"These protectionist measures [...] guarantee to US pharmaceutical corporations huge profits on drugs that are priced far beyond the reach of taxpayers who fund the research, let alone the bulk of the world's population. "Basic biomedical research has long been heavily subsidized by United States taxpayers," the _New York Times_ business pages observe, and "high-tech pharmaceuticals owe their origin largely to these investments and to Government scientists," funded by billions of taxpayer dollars [..] "But drugs created through genetic engineering and other state subsidy are priced beyond the reach of those who pay for their development. Protection of "intellectual property" is designed to guarantee monopoly profits to the publicly-subsidized corporations, not to benefit those who pay; and the South must be denied the right to produce drugs, seeds, and other necessities at a fraction of the cost. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Topic 22 Chomsky/Z: Year 501 (part II), Part Response 7 of 7 - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - The following article by Noam Chomsky appeared in: Z Magazine, July-August 1992 and is reprinted here with the magazine's permission. ================================================================= Year 501: World Orders Old and New: Part II (PART 8 of 8; 13KB) =============================================================== 6. Reshaping Industrial Policy ------------------------------------------------------------ The economic managers of the 1980s not only left the US with a legacy of unprecedented debt, but also with the lowest rate of net private investment of any major industrial economy. In 1989-90, the US fell behind Japan in the absolute level of industrial investment, with a population twice as large. The US position in traditional high-tech industry also declined severely. <<>> For forty years, US industrial policy has been based on the Pentagon system, which provided a regular stimulus to high technology production and a state-guaranteed market to cushion management decisions. With Soviet power a reality, it was always possible to concoct "missile gaps," "windows of vulnerability," and other threats to our existence when needed. These forms of massive state intervention in the economy provided the US with a comfortable lead in the advanced sectors of technology. But the pretexts are now gone, and new devices are needed. At the same time, the cutting edge is shifting towards other areas, notably biotechnology. Like other competitive sectors of the economy, the pharmaceutical and health industries and agribusiness have always benefited from a crucial state-organized subsidy for research, development, and marketing. These areas are now gaining a greater role in planning for the years ahead. In the early postwar years, research would "spin off" electronics and computer firms, creating new opportunities for enrichment for engineers, scientists and entrepeneurs. Today, biotech firms are springing up around the same research institutions, by rather similar mechanisms. The US National Institutes of Health are engaged in what the _Wall Street Journal_ calls "the biggest race for property since the great land rush of 1889," in this case, "staking U.S. patent claims to thousands of pieces of genetic material -- DNA -- that NIH scientists are certain are fragments of unknown genes." The purpose, the NIH explains, is to ensure that US corporations dominate the biotechnology business, which the government expects "to be generating annual revenue of $50 billion by the year 2000," and vastly more beyond. A recent patent for a basic human blood cell could allow a California company to "corner the market for a broad array of life-saving technologies," to cite merely one example. The biotech business took off after a 1980 Supreme Court decision granting a patent for an oil-dissolving microorganism developed through genetic engineering, the _Journal_ observes. The prospects are considered to be expansive. To convey a sense of the prospects, one researcher remarks that some way down the road, parents might even have to pay royalties for having children. Medical procedures such as bone-marrow transplants and gene-based therapies will also be protected by patent. The same could be true of engineered animals, seeds, and other organisms. We are now speaking of control of the essentials of life. By comparison, electronics deals with mere conveniences. <<>> These developments give new urgency to the US demand for increased protection for "intellectual property" -- crucially including patents -- at the ongoing GATT negotiations. These protectionist measures are needed to ensure that US corporations dominate the health and agricultural industries, thus controlling the essentials for human life; and to guarantee to US pharmaceutical corporations huge profits on drugs that are priced far beyond the reach of taxpayers who fund the research, let alone the bulk of the world's population. "Basic biomedical research has long been heavily subsidized by United States taxpayers," the _New York Times_ business pages observe, and "high-tech pharmaceuticals owe their origin largely to these investments and to Government scientists," funded by billions of taxpayer dollars for the National Institutes of Health and for University research. But drugs created through genetic engineering and other state subsidy are priced beyond the reach of those who pay for their development. Protection of "intellectual property" is designed to guarantee monopoly profits to the publicly-subsidized corporations, not to benefit those who pay; and the South must be denied the right to produce drugs, seeds, and other necessities at a fraction of the cost. On similar grounds, the US has refused to sign a treaty on preserving the world's biological species. The Assistant Secretary of State for the Environment, Curtis Bohlen, said that the treaty "fails to give adequate patent protection to American companies that transfer biotechnology to developing companies," and "tries to regulate genetically engineered materials, a competitive area in which the United States leads," the _New York Times_ reports. <<>>