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Introduction to RAFI - Stories - People's Health Assembly - December 2000
Introduction to RAFI
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INGO, international board
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Research and advocacy on issues relating to biodiversity (especially in agriculture), trends in biotechnology and the life industries, indigenous knowledge about biodiversity, and intellectual property.
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In particular, we work on the controversial issues surrounding the ownership and control of genetic resources, which include human genetic resources.
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Website - www.rafi.org
Estonia, Iceland, Tonga... three very different countries, but with one very important thing in common. All have passed legislation to sell their genetic material and the attendant medical records of their population to those willing to pay for the information.
About two weeks ago, an Australian biotech company, Autogen, bought the exclusive rights to the entire gene pool of the people of Tonga. Autogen is using the genetically unique DNA of Tongans in its hunt to treat diabetes, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, cancers and ulcers. The company is negotiating with other Pacific nations in a move to make it the only company allowed to perform genetic studies on the entire Polynesian race. It has been claimed that Tongans, who number 110,000 have not been told of the deal.
According the company's stockholder reports, the information could make the company hundreds of millions of dollars.
The commercial value of this kind of genetic diversity research was really highlighted when Iceland sold its genetic data and medical records to deCode, which in turn sold parts of the information to Hoffman La Roche for 200 million dollars.
Overall the market in diversity research is now worth over one billion dollars and is set to increase.
In the commercial genetic world, this is the final frontier. With the nearing completion of the Human Genome Project, the next three years will see gene hunting being conducted among indigenous people, disability groups, disease groups and other ethnically unique populations at an increasing rate. Who will have exclusive monopoly control over the genetic material of these people and their medical records is an open question.
In only a few months, one company alone, Incyte filed 45,000 patent applications on genetic diversity DNA information. In fact, the commercialisation of the human genome has already taken place. Although only about 2,000 patents on full-length genes have been granted in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO), the number of gene patent applications runs into the millions.
The USPTO confesses that they have no idea how many patents applications are pending on gene fragments since the "quit tracking them" about for years ago, at which time they had about half a million. There are at least 3 million, based on the companies information.
Though the content of the application aren't public, the sheer number of applications suggests that every human gene, at least in part, is already the subject of a patent application. Though we don't know who owns which bits.
RAFI concluded a number of years ago that the collection and management of human genetic diversity was taking place in an almost total policy and regulatory vacuum. Since then, the human rights abuses of research subjects have worsened but national governments and international agencies have sidestepped any responsibility for the issue.
The commercial genomic revolution goes beyond control, ownership, and research ethics issues and also includes implications for food, health and agriculture. In particular, proponents of biotech predict that human genomics research will revolutionize our ability to use prescription drugs and designer diets to stave off development deficiencies, diseases or disorders predicted by an individual's genetic profile.
This move towards using genomics to develop functional foods is part of what RAFI refers to as the 3rd Generation of biotech food products. The first generation was of inputs into foods, like pesticides, the second generation involve output traits that benefited the food retailers like longer shelf life and the third generation is being sold as a package of benefits to the consumers.
The Gene Giants aim to manufacture things like vaccines, drugs and enzymes, and genetically engineered crops and livestock. One of the primary goals is to market "functional foods" and "nutraceutical" that appeal to affluent consumers everywhere. We will see foods with omega-3 fatty acids for the prevention of cardiovascular disease, Vitamin C lettuce; maize that combats iron-poor blood, tomatoes with beta-carotene and much more. And if the Gene Giants get their way, all of it will be genetically engineered.
In this generation, "designer diets" will be delivered to affluent individuals based on their own personal risk profiles. The focus on individualized nutrition will begin before birth when amniotic fluid from an unborn baby will allow parents to select optimal functional baby foods based on genome analysis.
Consuming health promoting products make up for lack of nutrition in the diet, however is similar to using Vitamin A rice to solve the problem of a lack of leafy green vegetables that have been wiped out by genetic uniformity and the Green Revolution.
Generation 3 and the South
In fact, many Third Generation products, such as GM foods vaccines and Vitamin A rice, are being widely promoted for their potential to cure disease and malnutrition in the South. In the long run, however, it is not genetically modified Golden Rice or transgenic cassava that will affect the greatest number of the South's resource-poor farming communities. The greatest impacts are likely to come from the less glamorous and seemingly benign Generation 3 products that could dramatically alter agricultural trade, production, and ultimately health in the South. Generation 3 products have the potential to change not only where our food is produced, but also how it is produced, and by whom. For example, novel production processes will alter, reduce or eliminate the need for traditional cultivation of tropical crops and commodities in the developing world. New, natural substitutes may eliminate traditional export markets. At stake are not only foreign exchange earnings, but also the livelihoods of literally millions of agricultural workers who currently produce these products. Although RAFI has been documenting these trends for over 15 years, the peace of technological change brings the potential of Generation 3 products into sharper focus. I want to give two short examples.
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Scientists at Ohio University (USA), for example, have successfully modified tobacco plants to produce gum arabic, an ingredient that is widely used by industrial food manufacturers. Gum arabic is traditionally tapped from the branches of Acacia Senegal trees, primarily in Northern Africa. In the Sudan, the world's largest supplier of gum arabic, more than 5 million people are dependent on the gum arabic harvest, which provides US$ 50 -70 million per annum in desperately needed foreign exchange earnings. If bio-industrial production of gum arabic becomes commercial viable, it will reduce or eliminate gum arabic export markets for North African producers.
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Coffee, the South's most valuable agricultural export commodity, is predominantly a smallholder crop. But coffee varieties are being genetically engineered to promote large-scale, mechanically harvested coffee production. Integrated Coffee Technologies, Inc. Based in Hawaii (USA) is using a patented, genetically engineered technology to suppress the ripening process in coffee plants. By applying ethylene to the engineered plants, the coffee berries will ripen uniformly, making mechanical harvesting more productive. This would reduce the need for harvest labor and small-scale coffee growers, and it will likely promote a shift to large-scale coffee plantations.
In short, the lines between food and pharmacy, health and nutrition will blur - and the danger is that civil society will lose focus amidst corporate and technological consolidation. Civil society and governments must fortify and renew efforts to understand, monitor and resist technological monopolies both of food and human genetic resources. Commercialisation of human genetic information and of genetically modified crops has taken place with virtually no public discussion of the risks and benefits, and without an adequate regulatory framework. The social, economic, health, safety and environmental impacts of genetic diversity research and of Generation 3 products must be assessed now
No patents on life
The people can call for moratorium on human genetic diversity research. They can criminalize the collection of DNA w/o informed consent. They can protest the introduction of Generation 3 products.
As the speaker yesterday said.
The People's Health Assembly is a key meeting to begin to mobilize people to make these changes.
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