Cultural diversity

Biotechnology and IPRs will contribute to the destruction of cultural diversity, as neo-liberalism advances. The rhetoric of IPRs is concerned with "invention," "innovation," and "ingenuity." However, the crucial issue is whether an object for which a patent is sought is "capable of industrial application," as the GATT 1994 rules themselves stipulate. From there, it is a simple step to make the products modern biotechnology "ingenious" by definition and therefore worthy of "intellectual" property right s. Conversely, the eons-old cultivation of ecosystems and the concomitant acquisition and communication of highly specialized knowledge by traditional farming communities is labeled "informal" in the world of the GATT and UPOV agreements (Crucible Group 1 994). By definition, they are not explicit, original, or ingenious enough to deserve IPR protection.

As I have commented, biotechnology industries mine these communities for their useful biological material and traditional knowledge. For example, in the pharmaceutical industry, 75% of 120 active compounds derived from biological resources show a posit ive correlation between their modern therapeutic an traditional uses (Nijar n.d.). Few, if any traditional herbalists or shamans have ever been awarded patents for their processes or products. Even if they wanted to claim such rights (against all traditio n), they likely would not have the legal and political resources that biotechnology companies do when they lay claim to a biochemical derived from a traditional medicinal plant. Indigenous peoples living within and between the borders of nation-states, is olated local communities, and such people as the "tribals" and chandalas of India are particularly vulnerable to the depredations of the "bio-pirates."

Soleri and his colleagues (1994) record that when a sample of Zuñi farmers in the U.S. was asked whether it was important to make sure that old Zuñi peach varieties do not disappear, the majority answered in the affirmative. When the group wa s asked further why it was important, its members explained that they should be protected for future generations. This survey illustrates the difference between IPRs and many traditional concepts of property. Within the current international IPR framework , no place exists for systems of communal or lineal connection to the land, or for protection of inherited knowledge. Biotechnology companies exploit this unequal treatment to acquire the gene and species diversity they require. It is the derivative techn ology they will protect, not necessarily the biological diversity. The aim and consequence is not to create more diversity but to gain greater control over the production process. It matters not if the application of the technology displaces or destroys t he various communities that helped them on the way. They are very likely to be destroyed, since diversity has been their security (Hobbelink 1995; Shiva 1991, 1993).

Scientific diversity

It is easy to think of the loss of cultural diversity as taking place only in traditional societies within Third World countries. It is important to remember that some "traditions" closer to home also are threatened by biotechnology and its attendant t heories and practices. Science, too, will suffer--if by "science" we mean, broadly, the systematic use of methods of critical observation and verification of fact. Needless to say, ecology will be one of the first victims of biotechnology's obsessive redu ctionism. Economics, too, will be debased as the "preference for logically beautiful results over factually grounded policies" reaches "fanatical proportions" (Herman Daly, quoted in Chomsky 1994: 155). Science is likely to be reduced to a crass and mech anical positivism, rather than flourishing as a realm of hypotheses and metaphors analyzed, criticized, and tested to their limits (q.v. Juma 1989). Research will be distorted further by preferential funding. Already the industries have made a mantra of s tating that biotechnology is based on the "best science available."

Education

Our educational institutions are already undergoing disturbing changes in the face of biotechnology. As the biotechnology industry forges alliances with universities to share resources in R&D, academic researchers are withholding their findings from sc ientific publications and conferences until after patent rights are secured. This often amounts to a delay of five of more years (Haber 1996; Munasinghe 1996). In addition, we should expect a larger portion of academic budgets will be diverted toward R&D. We will probably also see more programs like Monsanto's Biotechnology Education Project shaping the curricula of our primary and secondary schools.

Technology

We have touched upon how medical biotechnology will discourage and undermine other, less capital-intensive forms of medicine. In conclusion, we might do well to examine some of the other alternatives that the biotechnology industry is trampling in its progress.

We should understand that agricultural biotechnology does not offer the only possible solution to feeding and clothing the people of the world. Numerous authors have pointed out that the agricultural ecosystems that have been the foundation of much tra ditional life on the land developed over the course of millennia, and it seems that history alone has proved their sustainability. (See, for example, the discussion in Shiva 1991.) Students of the issues have demonstrated that traditional plant and animal breeding, using and maintaining genetically diverse wild relatives, as well as multi-cropping and crop rotation, could provide enough for everyone in the world and them some. A U.S. National Resource Council study states, "Farmers who adopt alternative farming systems often have productive and profitable operations, even though these farms usually function with relatively little help from commodity income and price support programs or extension" (NRC 1989: 8). In the U.S. greater latitude exists to undertake alternative farming systems than exists in other, poorer countries, and quite often these undertakings require large initial costs. Still, it should remind us that we have options. Even a World Bank study c oncluded that current resources--land, chemicals, and technologies--are sufficient to generate enough grain to feed the world into the indefinite future (McCullum 1995).

Hobbelink (1995) has admonished us: "With highly promising technical solutions being heralded at every turn, the focus is often blurred." He adds, "After all, money tends to go where it multiplies fast, which is often not in the fields of indigenous fa rmers." Rissler and Mellon remark,

"Advocates of 'sustainable agriculture' take an ecological approach that adjusts the parameters of agroecosystems with sophisticated practices and information strategies, often obviating rather than 'solving' problems" (1996: 21)