When I left at midnight last night, the technology text was four pages long (and was in the secret category that NGOs could access only if a government delegate gave it to them) — down from 30 that we had seen at the start of the Copenhagen summit.  That could be read as progress, except in fact the paper said virtually nothing.   It created three new levels of bureaucracy but their mandates were hopelessly vague and did not have enough to please either those who want to export their technology nor those who want to access it.

This morning the text is 12 pages and all the contentious stuff is back in.   Top of the list on contentious items is intellectual property protection. That is the core issue when it comes to technology transfer.  It’s a sad statement on these negotiations that exhausted delegates are all up in the middle of the night negotiating meaningless language on the technologies that could play an important role in the fight against climate change.  Even sadder is the notion that these governments will not put in place any mechanism whatsoever to evaluate whether a particular technology is worthy of support.

One would think that in a global meeting such as this, discussions about technology transfer would be about the … um… transfer of the technologies that developing countries need to adapt to and mitigate climate change.  Not so.   Rather, the various institutions that have been set up under the UNFCCC have more to do with the interests of businesses in OECD countries in expanding markets for new  (and existing) technologies and getting public support for them than they do with the actual needs of people in developing countries.  That orientation is liable to be reinforced if anything at all gets agreed at this meeting.

The discussion on technology development and transfer is really about the expanding markets for ill-defined “environmentally sound technologies” — which many people in this forum expect will save us from climate change. Of course, as the experience of biofuels has shown, so-called “environmentally sound technologies” can sometimes do more harm than good.  At the beginning of the Copenhagen talks, about 200 organizations called for the inclusion of “assessment” of social and environmental impacts of technologies in the cycle of “research, development, demonstration, deployment, diffusion, transfer” in a common declaration called “Let’s Look Before We Leap“. This ad-hoc coalition also called for real civil society input and the participation of indigenous peoples and local communities that could be affected by these new technologies that would receive institutional, political and financial support from a new deal to be signed in Copenhagen.  Such precautionary assessment is nowhere to be found in the current working drafts.  And the failure to assess what technologies are supported could prove costly to us all.

So how do things really work in the world of climate-friendly technology transfer? Take for example, the “technology needs assessments” which are targeted for support.  One would expect these to be assessments by developing countries of their technological needs – perhaps a study into what would be the appropriate balance between wind and solar energy, or a structured plan to get certain parts of the country on electrical grids, or early warning systems for extreme weather events. Not at all. The publication that the UNFCCC has developed to show how “technology needs assessments” should be done is basically a training manual for business on how to attract investment capital and expand  markets. The manual itself came out of two workshops, held in Montreal and Bonn, in collaboration with the private sector and the Climate Technology Initiative — a body created under the International Energy Agency to implement technology transfer agreements, whose members are ALL from the OECD!  G77 and China have been fighting for “country-driven” policies in the technology text but all the institutions devoted to technology seem to be entirely driven by the needs of business and those with the expertise and the implementation mandates are based in the North.  Last night, developing countries stayed up late putting interesting language on the sharing of intellectual property rights back in the text  – basically trying one last time to get important climate-related technologies in the public domain.

The new text guts the old structures such as the Expert Group on Technology Transfer in favour of a new “Technology Mechanism” (an executive committee and a Climate Technology Centre) which would focus on doubling global “energy related research, development and demonstration by 2012″  and will basically decide what kinds of activities get funding from whatever resources get allocated.     There are two options defining in more detail what the precise mandate of the technology mechanism would be, and of course one reflects the views and interests of the North, and the other of the South.  They are quite diametrically opposed.   The South wants rapid action on accessible, affordable technologies, new financing, capacity building, accountability in terms of support offered to the Conference of the Parties and country-driven technology plans, looser intellectual property arrangements, and joint R & D.   The North wants “improved enabling environments”, technology needs assessments and planning processes , regional innovation centres,  road maps and action plans that report to the Subsidiary Bodies for Scientific and Technological Advice and the status quo on intellectual property.  As a representative of Microsoft stated yesterday in a side event, they are “quite satisfied” with current arrangements at the WTO and WIPO.
Finally, the text foresees a Climate Technology Network that will also facilitate public-private partnerships, accelerate diffusion of technologies and provide “technical assistance and support”.  Basically, there seems to be three new layers of support for private sector involvement in technology transfer, which would be in keeping with the work of the soon-to-be-phased out Expert Group on Technology Transfer, and the conclusions of the SBSTA from this weekend.  There is no mention whatsoever of civil society groups, local communities or social impacts!  It is not at all difficult to imagine this network holding meetings on geo-engineering over the next few years!

