Biotechnology , livre ebook
257
pages
English
Ebooks
2005
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257
pages
English
Ebooks
2005
Obtenez un accès à la bibliothèque pour le consulter en ligne En savoir plus
Publié par
Date de parution
20 mars 2005
Nombre de lectures
0
EAN13
9781849644938
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
Frankenfoods, designer babies, Dolly the Sheep and Raelian fantasists: few subjects generate as much controversy and misinformation as biotechnology. This book takes the reader behind the headlines to examine the new laws on genetic-based technologies, who's making them, and why.
Steven P. McGiffen offers a lucid analysis of the real implications of biotechnology legislation in the US and the EU, and contrasts it with approaches to agricultural and medical biotech in the rest of the world. He argues that the EU and America are removing decision-making power from the people and their elected representatives. Biotechnology regulation is a local manifestation of a global process of transferring power: from the people to corporations, from poor countries to rich ones, from the public to the private.
He shows that biotechnology demands effective and democratic international decision-making procedures - and that we are very far from achieving them. This is an indispensable guide for activists and anyone who wants to know more about how to control biotech regulation and how to resist handing control of our future to corporations.
Introduction
1. The European Union
2. The United States
3. Other Developed Countries
4. Developing Countries
Glossary of terms and abbreviations
Index
Voir
Steven P. McGiffen offers a lucid analysis of the real implications of biotechnology legislation in the US and the EU, and contrasts it with approaches to agricultural and medical biotech in the rest of the world. He argues that the EU and America are removing decision-making power from the people and their elected representatives. Biotechnology regulation is a local manifestation of a global process of transferring power: from the people to corporations, from poor countries to rich ones, from the public to the private.
He shows that biotechnology demands effective and democratic international decision-making procedures - and that we are very far from achieving them. This is an indispensable guide for activists and anyone who wants to know more about how to control biotech regulation and how to resist handing control of our future to corporations.
Introduction
1. The European Union
2. The United States
3. Other Developed Countries
4. Developing Countries
Glossary of terms and abbreviations
Index
Publié par
Date de parution
20 mars 2005
EAN13
9781849644938
Langue
English
Poids de l'ouvrage
1 Mo
Biotechnology
Biotechnology Corporate Power versus the Public Interest
Steven P. McGiffen
P Pluto Press LONDON • ANN ARBOR, MI
First published 2005 by Pluto Press 345 Archway Road, London N6 5AA and 839 Greene Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48106
www.plutobooks.com
Copyright © Steven P. McGiffen 2005
The right of Steven P. McGiffen to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN ISBN
0 7453 1975 0 hardback 0 7453 1974 2 paperback
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data applied for
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9
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Designed and produced for Pluto Press by Chase Publishing Services, Fortescue, Sidmouth, EX10 9QG, England Typeset from disk by Stanford DTP Services, Northampton, England Printed and bound in the European Union by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham and Eastbourne, England
Introduction
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The European UnionThe Barcelona Declaration What the EU can and cannot do The strange case of Europe’s unwanted GMOs First steps in regulating GMOs From field to fork: the new legislative framework for GMOs Seeds Coexistence Liability Enlargement of the European Union The Sixth Research and Development Programme Patent law
The United StatesBovine Somatropin The corporate agenda Regulation Regulation and public opinion Pharming Patents Reproductive and therapeutic cloning Bioethicists Regulatory capture
Other Developed CountriesCanada Australia New Zealand Switzerland Japan The newly industrialised countries
Developing CountriesCould biotech put an end to hunger?
