One of the features of capitalism is to continuously explore and exploit expanding areas and markets in the quest for greater profits. Its very survival depends upon it.
No area is considered off-limits for exploitation. What natural resource has not become a commodity in the era of globalized capitalism—not just resources like oil and precious metals but basic necessities of life like drinking water, food and medicine?
Today, billion-dollar corporations are even setting their sights on the building blocks of life itself: the DNA proteins in every living cell that determine every individual feature of an organism. They are using so-called intellectual property rights and patents as tools to monopolize the market.
With the advent of genetic engineering and biotechnological advancements, scientists are increasingly able to manipulate genes containing DNA in order to alter living organisms. For example, they are able to engineer crops that are more resistant to disease or yield larger fruits.
Such technology has given way to a scramble for patents granting the exclusive legal right to profit from new inventions. This might seem as farfetched as patenting the sun’s energy, the water we drink or the air we breathe. In fact, until 1980, U.S. intellectual property regulations prohibited the ability to patent plants and animals.
But multinationals have circumvented this prohibition by arguing that genetically engineered living beings are in fact “inventions.”
The first attempt to patent a living organism came in 1971 when a General Electric microbiologist, Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty, attempted to patent a bacterium after merely switching the placement of certain genes within the DNA. The U.S. Office Board of Appeals rejected the application on the grounds that living organisms cannot be patented. But in 1980, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the ruling, opening the door to patenting genetically engineered organisms.
Other corporations followed suit. Seed patents in particular allowed for a vast expansion in profits, soon dominating the entire agricultural landscape.
According to Vandana Shiva’s book “Biopiracy” (South End Press, 1997), U.S. chemical companies merged with seed companies to “improve” nature through biotechnology. These mega-monopoly multinationals replicated practices in the pharmaceutical field and employed them in agriculture. In this way, corporations created new “genetically modified organisms.”
Corporate scientists crossed plant and vegetable genes with other genes—sometimes even with animal genes. Other seeds had certain genes eliminated to enhance the aesthetics, size, yield of the harvest and produce “shelf life.” The final product was then patented and sold on the market, prohibiting farmers from using the genetically modified seeds in any future seasons.
Case study: Monsanto
The Monsanto Company was the first company to create a genetically modified plant cell in 1982. Today, Monsanto is the largest fruit and vegetable seed company in the world. It is also one of the top 10 chemical companies in the United States.
Among Monsanto’s products is an herbicide called glyphosate, better known as Round Up. Monsanto genetically modified its soybean seeds to withstand the Round Up herbicide. It now globally markets both its seeds together with its herbicide to compound its profits.
Monsanto projects itself as a benevolent entity. Its slogan says it all: “Monsanto: food, health, hope.” It attempts to project an image of a corporation whose sole pursuit is to provide consumers with bountiful produce.
This is done with good reason. Monsanto has repeatedly released products harmful to the population. It marketed the now-notorious defoliant Agent Orange, which injured and ultimately killed hundreds of thousands of Vietnamese civilians and U.S. soldiers after it was used widely in the Vietnam War.
Monsanto was a major producer of another notorious pesticide, DDT, which was ultimately proven to cause cancer. Monsanto also produced the growth hormone rBGH, which is given to cows to increase milk production. This hormone is also a carcinogen.
Despite its corporate propaganda as a wholesome entity, Monsanto lobbied against labeling milk products which originated from rBGH-injected cows.
Monsanto’s monopolistic expansion coincides with the vast increase in genetically altered organisms—driving up the value of those patents. In 1996, for example, Monsanto acquired the seed company Agracetus, which owned a broad array of patents on both soya and cotton. Three years later, 50 percent of U.S. cotton, 45 percent of U.S. soybean, and 40 percent of all corn crops were genetically modified.
Patenting human life
The growing practice of privatizing living organisms is not restricted to agriculture. Astonishingly, even human tissues are being patented in ways that drive up the costs and limit the availability of medical treatment.
For instance, for several years cancer patient John Moore went for treatment at the University of California Los Angeles. He was given a series of tests to treat a form of lymphoid leukemia known as hairy cell leukemia, undergoing blood tests and skin, bone marrow and sperm biopsies.
In 1983, his doctor applied for a patent of all of the cancer cells found. The doctor not only became the owner of Moore’s cancer cells but of the hairy leukemia cells that are found in all other patients.
In a Feb. 13 op-ed piece in the New York Times entitled “Patenting Life,” author Michael Crichton explains how breast cancer detection that could cost $1,000 now costs $3,000 per test.
A private corporation, Myriad Genetics, holds the patents for a crucial breast cancer gene. This grants them the sole monopoly in receiving royalties from anyone diagnosing and researching this breast cancer gene. As the sole owner, Myriad has the right to charge any exorbitant price it desires for its use.
A brake on progress
Big business apologists defend intellectual property laws the same way capitalist apologists defend all private property. Property rights and the quest for profits, the argument goes, have revolutionized industry and dramatically improved the lives of all people.
The reality is different. Patent holders only aim to profit from regulating the use of the patent, inflating the market. Communication within the scientific community—an essential component of scientific progress—is stifled.
Many environmental activists compare the field of genetics to the “commons”—land in the feudal era that was not owned by a lord but was used in common for livestock grazing. The dividing up and fencing off of the commons for private use was one of the initial impetuses to the growth of capitalism.
More and more today, capital infringes on any advancement for the common good, including in medical science and agriculture.
Capitalism, once a revolutionary system that advanced science and technology, now does just the opposite. Under a socialist system of planned development for the public good, science would have the chance to flourish freely in a way that addresses human needs, not corporate profits.
Corporations look to DNA, nature’s genetic building block, as a new source of profits.
Photo: JUPIterimages
Genetic modification of traditional crops like rice help strengthen corporate agriculture against traditional farmers.
Photo: Strdel/AFP/Getty Images