At a side event organized by the International Chamber of Commerce on December 14, the business community made it very clear that they wanted strong IP protection, predictable regulatory environments and claimed that 80% of technology transfer was done by business. As Peter Taylor of the International Energy Agency said: “Business sees the whole climate change issue just as much as an opportunity as a threat”. That is precisely the way the new text on technology transfer is structured: not to meet the threat of climate change, but as a new business opportunity.

In a best case scenario, we have useless layers of bureaucracy so it will be business as usual. In a worst case scenario, we shall have accelerated deployment and financing of unproven and even untested technologies that will potentially worsen the climate crisis — exactly what happened with biofuels.

Those who say no deal is better than a bad deal are right.  And although tension is rising with 100 heads of state arriving in the next few days, from inside the Bella Centre, a deal looks more and more unlikely. Naomi Klein commented this morning in a press conference for the Angry Mermaid Award that there is not enough talk about corporate lobbying in this forum and that it is far too polite.  So true.  As NGOs, it is extremely difficult to think that we have any leverage at all to influence text at this point in time but the multinational corporations, so effectively coordinated by the ICC and the large international agencies and international financial institutions continue to get what they want: precious little action on climate change.

Today of course was a highlight — the demonstration for action organized by several hundred organizations from around the world.  An estimated 80-100,000 people in the streets — very varied and colourful crowd, calling for Climate Justice now!  The march was so long it was impossible to walk from one end to the other, let alone find someone you were looking for.   We had printed 5000 Stop Geoengineering stickers and I was able to distribute about 4000 of them during the march.   They look like this:

But loads of people will blog about the demonstration — and the arrests that ensued which i did not see —  and no-one will talk about what is happening in this meeting with regards to technology, so let me spend a bit of time on what has been happening there.

The Royal Society issued a report earlier this year on geonengineering which really helped to bring this set of technologies out from the margins and into the mainsteam of scientific and public policy debates on climate change.  ETC Group at the time issued two controversial sets of commentaries on it, one before and one after.   Neither was particularly appreciated by the august institution, which opened its press conference with a denunciation of our report laying out what we expected them to say.   They were particularly offended at our insinuation that that the report would legitimize geoengineering research and end up making crackpot profiteers acceptable.  Of course, that is exactly what has happened.

So here we are in Copenhagen and the Royal Society has teamed up with The Climate Fund (directed By Margaret Leinen, better known for her association with Climos, her son Dan Whaley’s ocean fertilization firm), Jason Blackstock doing double duty for CIGI and IIASA and lead author of one of the most frightening geoengineering reports to date as well as the Stockholm Environmental Institute and IISD to host a series of three side events on different aspects of geoengineering.  To my great surprise, I was invited to speak at one of them, an invitation I gladly accepted.   Then I found out I only had 2 minutes to comment on the rather lengthy presentations by John Shepherd (on the science) and Jason Blackstock (on the governance aspects).  The whole was chaired by the affable Oliver Morton who just joined the economist and lost his byline.

It ain’t easy to do battle with these guys and and I was called simplistic (publicly) and stupid (privately). I was however able to make my point that no real-world geoengineering experiments should be allowed to go ahead, especially not before some real international governance mechanisms were in place.  I tried to explain why geoengineering was a bad idea, why it was sheer hubris to think we could actually “manage solar radiation” by putting sulphates in the stratosphere or sunshades in space.  I insisted on how the debate is really one between white male scientific elites and how a much broader conversation needed to take place. Difficult as it was though, I did appreciate the possibility of dialogue and frankly it was in private conversations after the event that I felt the most hostility.  Maybe that was because alot of people in the audience seemed to share my skepticism.

