Sub Navigation
Promotion
Learning area
Patent-related events
Vandana Shiva
Director - Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Ecology, New Delhi
The Trade Related Intellectual Property Rights Agreement of WTO is the most far reaching in terms of creating corporate rights and corporate monopolies.
TRIPs not only made Intellectual Property Rights (IPR) laws global geographically, but also removed ethical boundaries by including life forms and biodiversity into patentable subject matter. Living organisms and life forms that are self-creating were thus redefined as machines and artifacts made and invented by the patentee.
Intellectual property rights and patents then give the patent holder a monopolistic right to prevent others from making, using, or selling seeds. Seed saving by farmers has now been redefined from a sacred duty to a criminal offence of stealing “property”. Article 27.3 (b) of the TRIPs agreement, which relates to patents on living resources, was basically pushed by the “Life Science” companies to establish themselves as Lords of Life.
As a result of globalization, corporations like Monsanto have gained monopoly control over seed. In India, they first entered through hybrid cotton seeds and later with genetically engineered Bt cottonseeds. High cost seeds, which are both non-renewable and unreliable, have pushed hundreds of thousands of Indian farmers to suicide. In a parliamentary debate in 2006, the government figures were 150,000 farm suicides in the last decade. The “suicide belt” overlaps with regions where corporations like Monsanto have established seed monopolies.
Not only has TRIPs encouraged monopolies over seed, threatening the very survival of farmers, it has also led to monopolies in medicine.
Monopolies on medicines and seeds are threatening the lives of millions. What is needed is a completion of the review of TRIPs and implementation of the Doha public health declaration.
If TRIPs has killed hundreds of thousands of farmers, by denying them seeds, and threatens to kill millions of people by denying them medicine, how much more violence will a TRIPs plus, driven by the G-8, unleash on the poor of the world? Corporate intellectual property rights have become a threat to the survival of the poor."