5 - 11 July 2001
Issue No.541
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 5 - 11 July 2001 Issue No.541 |
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Monopoly on life
Sherif Hetata* explores the awesome potential the application of TRIPS will have on the lives of people
The first time I heard about the acronym "TRIPS" was in 1995. At that time I was a visiting professor at Duke University in the United States, where I taught a course called "Dissidence and Creativity." One of my students was a slender, white-skinned youth with fine features, long black hair and large black eyes. His name was Shaheen.
For mid-term examinations I used to ask students to write about a subject of their choice in the form they liked best. I remember he wrote a beautiful, literary piece about intellectual property and something called TRIPS. During the semester he would drop by my office sometimes for a talk. He was on a scholarship for a doctorate degree and had come from Austria. His mother was born in Vienna, but his father was from Lahore, whence the name Shaheen. He had a great talent for writing, but told me that after getting his degree he wanted to go to Geneva, and find a job in an organisation called WIPO.
The terms WIPO and TRIPS at that time and for several years after remained vague and remote in my mind. Yet six years ago, a 23-year-old student was already aware of a field that is now attracting considerable attention because of the effects it will have on the future of the billions of inhabitants who people our globe. Now I know that TRIPS stands for Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights and that WIPO is the World Intellectual Property Organisation.
During the past decade or so a monopoly has arisen in what is known as the "life industry." A common biotechnology can now link human genomes with human pharmaceuticals, with veterinary medicines, with crop chemicals, with seeds, cosmetics and household cleaning products.
The direct monopolisation of knowledge has become the mechanism of choice for most transnational corporations. "Intellectual Property" patents and "plant variety protection" are a growing force of hegemony in the world market. Between 1980 and 1994 the share of global trade depending on high tech "patented production" rose from 12 per cent to 24 per cent, and now accounts for half of the Gross National Product (GNP) of the countries in the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD). This, however, does not take into account the overwhelming majority of agricultural commodities which are produced, and traded by these countries, and are protected by "patents" or "Plant Breeders Rights."
The number of annual "patent" applications made through the "Patent Cooperation Treaty" has risen from barely 3,000 in the mid-seventies to over 76,000 in 1999. Half of all royalties and licensing fees went to corporations in the USA.
The proof that patent monopolies are now the main weapon used by transnational corporations to deny access to markets sought by smaller enterprises is evident in the reports published by WIPO which estimate that 90 per cent of all cross-border licensing payments, and 70 per cent of all licensing fees are made between subsidiaries of the same parent transnationals. In its Human Development Report for the year 2000, the UNDP estimates that 90 per cent of all patents related to advanced technology are held by global enterprises.
The next hurdle faced by all countries especially in the "South" is the TRIPS battle over plant variety. The transnational agro-businesses are seeking a complete patent monopoly over all plant species so that they can promote the varieties they wish to cultivate and use in agro-industries, pharmaceuticals, veterinary drugs and cosmetics industries.
Monsanto, the American agro- business industrial giant, has been granted exclusive monopoly of the biotech development of cotton -- a crop that is particularly important to Egypt -- as well as in soya beans, through a recent approval of two "species patents." The last years of the previous century witnessed an uncontrolled acceptance of patents on genes and "indigenous knowledge" (local plant and animal varieties) in different countries, as well as practices and uses related to them.
The most worrisome "intellectual property" claims have continued to come from the life industry. In December 1999 the US Patent Office granted its six millionth claim since its establishment more than 200 years ago. Three human genome companies have admitted that they have applications pending on about three million claims related to bits and pieces of human DNA and gene fragments. Patents have already been granted on human genes, and on single nucleotide polymorphisms, so that by the time Bill Clinton and Tony Blair announced the completion of the Human Genome Map not a single scrap of our humanity remained unclaimed by the transnational "Life Industry".
This is piracy. It is also "driftnet" patenting, and is not only being applied to our DNA, to our bodies, but also to the deserts, fields, beaches and forests of most countries in the South. Biotech companies are scavenging everywhere in order to monopolise intellectual property rights over all forms of plant and animal life.
More than six weeks ago Egypt's consultative Shura Council was discussing a law prepared by the government on Intellectual Property in a belated attempt to regulate and save whatever remains of our national patrimony and powers of research and discovery. But let us remember that this law stipulates in article three that patents can only be granted to intellectual property which has not been previously patented, or which is not under claim for patenting either partially, or in its entirety in Egypt or abroad, or which has not been exploited publicly in Egypt or abroad prior to the claim, or which has not been described in a way rendering it exploitable in Egypt or abroad.
This means that we are probably already far behind in the race for intellectual property claims over plant and animal species and varieties in our own country. If this is not so, what is required is an almost superhuman effort to catalogue, describe and patent what exists on Egyptian soil, deserts and beaches, and in river or sea waters.
American companies have already announced their patent rights to over 250 medicines manufactured in our country. This not only could be disastrous for the pharmaceutical industry, but also for thousands of people who may be obliged to buy these drugs at five or even 10 times their original market price. If patent practices start to be applied seriously to pharmaceutical and veterinary drugs, to chemicals, food industries and other branches of the economy, we can well imagine the effect this can have on a situation already under strain, and on the lives of the ordinary men and women of Egypt.
The exercise of intellectual property rights by the giant transnational corporations, unless met by vigorous governmental and popular resistance on a worldwide scale, could spell disaster to thousands of millions of people. It would mean a virtual monopoly on all forms of life, on agriculture and industry, on the bodies and minds of the human race. The perspective of such a monopoly in the hands of the global few is indeed frightening, and people will have to discover ways and means of breaking out of it.
* Sherif Hetata is a writer and a physician
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