The next day however we (Silvia Ribeiro from ETC Mexico and I) had planned a workshop on geonegineering at the Klima Forum where the NGOs and the activists gather every day. Lo and behold, the whole gang walked in  – Shepherd, Leinen, Whaley, KPMG — with their suitcases fully of glossy Royal Society reports.  That was rather astonishing since the day before I had been told I could not distribute a two-page declaration that has been signed by 180 organizations from around the world in their side-event!   However, we let them distribute it and a lively debate was had in a small jam-packed room of people wanting information about what geoengineering was all about.  I am pretty sure it was the first time any of them had had such a close encounter with civil society activist types and certainly Silvia gave them a piece of her mind about how cloud whitening along the Pacific coast would be received by the people of Ecuador, Peru and Chile!
There is much much more to say  – most importantly perhaps was the G77 Chair’s meeting with civil society groups yesterday.  He — a very well respected diplomat from Sudan Ambassador Lumumba — who blasted the West and those NGOs who are not strong enough to blast their governments  – now on youtube.  This is mostly about attempts inside the official process to kill the Kyoto Protocol and seed divisions between developing countries which so far has not been successful — but that will have to be my next blog…

As to global annihilation, I’m stumped. Most of us wouldn’t recognise a strangelet if it casually devoured us in the street

There’s a slim chance – about one in 50 million – that nobody will ever read this article. A physics experiment taking place under the French-Swiss border could theoretically destroy the world first. In late May 2008, the Large Hadron Collider, the world’s largest machine, is expected to begin accelerating single atoms along a 27km-long doughnut-shaped tunnel. Those atoms will then be smashed together at almost the speed of light. The aim is to recreate the conditions of the Big Bang – albeit under European countryside rather than in the empty nothingness of space.

CERN, The European Organization for Nuclear Research, which has built this giant doughnut, hopes its atom-smasher will provide glimpses of the elusive particles that make up atoms – but that might not be all. In his gloomy book, Our Final Hour, Sir Martin Rees, president of the UK’s Royal Society, offers three scenarios by which atom-smashing experiments could go badly awry. They might form tiny black holes or could destabilise empty space. They might also create theoretical quantum objects called ‘strangelets’ able to ‘transform the entire planet Earth into an inert, hyperdense sphere about 100m across’. Yikes.

Before anyone presses the panic button, however, a CERN report that weighs the chances of planetary annihilation has concluded they are too low to worry about. Fifty million to one, in fact. Even Rees admits the black holes don’t keep him awake at night. He’s a bit less sanguine about strangelets.

Nonetheless, the Large Hadron experiment raises stark questions about our relationship to technology in general. Who decides what level of technological risk is acceptable when total annihilation may be the outcome? It’s in the interests of CERN physicists to downplay the risk; the rest of us have no say. In April, Walter W. Wagner, an ex-nuclear safety officer from Hawaii, filed a private US lawsuit to restrain the Large Hadron Collider from coming online. His first hearing in mid-June might prove a bit late.

What if we did have a say? If there were a referendum on whether CERN should smash atoms or not? I suspect the public might at least ask some questions the official report overlooked. For example, should the Large Hadron Collider be gobbling up 120MW of power at a time when society needs to cut back global energy-use? This figure does not take into account the energy required for the new global computing grid that will process data from the collider. The public might question the wisdom of spending $10 billion of public funds to glimpse esoteric particles. That amount might be enough to deliver universal primary education.

As to global annihilation, I’m stumped. Most of us, after all, are not high-energy physicists and wouldn’t recognise a strangelet if it casually devoured us in the street.

That points to a bigger tragedy: that we no longer understand our technologies. Somehow we have reached the point where decisions that may weigh on our future are only intelligible to a tiny elite of scientific experts. The black holes we should worry about aren’t tiny holes in the fabric of space and time, but the yawning vacuums in our democracies over how to govern complex technology.

Jim Thomas is a research programme manager and writer with ETC group (www.etcgroup.org)

As G8 leaders meet this week in Japan, their ears will still be ringing from the bombshell dropped last week in a leaked World Bank report declaring that biofuels have forced global food prices up by 75 per cent, far higher than previously estimated.

The food crisis will be a major topic for world leaders, as millions of the world’s most vulnerable people call for help. According to World Bank president Robert Zoellick, who wrote a letter to G8 leaders last week, the world “is entering a danger zone” that will require $10 billion for emergency food aid and to help countries deal with the double impact of rising food and fuel prices.

