FEATURE - Patenting GMOs - a difficult question of balance
Date: 25-Sep-01
Country: SWITZERLAND
Author: Karen Iley
Those are just two sides of the debate over the complex and sensitive issue of slapping intellectual property protection on living forms, including genetically-modified organisms (GMOs).
Striking that balance, even before entering the whole ethical debate, is proving difficult.
Developing countries, those opposed to globalisation, health and welfare bodies say giving rich countries and companies the right to "patent" crops and medicines stops developing governments from providing cheaper versions to their people.
They also condemn so-called "biopiracy" where firms take local knowledge or plant varieties, change them slightly and patent the new variety.
This has been illustrated by the furore over a U.S. firm's patenting of its version of Basmati - the "crown jewel" of south Asian rice grown for centuries in India and Pakistan.
"It's unacceptable for a corporation to take the genetic resources that farmers have developed and conserved, do some tweaking and then claim a private monopoly on the material," said Renee Velleve of Genetic Resources Action International (GRAIN), a non-governmental body.
"The seed industry - and now the biotech companies - want strong IPR (intellectual property right) protection over plant varieties in order to control markets," she said.
FINANCIAL PROFIT
Other groups, like Greenpeace, have reacted angrily to patent law which they say is "turning human and animal genes, and organs, as well as plants, into mere 'inventions' to be exploited for financial profit."
They also have deep fears about environmental and food safety.
"Living organisms are being equated with commercial commodities, which is a frontal assault on the ethical notion that all human life has an intrinsic value and debases the dignity of nature and the natural life process," said Brigid Gavin, GMO advisor at Greenpeace.
The main focus of their wrath has been the World Trade Organisation's (WTO) controversial 1994 pact on trade-related property issues, TRIPS.
They also question whether built-in clauses which should weaken IP rights in health crises - like compulsory licensing, parallel imports and differential pricing - actually work.
"The TRIPs agreement attempts to strike a balance between the interests of society at large on one side and the inventors and creators on the other," said Thu-Lang Tran Wasescha, a councillor in the IP division at the WTO.
"It's a constant effort to keep the balance.
"If the interest of one party is allowed to prevail too much, there are in-built safeguards within TRIPs. The real problems are not caused by intellectual property itself but because people don't use these safeguards properly," she said.
Critics, however, argue that TRIPs flies in the face of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), concluded in 1992 at the United Nations' Rio Earth Summit.
MAINTAINING BIODIVERSITY
That treaty recognises national sovereignty over all genetic resources and argues that the access to, and sharing of, benefits from commercialisation of these resources is vital to maintain the world's biodiversity.
"Under TRIPS, there is no guarantee the owner will share the benefits and be able to exploit the patent," said a Geneva-based Brazilian negotiator.
"There must be identification of the source of the genetic material and evidence of benefit sharing and of prior informed consent."
The WTO says that is not the point of the agreement, which most of the currently 142 countries in the WTO have endorsed.
"TRIPS intervenes only when there is a request for protection, because there is something new and useful - whether that is because of manual manipulation or very sophisticated technology such as GMO," Wasescha said.
But moves are afoot to bridge the gap between TRIPs and the CBD, with an International Undertaking on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture (IUPGR) attempting to create a multilateral system for sharing certain genetic resour