For years Western scientists considered these techniques to be "unscientific," that is, not "real knowledge."

But since 1985 more than a dozen U.S. patents have been taken out for neem-based products. By making slight variations in the manufacturing technique, the corporations can claim to have "invented" neem-based medicine. Armed with their U.S. patents they hope to force people in India to stop making neem-based medicine using their traditional methods, by suing them for "patent infringement." To obtain neem, they will have to buy it from foreign TNCs. Dr. Shiva calls this "biopiracy." (To learn more, read Vandana Shiva, Biopiracy, Boston: South End Press, 1997.)

Shukan ST: July 18, 1997

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