Many of the G8 countries, including Britain, members of the EU and the United States, have brought in policies dramatically expanding the use of biofuels through mandatory minimum biofuel content in domestic gasoline. Some have speculated that the World Bank’s findings have been kept under wraps to avoid embarrassing U.S. President George W. Bush, whose administration has argued that biofuels are responsible for only 3 per cent of the rise in food process.

In Canada, Stephen Harper’s government, with Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion’s support, is poised to set a 5 per cent minimum biofuel content level in our gasoline, adding fuel to the food crisis fire.

But unlike other governments, many of which moved too quickly to promote biofuels, the Canadian government has the opportunity to consider the growing evidence that mandatory biofuel content requirements do more harm than good.

Coming on the heels of these findings by the World Bank is the Gallagher Report, which will be released in the U.K. in the coming days.

Like the World Bank’s secret report, it points an accusing finger at biofuels as playing a “significant” role in the dramatic rise in global food prices that has left 100 million more people without enough to eat, the U.K.’s Guardian newspaper has learned. It also urges that far more research be conducted into the indirect impact of biofuels on land use and food production before the government sets targets for their use in transport.

The report, produced by a panel of government experts chaired by Professor Ed Gallagher, head of the Renewable Fuels Agency, is expected to trigger a review of British and EU targets for the use of plant-derived fuels in place of gasoline and diesel. It may even compel Prime Minister Gordon Brown, who campaigned on expanding the use of biofuels, to reverse course.

The World Bank’s sister institution, the International Monetary Fund, has confirmed that biofuel production puts pressure on food supplies as crops are increasingly grown for fuel, not food. The increasing demand for food has contributed to higher prices, which the IMF says have risen by 50 per cent this year. Particularly hard hit are Asia, the former Soviet Union, southern Africa and parts of Latin America.

Canadian policy-makers should also consider the fact that even U.S. food producers are calling on the Bush administration to ease minimum biofuel-content regulations for American gasoline.

Keith Collins, former chief economist in the agriculture department, released a study last month, funded by Kraft Foods, saying that as much as half of the sharp increase in corn prices over the last few years is due to the demands of corn-based ethanol production.

“We’ve seen a tremendous range of unintended consequences” from the requirement that increasing amounts of biofuels such as ethanol be blended into gasoline, Collins told the New York Times.

Texas has already lodged its complaints, and more states will follow. In April, Texas Governor Rick Perry said the “misguided” mandate was devastating the livestock industry in Texas. He asked for a large decrease in ethanol requirements in order to free corn for use as animal feed.

Given all of this new evidence casting doubt on biofuel regulations, it is utterly reasonable for the Canadian government to take the time needed to fully consider all aspects of the proposed minimum biofuel content regulations for Canadians’ gasoline.

Let’s be sure that the legislation is helping, rather than harming, Canadians, the environment, and the world’s most vulnerable people.

Pat Mooney is executive director of the ETC Group, an international organization addressing the impact of new technologies on rural communities.

And it was a long day as a result — beginning at 8am with a keynote speech by Nobel Prize winner Ham Smith — Craig Venter’s right hand man. Ham seemed as surprised as anyone at the number of earlyrisers hoping for news on his synthetic minimal genome. According to Ham his team really are in the last phases of constructing the synthetic version of Mycoplasma genitalium – its genome currently in 101 different synthetic parts that are midway to being stitched together. In contrast to the bold claims of his boss (and his patent), Ham happily admitted that “we still don’t know what a minimal set [of genes] is.”

Most significantly however Ham Smith described a new process by which the synthetic genome, once it’s built, will be transplanted into a working cell replacing the host genome and making a new fully functioning organism. It’s an elegant system in which the full genome of “naked DNA” plus an extra tetracycline-resistant gene is transplanted into an existing cell, making a diploid cell (with 2 different genomes). That host cell then divides into two daughter cells — each with a different genome and the cell that retains the host genome is killed off with an antibiotic wash. A paper on this in Science is expected later this week. It turns out that acheiving this transplantation is quite a big deal and seemingly removes one of the last technical barriers to having a functioning fully synthetic organism. Once Ham Smith and his colleagues have booted up a working Mycoplasma genitalium they will then strip back the synthetic genes they regard as probably superflous and er… that’s life? Curiously, this is NOT the process described in the recent patent application on a minimal genome which referred to an already empty cell known as a ghost cell. When the patent to this process surfaces it will be important to check how widely Venter has drawn his monopoly claims.

