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ABOUT GENEWATCH

GeneWatch is America’s first and only magazine dedicated to monitoring biotechnology’s social, ethical and environmental consequences. Since 1983, GeneWatch has covered a broad spectrum of issues, from genetically engineered foods to biological weapons, genetic privacy and discrimination, reproductive technologies, and human cloning.

Humans history is filled with figures who have tested the boundaries of the known world. They have done this physically, literally sailing into the unknown, and mentally, tearing down earlier conceptions of the laws of the universe and replacing them with more and more accurate versions.

This exploration has not always been done out of some noble quest for knowledge; much of the time, it has been in search for new things to sell and new people to sell those things to. Mercantilism and colonialism go hand-in-hand, and though we are running out of lands to colonize, the colonial urge remains.

In many ways, the genome represents an untamed frontier waiting for the biocolonist’s flag: the patent. GeneWatch has covered the race to find or create novel gene sequences since the first organism was patented by Ananda Chakrabarty. While this practice has accelerated in the last couple decades, the thrust remains the same: to redefine a public good as a private one. While much of gene patenting has been limited to plants and animals, we are currently seeing these patents creep into the human genome in new ways.      

In "The Politics of Patenting Race," Jonathan Kahn discusses how the concept of difference has become a patenting resource. Citing BiDil, the first medicine with a race-based indication, as harbinger of this trend, Kahn shows how a biologic construction of race is necessary for the patent protection products like BiDil rely on, even if it has no basis in how the products works, or whether it works better in one group or another. 

For more on BiDil and the genetics of race, please see Kahn’s "BiDil: False Promises".

In Robin Nixon’s "Wishing for What We Already Have,” we see some of the problems associated with pharmaceutical development mix with those related to genetically modified organisms. Ventria has developed a new strain of rice, engineered to contain a protein to be used in medicinal products aimed to combat diarrhea. This is yet another case where modern biotechnology and traditional knowledge come into conflict due to differing marketability.  

Ben Grosscup and Brian Tokar  describe different popular responses to this kind of biocolonialsm in their articles, “Mass Movement” and  “Taking it to the Streets.” Grosscup takes a more local approach, describing how Massachusetts farmers are fighting to protect traditional agricultural production models against centralized, technological ones. Tokar takes a more global approach, exploring the local forms of the worldwide resistance to the biotechnology industry.

Past articles can be found in our archives.

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