6:10 AM Nov 20, 1995

CAMPAIGN AGAINST LIFE-PATENTING IN INDIA

New Delhi 18 Nov (TWN) -- The launching of a national campaign against patenting of life was announced here by non-governmental organizations active in this field.

A bill to amend the Indian Patents Act to conform to the Trips accord of the World Trade Organization is pending before the Rajya Sabha, the upper house of the Indian Parliament.

The launching of the campaign and mobilization of the public campaign was announced at a press conference here by Dr. Vandana Shiva, Director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resources Policy and Mr. B. K. Keala of the National Working Group on Patent Law.

Dr. Shiva said the patenting of life forms was "particularly immoral" as life-forms could not be created. Through the campaign, she added, "we are building up and consolidating the movement against patents".

Present at the press conference was Mr. John Moore, whose cell lines have been patented in the United States without his consent.

A patient of hairy cell leukamia, a potentially fatal type of cancer, Moore's enlarged spleen, which contained a rare blood protein that could be used for treating cancer, was removed in the hospital and his doctor, Dr. David Golde of the University of California.

Seven years later, Dr. Golde and his research assistant, Shirley Quan and the Regents of the University of Calfornia patented this (US patent No 4438032) 'Mo' cell line, without seeking the consent of Moore, and have made millions of dollars by entering into contracts with Genetic Inc and Sandoz Ltd, pharmaceutical TNCs, for commercial exploitation of Moore's cell line.

"To learn all of a sudden that somebody else owned a part of me that I could never recover.... to learn all of a sudden that I was just a piece of material ... it is so beyond anything you can really conceive of," said Moore at the press conference.

The challenge against the patenting of his cell line, which Moore contended was his property, was rejected by the US courts.

Subsequently, Moore with a small group launched a campaign in the United States against the patent regime. Recently this year, leaders of various religious groups and churches joined in an appeal against life-patenting.

Moore, who is planning to tour Bangalore and Bombay to help the campaign against life-patenting said he was against the patenting of his cell line as he could not provide it to somebody else for the general good.

The campaign in the US, he added, was not as strong as in India or Europe, but a beginning had been made.

The floodgates for life patenting was opened with the patenting, by Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty, of a genetically engineered bacteria to devour oil slicks. This patent was granted by the US Supreme Court in 1971 to Chakrabarty and the US transnational company, the GEC, even though Chakrabarty himself remarked that he had "merely shuffled the genes, changing bacteria that already existed".

"It is like teaching your pet cat a few new tricks", he said.

The bacterial organism he got patented was itself found to be useless for eating oil in open seas, and thus failed to satisfy the test of utility of the 'discovery' for the patent.

yBut this set a precedent for patenting of life and life-forms including seeds, plants, mice, sheep, cows and even parts of human beings. Only the US Constitutional prohibition against slavery appears to be standing in the way of patenting of human beings.

Recently, the patent claimed on the cell line of Guayana Indian women in the US was forced to be given up because of worldwide protests against patenting of indigenous people.

But the US in 1995 has granted to its National Institute of Health a patent on the cell line of an Hagahai man from Papua New Guinea.

Sheeps and cows have been patented as pharmaceutical factories and 'bio-reactors'. And in Europe, an attempt was made to file a patent claim on a woman's breast which was genetically engineered to produce pharmaceuticals in her breast milk.

The case of John Moore and the patenting of his cell line by his doctors, Dr. Shiva said, highlighted that the new era of patenting was also the era of "biological piracy" -- since Moore's cell lines had been appropriated and patented for commercial gain by his doctor and assistant and the Calfornia University.

The large number of companies that had been involved in the GATT in drafting the TRIPs code, Dr. Shiva added, had all been involved in the pirating of biological material.

Right from the first patent on life, Dr. Shiva asserted, none of the criteria that are supposed to be applied for the grant of a patent had been followed. "No life form is ever created" by merely shuffling the genes that exist.

Challenging the view that patenting and patent monopolies are needed for discovering medicines, Dr. Shiva pointed out that penicillin and insulin were not patented by the scientists who developed them. Their foresight had made these life-saving drugs freely and cheaply available to all people.

Allowing patents on biological material, Dr. Shiva said, would open the flood gates for piracy as there was a huge market for biological products. All herbal plants, now in the public domain, would be available for piracy, if patenting of life-forms was allowed in the country.

Mr. Keyala, chairman of the National Working Group on patents, said that in the bill pending before the Rajya Sabha, the scope of protection for trade-markets had been enlarged.

The TRIPs agreement allowed a transition period of five years for amending the trade-marks legislation and to bring it in line. There was therefore no justification for the government's attempt to rush through the amending bill in Parliament.

Considerations of public interest had also not been taken into account. The amending bill allowed for collective trade marks and this would lead to cartelization and monopolisation and would result in high prices.