The concerned had other things to chew on today — a panel on security and safety concerns featured social scientist Joyce Tait offering marketing advice to the Synthusiasts on how to improve their public image — apparently they need to set up ideologically-driven activist groups of their own advocating for Synthetic Biology and that although synthesis is a hard sell to a sceptical public they could talk up the potential for new vaccines to get that public relations karma flowing. Meanwhile biologist Scott Mohr offered a rather more humble call for synthetic biologists to pull their collective heads out of the sand, ‘think the unthinkable’ and start actively imagining the ways in which their cool science could be misused for evil. “Most of us are reasonably naive,” he mused.

Because the session on biosecurity/biosafety was scheduled at the same time as the session on intellectual property, ETC had to go their separate ways. In the IP session, we heard an amazing estimate from Joachim Henkel of Munich’s Technical University: though no one’s quite sure (because maybe no one’s quite ready to learn the answer) — somewhere between 20% and 80% of the standard parts in MIT’s Registry could already be patented. It’s a somewhat baffling to think that the deep-end of synbio’s open-source community pool may already be private. So we can expect that when someone starts making money from products using those standard parts, we’ll find out who holds what patents because they’ll no doubt surface.

The day’s proceedings ended with an ‘ethics’ panel in which ETC provided the token civil society presence. ‘Ethics’ seems to be one of those unhelpful catchall terms better suited to securing academic funding than actually moving forward on real societal challenges. The discussion ranged from a clever presentation on the need for secrecy in synthetic biology (by Laurie Zoloth) to an impassioned and heartfelt plea that Synthetic Biologists follow the example of Joseph Rothblatt, the physicist who left the Manhattan Project to dedicate his life to stopping nuclear weapons (from Malcolm Dando of Bradford University’s Department of Peace Studies). As for us — we suggested that discussions on governance of such powerful technologies neccesitated a more formal venue with much wider transparency and participation than just the converts of cool… A United Nations body perhaps, or a formal, independently facilitated process.

For others, the day ended at a public event in Sternwarte (a place to wait for stars?) on ETH’s downtown campus — a potentially useful forum for ordinary folk (that is, if you can call folk who attend 2-hour public lectures on complex science in the evenings after work “ordinary”) to get their introduction to synthetic biology. Even without biologist Florianne Koechlin’s helpful translation of the German, we could tell what was being said, as the language of synthetic public acceptance is, apparently, universal: It was easy to pick out “medicines,” “clean energy” and “artemisinin.” And “Gates Foundation,” of course, needs no translation. Beyond hearing the blue-sky (or is that pi in the sky?) prospects for synthetic biology, we were told how utterly stupid ordinary folk can be – did you know, for example, that half the people surveyed thought that tomatoes didn’t contain genes? Florianne knew because, as she told us, she has been hearing that statistic for the better half of a decade – it’s used to demonstrate how badly the public needs to be “educated” about science — A bit paternalist perhaps… or maybe we’re just not cool enough?

by Silvia Ribeiro

Corporate concentration through global mergers and acquisitions reached a record at the close of 2006. In our daily life this means that companies are becoming ever fewer but also ever larger with greater power to impose their products and norms of consumption on us, dictate labour conditions (and unemployment) and exercise every kind of pressure on legislators, governments or international institutions so as to achieve the rules and legislation they consider necessary. What they cannot achieve through market mechanisms they can impose through laws favourable to them as has happened on many occasions in the year just past as well as previous ones.

According to the market analysis firm Thomson Financial, the total value of business mergers and acquisitions in 2006 reached US$3.79 trillion (1) globally which means an increase of 38% over this type of transaction in 2005. According to another firm, Dealogics, the total value may be even more, reaching US$3.98 trillion.