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6 6 7 8 12 14 24 27 31 33 35 37
56 56 57 62 73 77 82 86 90 91
93 93 104 108 117 119 122
130 130
vi Biotechnology
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The (attempted) rape of Africa India Argentina Brazil ISNAR and others: the carrot to Bush’s stick The European Commission: probiotech propaganda Other advocates of biotech as a solution to the problems of development Third World sceptics The real solution lies elsewhere
International Treaties and AgreementsThe (Cartagena) Biosafety Protocol to the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity Other international agreements touching on trade in GMOs Proposed United Nations ban on human cloning Universal Declaration on the Human Genome and Human Rights Attempts to curb biological weapons
Conclusion GMOs: irreversible contamination of the world’s food supply Medicine and health care The bottom line
Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations Notes Index
136 143 149 153 156 158
159 161 162
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184 185
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188 191 198
202 208 241
Introduction
‘If we don’t play God, who will?’ 1 James Watson
Despite wide differences of attitude and approach in different parts of the world, it is possible to begin this study of the regulation of biotechnology internationally with some generalisations which I hope will prove useful in making sense of a complex picture. Firstly, regulatory systems for the control of agricultural applications of biotechnology have been notable, in general, for their relative permissiveness when compared to the much more cautious approach which has prevailed in relation to medicine and health care. Agricultural biotechnology, through its effects on the environment, through changes in the molecular composition of familiar foodstuffs, and through a host of features which will be discussed in some detail in the next chapter, certainly has implications for human health. However, the fact that medical biotechnology deals directly with our bodies has focused the minds of legislators and made them less willing to give up any of their regulatory prerogatives to ‘the market’ or to any form of selfpolicing. Practical fears for the potentially disastrous consequences of mistakes or misguided initiatives, as well as unease at anything which smacks of the instrumentalisation of human beings, have dictated a relatively cautious approach. Secondly, until recently regulatory systems for agricultural biotechnology have been based on an assumption that the way to ensure that it has no negative effects on human health or the environment is to assess each of its products separately, as if they were new only in the sense that, say, a new chemical compound with useful properties is new. The wholly novel nature of the process by which genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are created has been played down, ignored or even denied. The European Union (EU) and several other legislative authorities have recently departed from this tradition, creating a body of law aimed specifically at GMOs, their release into the environment and their placing on the market. Thirdly, although ethical questions tend to be more to the fore in discussions of biotechnology in medicine and health care, agricultural biotech is also seen as impinging on vital moral concerns
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2 Biotechnology
and therefore of raising issues which cannot be settled purely on the basis of practical considerations. This means that, for some participants in the debate, questions of safety, the enhancement of food production levels and quality, and other matters of immediate and obvious relevance to agriculture are not themselves definitive in determining whether one is ‘for’ or ‘against’ biotechnology as a means of developing agriculture. Ethical issues, bound up with political and economic questions, play a large role in deciding such matters. Fourthly, each of these regulatory systems is being developed, though with varying degrees of willingness or reluctance, with a close eye on those being created in other countries. The mesh of obligations under which a modern state is placed by agreements presided over by the World Trade Organisation (WTO) are sufficient to ensure this, whilst in medical biotechnology in particular, international human rights law has also played a role. The WTO has, moreover, been added to and qualified by important agreements specific to the cultivation of and trade in GMOs, including the Biosafety Protocol and modifications to the United Nations general rules on food, the Codex Alimentarius. Categorical statements concerning the safety of these novel techniques and their products are by definition the province of charlatans and their dupes. The precautionary principle, as it has been called, therefore provides the only rational basis on which legislative action can be based. The question is not whether there is sufficient certainty to proceed on a basis other than the precautionary principle, but whether the rewards offered by biotechnology are so great that we can afford to take risks to achieve them. Concerns surrounding biotechnology go to the heart of discussions over control of the food supply, over relations between agribusiness corporations, farmers and consumers, between rich and poor and ‘North’ and ‘South’, forcing us to examine the whole future of commodity production. In the development of US agriculture since the Second World War, in the European Union’s Common Agricultural Policy (CAP), and in the Green Revolution with its transformation of agriculture in much of the Third World, we can see certain common features: intensification of labour and land use; increased reliance on inputs from outside the cycle of production itself, as when manure or compost are replaced with chemical fertilisers, or ‘artificial’ pesticides are used to destroy pest species; and the consequent increased dependence of the farmer on the corporate supplier of such inputs, as well as of seed, specialised tools, and other necessities, a dependence
Introduction 3
enhanced by the preference for cash crops over those which can be consumed directly by the farmer and his or her family. In medicine and health care, moreover, biotechnology raises similar questions, to do with the increasing commodification and expense of the business of staying well, and thus of control and availability. Problems of availability, in particular, and of resource allocation and management, are brought into sharp focus by what biotechnology has to offer to the sick and, as we shall see, to the ‘not well enough’. In addition, medical biotech has become the focus of intense ethical debate around a number of issues, from the status of the human embryo to whether an individual owns his or her own DNA. It is with such questions that this book is concerned. It is neither a text book on international law, nor an academic work on economics, nor a deep analysis of ethics, though I hope it will be useful to students of law, economics, business studies and those subjects whose specialists deal with the kind of ethical and philosophical difficulties confronting men and women whose task it is to regulate biotechnology. Rather, it is an attempt to ask what problems the application of these have posed for regulators and what their solutions have been, as well as to understand the way in which biotechnology is transforming the world, and ask whether we wish to see the world transformed in this way and, if we answer no, whether there is anything at all which we can do about it. Some legislators have responded intelligently to these questions, while others have preferred to ignore both the public interest and the science and bow instead before the furious, selfinterested lobbying of multinational corporations with a stake in biotechnology. In five chapters, this book takes the reader on a tour through existing biotechrelated law in the European Union, the United States, the rest of the economically developed world and, finally, those developing countries which have found themselves confronted with the issue. The European Union’s new raft of legislation for the control of GMOs is looked at in some detail, while the following chapter deals with the United States and its in comparison extremely lax regime, a system based on the idea that the products of genetic modification are ‘substantially equivalent’ to organisms produced by traditional crossbreeding methods. In addition, the approach of the two great trading powers to medical applications of these new technologies is contrasted. In the chapter on other developed countries I discuss the way in which each is following the lead of either US or EU, but in
