Trading the Genome

by Parry, Bronwyn

• ISBN13: 9780231121743
• ISBN10: 0231121741
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2004-09-01
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

Major changes in scientific, technological, and regulatory domains have fundamentally altered the way collected biological materials are used industrially. New technological artifacts are being created -- cell lines, cryogenically stored tissue samples, biochemical extracts, and even sequenced DNA stored on databases -- each of which contains highly sought after genetic and biochemical information. Able to be cloned, copied, synthesized and engineered, rented, downloaded, viewed, and exchanged, these bio-informational "proxies" may be transacted thousands of times in any given month or year. The result is an extremely lucrative, albeit largely invisible, resource economy in bio-information. But who will benefit from this new trade? Many suppliers of the genetic and biochemical resources from which this information is drawn come from economically vulnerable developing countries. The Biodiversity Convention obliges signatory states to ensure that suppliers of genetic and biochemical resources receive "a just and equitable" share of the profits that accrue from the commercialization of their resources -- but it is not clear that they do. In a groundbreaking work that draws on anthropology, history, philosophy, business, and law, Bronwyn Parry links a firsthand investigation of the operation of the bioprospecting industry to a sophisticated analysis of broader economic, regulatory, and technological transformations: the rise of an information economy, global intellectual property rights and benefit-sharing regimes, and the progressive molecularization of approaches to biological research. Parry reveals how a failure to monitor this new global trade in bio-information could have potentially disastrous consequences for the suppliers of genetic and biochemical resources -- transforming the complex dynamics of collecting, as well as the politics and practice of biological resource exploitation.

Author Biography

Bronwyn Parry holds a senior research fellowship at King's College, University of Cambridge.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
List of Tables	xi
Acknowledgments	xiii
Preface	xvii
Introduction	1	(11)
The Collection of Nature and the Nature of Collecting	12	(30)
Revealing the Social and Spatial Dynamics of Collecting	14	(2)
Collecting as Simple Acquisition: Decontextualization and Exoticization	16	(3)
Collection as Concentration and Control	19	(13)
Collection as Recirculation and Regulation	32	(6)
New World Collectors	38	(4)
Speedup: Accelerating the Social and Spatial Dynamics of Collecting	42	(60)
Retheorizing Life Forms: Material and Informational?	45	(9)
The Rise of the Information and Bio-Information Economies	54	(24)
Emerging Markets: The Regulation of Trade in Bio-Information	78	(24)
New Collectors, New Collections	102	(48)
``When the world was a kinder and gentler place'': Early Players and Vacation Pursuits	103	(4)
``An historic revival of collecting''	107	(6)
Impetus for the Revival: Technological Change	113	(4)
The Biodiversity Convention: New Protocols and New Rationales	117	(5)
GATT TRIPs: New Protections, New Incentives	122	(4)
The Practice and Process of Collecting	126	(24)
The Fate of the Collections	150	(50)
From Reproduction to Replication	151	(5)
``Build it for us''	156	(4)
Combinations and Permutations	160	(6)
The Diminishing Role of in situ Collecting	166	(6)
The Advent of Microsourcing	172	(4)
Re-mining ex situ Collections	176	(7)
The Emerging Trade in Collected Genetic and Biochemical Materials	183	(7)
Hire Plants: Renters and Brokers	190	(5)
Transacting Bio-Information: Licensing and ``Pay-Per-View''	195	(5)
Taming the Slippery Beast: Regulating Trade in Bio-Information	200	(49)
Compensatory Agreements: The Rise of a Proto-Universal Culture of Regulation?	203	(4)
Networks, Capillaries, and the Geography of Knowledge Systems	207	(7)
Compensatory Agreements: Investigating Terms and Conditions	214	(4)
Infrastructural Support and Technical Training	218	(6)
Future Benefits: Royalty Payments	224	(5)
Taming the Slippery Beast	229	(4)
Regulating the Unlicensed Copying of Bio-Information	233	(6)
Concentration and Control: Patenting Collected Materials	239	(4)
The Complexities of ``Co-Inventorship''	243	(6)
Back to the Future	249	(18)
Appendix: Methodology	267	(4)
Notes	271	(26)
Bibliography	297	(12)
Index	309