The phenomenon of corporate concentration is not new. On the contrary, it is part of capitalism’s intrinsic logic : businesses eat each other up so as to eliminate competition and better control prices as well as markets, and too workers and consumers who have progressively fewer choices. In the decade from 1990 to 2000 the rhythm of mergers and acquisitions accelerated in a way never seen before, starting out in 1990 with a total value of US$462 billion. and closing the year 2000 with an incredible spike of US$3.5 trillion, multiplying the initial value 7.5 times

That decade saw mergers and acquisitions between the giant oil companies (Chevron+Texaco, Exxon + Mobil Oil, BP + Amoco, Total+Petrofina+Elf), which made up an important percentage of the total volume of this type of operation. However, they were exceeded by the combined volume of acquisitions between telecommunications and high-tech companies. These were responsible for the spike in 2000.

The new record of 2006 surpasses the level of 2000. Although analysts indicate that this time the volume is spread over more industries, again one finds the telecommunications sector among the principal actors with the acquisition of BellSouth by AT&T along with the high-tech sector (computing, Internet and electronics) followed now by the misnamed “life” technologies or bio-technologies.

Among the keynote transactions of 2006 figure the purchase of YouTube by Google, a quiet giant that has much more influence in our lives than perhaps we realise. YouTube is a well-known site worldwide where one can see and upload videos to be seen by many other users. In many cases it is the only distribution source available apart from the telecommunications monopolies. Google’s first action when it bought YouTube was to erase more than 30,000 videos from the site, alleging this was to protect the intellectual property of interested parties, marking incidentally that Google is a Big Brother serving the system.

In the “life industries” sector the most important deal was the purchase of the Biomet company bought by an investment combine including the Blackstone Group and the Texas Pacific Group. This acquisition is important for various reasons. It marks a trend among private investment groups competing for acquisitions : one is not dealing only with competition among corporations within the sector, but rather with investment groups that simply rate the deal, they do not care about the business itself, only its profit potential. In that light, it is significant that Biomet is a business dedicated to the sale of medical prostheses, several of which stem from the use of bio-nanotechnology. Beyond whether these prostheses might help whoever needs them rather than cause new problems, in this context they indicate an industry trend to invest aggressively in “improving human performance”, in other words, the definition by the industry of who can (who ought to?) be “improved”, opening up a new gap between those who can pay and those who cannot.

In this sector another important acquisition was that of the seed business Delta and Pine by Monsanto. Although smaller in volume it is tremendously significant : Delta and Pine was the biggest cotton seed business in the world, so Monsanto now also takes control in that area. But furthermore, Delta and Pine is the creator of the “Terminator” technology to make suicide seeds incapable of reproducing themselves. Now Monsanto is the biggest seed business in the world and also owns the patent on suicide seed which all growers have to buy from it each year

Although the examples are various, in the end they come to the same thing : an increasingly disembodied attempt to control us, to increase the profits of progressively fewer but ever more powerful entities.

Silvia Ribeiro is a researcher with the ETC Group (www.etcgroup.org)
Translation copyleft by Tortilla con Sal
Article published originally in Spanish in La Jornada, January 23, 2007.
Translation note
1. Silvia’s original article in Spanish uses the European billion (a million million) which is a US trillion.

It would have been nice to hear a suburban Dad tell the FDA that he wants the agency to require sunscreen companies to label their nano-scale ingredients because his three-year old daughter � slathered in sunscreen � loves to spend entire summer days splashing in the kiddie pool, but it wasn�t that kind of public meeting. It was the kind of meeting where people affiliated with organizations � already involved in a debate that only a tiny percentage of the public knows anything about � state their views for the record.

ETC Group was in good company. Several other civil society groups � including Consumers Union, Environmental Defense, Friends of the Earth, Environmental Working Group and the International Center for Technology Assessment � strongly criticized FDA for its failure to act on the scientific consensus that nanotech�s size-dependent property changes could have implications for public health. So far, FDA has maintained that �particle size is not the issue� and that its existing battery of pharmacotoxicity tests is �probably adequate� for �most� products the agency regulates.

The Cosmetics Industry (CTFA) was on hand to deliver its own crystal clear message � the industry doesn�t see a need for a regulatory makeover; everything is just fine, thank you � but when Dr. Norris Alderson of the FDA asked if companies would then be willing to hand over their safety studies upon request, it took two CTFA reps to make sure the answer was sufficiently evasive and opaque.

