Heinrich Boell Foundation 2004 Conference on BIOPOLITICS Privatization of Nature and Knowledge' Unde

1
Heinrich Boell Foundation 2004 Conference on
BIOPOLITICSPrivatization of Nature and
Knowledge. Under the BIOS Sign Technology,
Ethics, Diversity and Rights Mexico CityOctober
22-23, 2004
Privatization of Nature and Knowledge Toward A
Second Enclosure Movement by Marsha J. Tyson
Darling, Ph.D. Adelphi University
The Committee on Women, Population and
the Environment
2
Todays Major Ideas

• The privatization of nature and knowledge is the
  most complicated and complex issue being
  presented by a Second Enclosure Movement.
• That new genetics based technologies are a
  centerpiece of globalizations reach into our
  collective genetic knowledge.
• That a free market economic trade mantra that
  derives force from the utilitarian,
  individualistic values created and strengthened
  by the First Enclosure Movement now threatens the
  gains made in furthering social justice,
  equality, democracy, and capacity building for
  global South nations and indigenous peoples

3
Timeline for Techno-Eugenics

• 1953 Structure of DNA deduced
• 1960s DNA code deciphered 1970s First
  transgenic bacteria first test tube baby
  first transgenic mammals
• 1980 - US Supreme Court authorizes creation of
  new life forms
• 1980s Human (non-inheritable) gene transfer
  experiments
• 1996 First cloned adult mammal (Dolly)
• 1997 Council of Europes Convention on
  Biomedicine and Human Rights bans reproductive
  cloning
• 1998 First human embryonic stem cells cultured
• 1998 UCLA conference promoting
  techno-eugenics
• Rouge scientists announce plans to clone humans
• First transgenic monkey
• Advanced Cell Technologies claims to have
  created clonal human embryos
• Increasing reports of non-medical sex selection
  in U.S. fertility clinics
• PGD increasingly used and advertised for
  non-medical sex selection
• Gene targeting successfully applied to human
  embryonic stem cells
• Mouse embryonic stem cells transformed into eggs

4
Human Genome Diversity Project

• Technologys use is a vital arm of
  globalization. The HGDP, begun in the early
  1990s, seeks to locate, collect and patent human
  genetic knowledge and offer it as privatized and
  commercially available genetic manufacturing
  commodities. Governments and genomic companies
  have sought to privatize knowledge itself --
  human, plant and animal genetic information. For
  instance, in the early 1990s, the US govt secured
  a patent (WO9208784) on a 26 year old Guaymi
  woman from Panama, who was unaware that her
  bodys tissues had been patented, and it patented
  the DNA of 24 Hagahai from New Guinea, and a
  woman and man from the Solomon Islands.

5
Whats Down About the New Genetics

• Unethical medical experimentation
• Restrain generative capacity and reduce fertility
  of people of color and the poor, not redistribute
  global resources more equitably
• Expand generative capacity and enhance and
  increase fertility of white and affluent people,
  represent this initiative as a consumer choice in
  a world where the reality is that there is no
  gene for race, nor any other artificially crafted
  discriminatory concept.
• Questionable informed consent potential for
  coercion (e.g., of the ill or those in economic
  need) and deception towards the public
  (ingredients in foods and drugs)
• Lax consumer protection by agencies of the state
  (FDA)
• Genetic discrimination and stigmatization
• Abandoning and usurping Natural Evolution
• Privatization of all Knowledge
• Reduction of all living matter to components and
  spare parts
• Creating a market in embryos as spare parts for
  scientific and medical protocols

