Genes: the new real estate scam

Genes: the new real estate scam

Julian Cribb Suppose you discovered that someone was quietly stealing your home, brick by brick.  And when you found out and wanted them back, you found it was a big foreign company backed by an army of lawyers – and it wanted you to pay $1,000 a brick. Well, it’s happening. Now. Worldwide. Something that belongs to the entire human race is being quietly filched from beneath our noses with the aim of selling it back to us at much inflated prices at some future point. It’s the biggest real estate scam in history. Around the world thousands of genes, from humans, plants, animals and microorganisms are quietly being prospected and patented by a handful of wealthy corporates, mainly in the US and Europe. These are genes that have probably been around on the planet for millions if not billions of years. They are products of nature and were certainly not invented by the companies that now lay claim to them. The genes will mainly be used in medical diagnostics, drugs and foods and sold back to society at inflated prices.  If you have a suspected breast cancer and can’t afford the latest gene test, tough luck: that’s the point of a major lawsuit now running in the US. Remember the 25 million people who died in Africa before the drug companies were shamed into releasing low-cost anti-AIDS drugs? It’s the same shabby deal. Pay up – or die. Companies have a right to patent any product that they have genuinely invented that can be justifiably shown to be novel, and to recoup their effort and investment. But wandering around the planet patenting things that occur in nature on the pretext that they are ‘inventions’ because they been removed from their natural environments is another matter. Imagine if they decide next to patent gold, or iron, or aluminium. Or oxygen. Or sunlight. Or a tree. The logic is identical. Of great concern is the patenting of genes that go into GM food crops. Since most governments – including Australia’s – have steadily abandoned agricultural science over the past 30 years, the patenting of key genes in wheat, rice, corn, barley and other important crops will eventually make these grains the private property of a handful of corporations. The free varieties bred by public research institutes will gradually disappear, as they become vulnerable to changing pests, diseases and climate. Then it will be exactly the same: I own the wheat you eat – pay up or starve. There is something so obscene about this process that it almost defies description. A handful of companies, supported by an army of American and now Australian lawyers and, indeed, enthusiastically supported by agencies of the Australian government, are preparing to rip off your human heritage as hard as they can go. A large proportion of Australia’s species are found nowhere else on earth, meaning that some of their genes are unique to this continent. Yet they too are being prospected and may be patented in this genetic goldrush – and both Aboriginal and Australian people will soon begin to lose free access to their benefits.