The challenge � and for some, the impossibility � of regulating the products of a technology that doesn�t have a clear definition came up several times throughout the day�s meeting. Should FDA assess sunscreen or cosmetic ingredient particles that are 101 nm in size differently from those that are 99 nm? It seems like a good question and, in one sense, FDA is right that particle size is not the issue � the real issue is size-dependent property changes. And those changes, regardless of whether they occur in particles slightly larger or smaller than 100 nm, should serve as FDA�s wake-up call to demand substantiation of safety. Perhaps FDA has been asking the wrong question: Instead of asking companies if they will share their scientific safety data, maybe FDA should be asking them to submit their patent portfolios � patent attorneys seem to suffer less from the crisis of uncertainty about whether or not they�re dealing with a novel material.

Ventria, a California biotech company, is growing rice that is genetically engineered to produce two pharmaceutical compounds derived from human genes. It was revealed in May that the company had tested its controversial “pharmed” compounds on 140 patients at a pediatric hospital in Peru. The article below by Silvia Ribeiro appeared in the July 1 edition of Mexico’s “La Jornada.”

La empresa estadunidense Ventria Biosciences patrocin� la experimentaci�n de drogas derivadas de arroz transg�nico -manipulado con genes humanos- en beb�s y ni�os internados en dos instituciones pedi�tricas de Per�.

El experimento, cuyos resultados se dieron a conocer en mayo en Estados Unidos, fue realizado en el Instituto Especializado de Salud del Ni�o y en el Instituto de Investigaci�n Nutricional en Lima, Per�. El p�blico de esa naci�n, sin embargo, se enter� por las denuncias de la Asociaci�n Pro Derechos Humanos del Per� y de la Red por una Am�rica Latina Libre de Transg�nicos.

Ventria es una empresa biotecnol�gica especializada en producir farmacultivos, es decir, cultivos que son manipulados gen�ticamente para obtener sustancias de uso farmac�utico. Estas son a�n m�s controversiales que los transg�nicos de uso agr�cola que est�n en el mercado, por la posible contaminaci�n de cultivos aleda�os y los riesgos a la salud en caso de una filtraci�n a la cadena alimentaria.

Ning�n f�rmaco producido en plantas transg�nicas ha sido aprobado para consumo humano en Estados Unidos ni en otras parte del mundo. Ventria comenz� sus cultivos en California, pero tuvo que trasladarse a Missouri y luego a Carolina del Norte por las demandas de asociaciones de productores, consumidores y ambientalistas.

Debido al largo e incierto proceso de aprobaci�n de f�rmacos, en particular de este tipo, la empresa decidi� experimentar sus productos con ni�os del Tercer Mundo, donde las regulaciones son m�s laxas y parece m�s f�cil encontrar instituciones con d�ficit de financiamiento (y de �tica).

En un reciente cambio de imagen, Ventria llama ahora a sus productos �alimentos m�dicos�, seguramente para eludir las regulaciones m�s estrictas en la aprobaci�n de medicamentos.

Esa empresa produce experimentalmente dos prote�nas recombinantes humanas: la lactoferrina y la lisozima, presentes en forma natural en leche materna, saliva, semen y otros fluidos humanos. La producci�n se hace en arroz, al que se le insertan secuencias sintetizadas de genes humanos responsables de la producci�n de estas prote�nas. Dos de �stas, ya extra�das del cultivo, fueron usadas en el �estudio� con ni�os peruanos.

El experimento afect� a 140 ni�os de cinco meses a 3 a�os que sufr�an diarrea aguda y estaban hospitalizados en las instituciones mencionadas. La prueba dur� 48 horas en hospital, con dos visitas de seguimiento en los siguientes 15 d�as. Divididos en tres grupos, al primero se le trat� con un suero de rehidrataci�n oral (SRO) de glucosa; al segundo con SRO a base de arroz, y al tercero con el mismo SRO a base de arroz, adicion�ndole lactoferrina y lisozima recombinantes.

Seg�n el breve informe de resultados publicado por la empresa, el grupo de ni�os que recibi� el suero adicionado con prote�nas recombinantes se recuper� en un promedio de 3.67 d�as, comparado con 5.21 en promedio en el grupo testigo. Ventria presenta esos resultados obviando el hecho de haber usado ni�os peruanos porque no lo pod�a hacer en su pa�s, para promover la aprobaci�n comercial de su producto, que ahora dice ser� fundamentalmente para el tercer mundo.

