"Index" [2007] ELECD 124; in Somsen, Han (ed), "The Regulatory Challenge of Biotechnology" (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2007)

Book Title: The Regulatory Challenge of Biotechnology

Editor(s): Somsen, Han

Publisher: Edward Elgar Publishing

ISBN (hard cover): 9781845424893

Section Title: Index

Number of pages: 10

Extract:

10. Should we regulate biotechnology
through the patent system? The
case of terminator technology
Graham Dutfield

1 INTRODUCTION

According to the Devil in George Bernard Shaw's Man and Superman, `in
the arts of life man invents nothing; but in the arts of death he outdoes
Nature herself, and produces by chemistry and machinery all the slaughter
of the plague, pestilence and famine' (Shaw 1903 [2000]). Such a dark vision
of human nature seems to sum up the views of many people that oppose
the patenting of life forms, genetic modification and industrial agriculture,
except that the blame is more likely to be placed at the door of industrial
capitalism rather than of shortcomings inherent to human beings. This
becomes evident when the same people extol the virtues of indigenous
peoples and others `embodying traditional lifestyles', in the language of the
Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD 1992), for having a more envir-
onmentally friendly lifestyle than the rest of us, and for giving so much to
the wellspring of human knowledge without getting a cent in return. At the
other extreme we have the `techno-optimists' who have a much stronger
faith in our inherent creativity to improve on what we have inherited from
nature and from past generations of humans.
The so-called terminator technology, or technologies (since there is a
growing number of them), would superficially appear to reinforce the
Devil's point of view. Terminator technology, as its name suggests, was
coined not by proponents but by ...