6
Whats Down About the New Genetics

• Creation of artificial wombs, thereby permitting
  male defined science to take over and control
  reproduction as a manufacturing undertaking
  improvement of product control, genetic
  enhancements
• Attacking and collapsing Biodiversity
• Ignoring Precautionary Principle that would
  further human rights protections
• Blurring the essential and regulatible/enforceable
  distinction between Intended and Unintended
  Consequences
• Denying corporate accountability for product
  mischief or misadventure and denying state
  responsibility to protect consumers
• Designing and using ethnic specific and adverse
  biotech weapons
• Exacerbating health inequities How can we avoid a
  genomic divide?
• At least 40 million people in the United States
  have no medical insurance
• About a billion globally have no access to basic
  health care services
• Many biotechnology-based therapies will remain
  very expensive
• Conflicts between interests of researchers /
  companies and research subjects Who benefits,
  who risks?
• Potential for coercion (e.g., mandatory
  premarital or prenatal screening)

7
Genetic Discrimination

• The combination of genetic and reproductive
  technologies is particularly powerful, and poses
  particular issues for women
• Social pressures to produce certain kinds of
  children (e.g., boy babies)
• Economic pressures to sell or donate eggs
• Less control of ones own reproductive decisions
  and experiences
• Disability rights advocates have criticized trait
  selection of embryos and emerging technologies of
  human genetic modification
• Critique of the medical model of disability
• Will people with disabilities be viewed as
  mistakes who should not have been allowed to be
  born?
• Legacy of abuse of people with disabilities in
  the name of eugenics

8
Recommendations - 1

• Progressive scientists and bioethicists
  everywhere must continually
• distinguish beneficial technologies that do not
  exacerbate social
• inequalities (for instance, the scientific
  inquiry and technologies that have
• created medicines like Ibopropen or Aspirin),
  from technologies that
• should be watched and regulated as they pose some
  risks even as they
• present benefits for some (for instance the uses
  of ultrasound and
• preimplantation genetic diagnosis for non
  sex-selection), from a third
• category of technologies that present such
  problematic circumstances or
• risks that they must not be allowed to develop
  (for instance, reproductive
• cloning of humans and terminator and traitor
  technological alteration of
• agricultural seeds).

9
Recommendations - 2

• That those committed to social development
  alongside trade development articulate, publish,
  promote, disseminate alternatives to the myopic
  neoliberal policies of maximum deregulation,
  privatization, and liberalisation being promoted
  as necessary and good, even, as inevitable.
• That we insist on exploring alternatives that
  use the opening decades of a new millenium to
  reinvigorate a commitment to protecting the
  public commons, and by extension advancing a
  common good globally. We must change the legacy
  of deserving/undeserving.
• That global governance institutions and treaty
  bodies endeavor in earnest and with all
  deliberate speed to create a Convention on the
  Protection of Knowledge that establishes state
  level enforceable boundaries that protect human
  security, insist upon adherence to the
  precautionary principle of do no intended harm
  and minimize potential unintended harm, and
  concretize important safeguards for the
  protection of intergenerational justice based
  on the preservation and protection of
  biodiversity.

10
Recommendations - 3

• That women and male allies insist on the
  enforcement of the right of bodily integrity
  for women and girls, 10) that citizen and civil
  society advocacy instigate greater environmental
  stewardship, including the creation of
  accountable regulatory structures sufficient to
  safeguard the Earths biodiversity and ecosystem.
• That governance structures with state level
  enforceable regulatory responsibility directed at
  decreasing not exacerbating social inequalities
  are sorely needed, and still wanting as
  increasingly it is civil society that is
  promoting democratic processes and outcomes and
  holding the seams of social development together.
  

11
Recommendations- 4

• That a lexicon of concepts in addition to and
  perhaps at times more important than autonomy
  and individualism move to the forefront of how
  we grapple with the profound dynamics unleashed
  by the aggressive pursuit and marketing of
  biotechnological genetic interventions, in this
  vein, we are now overdue for a serious discourse
  on the moral status of nature and all that is
  associated with nature.
• And while we are engaging discourses, we must
  expand on the debates and commitments to action
  that we are presently pursuing around social
  responsibility and social justice (including
  gender and disability justice), as well as
  intergenerational justice. In essence, social
  development cannot be put on hold, as it is our
  ongoing commitment to human rights that must be
  consistently advanced.