Sin embargo, su mercado preferido no son los ni�os del de pa�ses subdesarrollados que sufren diarrea, sino el m�s lucrativo mercado de los nutrac�uticos, que incluyen bebidas deportivas y suplementos alimentarios, entre otros. Para la empresa, el caso peruano es un recurso propagand�stico.

Seg�n Jim Diamond, pediatra estadunidense, un aspecto sorprendente de los resultados publicados por Ventria es que se haya utilizado como testigo un grupo de ni�os al que se le dio soluci�n oral con base en glucosa, cuando existe abundante literatura m�dica desde hace d�cadas que muestra que la soluci�n a base de arroz (no transg�nica) es mucho m�s r�pida y efectiva para tratar la diarrea aguda.

Eso significar�a que la empresa, con la complicidad de institutos peruanos, us� intencionalmente un m�todo menos efectivo para lograr resultados artificialmente positivos. Por un lado, se expuso a un grupos de ni�os a drogas transg�nicas no aprobadas, y por otro se retras� la curaci�n de otros para presentar mejores resultados comparativos.

Existen numerosos art�culos cient�ficos -disponibles en la red electr�nica- que presentan casos en que el uso de prote�nas transg�nicas humanas, tales como factores anticoagulantes, de crecimiento e insulina, han provocado reacciones adversas en los pacientes, como alergias, creaci�n de anticuerpos y otras; inclusive algunas de gravedad, como ser origen de hemorragias, caso �ste por el que se retir� el producto del mercado.

Durante el proceso de consulta p�blica motivado por las solicitudes de Ventria en Estados Unidos, varias organizaciones, entre ellas la Uni�n de Consumidores, el Centro de Seguridad en Alimentos (Center for Food Safety) y Amigos de la Tierra de Estados Unidos, presentaron a las autoridades de ese pa�s amplios informes, con referencias cient�ficas, en los que describen en detalle una lista de posibles efectos da�inos a la salud de la lactoferrina y la lisozima recombinantes de Ventria.

Entre otros, explica que las prote�nas recombinantes no son id�nticas a las naturales, por lo que existe la posibilidad de provocar des�rdenes inmunol�gicos y alergias. La lactoferrina y la lisozima pueden favorecer adem�s el crecimiento de agentes pat�genos, como la bacteria helicobacter pyloris, causante de gastritis y c�ncer estomacal, de bacterias causantes de meningitis y otras enfermedades de dif�cil tratamiento por su resistencia a muchos antibi�ticos existentes.

La empresa, obviamente, conoc�a esos informes pero decidi� proceder colocando en riesgo ni�os del tercer mundo. Si las instituciones peruanas conoc�an los informes, su complicidad es criminal. Si no los buscaron, su negligencia es del mismo tenor.
���

Silvia Ribeiro es Investigadora del Grupo ETC
www.etcgroup.org
publicado en La Jornada, M�xico, 1 de julio de 2006

At 9:30 pm in Brazil, the 8th Conference of the Parties confirmed its decision on Terminator. It is now official.

We see a moratorium on Terminator that is now strengthened.

There is caution, however, as we celebrate since we know that corporations are still developing Terminator, that industry will not stop pursuing Terminator until national governments legislate bans on Terminator, that Canada, Australia and New Zealand will still support industry efforts to end the moratorium and find new ways to try and undermine it, and that the moratorium is not a ban.

The worst of the language that would have undermined the moratorium is gone � and there is an addition that strengthens the recommendation to governments that they not conduct field trials.

The final language from COP8 still holds remnants of continuing efforts to undermine the moratorium but for now these can serve as warnings to us to watch closely and work hard for an outright ban Terminator.

Click here for a little summary of how it happened.

This morning buses were forced to drive through a long corridor of protestors waving red MST flags – or cut across the road – either way the protest was visible and audible.

Many delegates have been affected by the protests, especially those who do not often interact or get so close to street demonstrations. In particular, for some sheltered bureaucrats in the North the demonstrations have had a powerful emotional impact and have communicated the real stakes for people.

On the final day of the meeting this is a critical message and one that government delegates should now take home.