Trading the genome : investigating the commodification of bio-information / Bronwyn Parry.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Parry, Bronwyn.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Biotechnology--Social aspects.

Biotechnology.

Germplasm resources.

Bioinformatics.

Physical Description:

xxi, 319 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

New York : Columbia University Press, [2004]

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.

Contents:

2 The Collection of Nature and the Nature of Collecting 12

Revealing the Social and Spatial Dynamics of Collecting 14

Collecting as Simple Acquisition: Decontextualization and Exoticization 16

Collection as Concentration and Control 19

Collection as Recirculation and Regulation 32

New World Collectors 38

3 Speedup: Accelerating the Social and Spatial Dynamics of Collecting 42

Retheorizing Life Forms: Material and Informational? 45

The Rise of the Information and Bio-Information Economies 54

Emerging Markets: The Regulation of Trade in Bio-Information 78

4 New Collectors, New Collections 102

"When the world was a kinder and gentler place": Early Players and Vacation Pursuits 103

"An historic revival of collecting" 107

Impetus for the Revival: Technological Change 113

The Biodiversity Convention: New Protocols and New Ratioanles 117

GATT TRIPs: New Protections, New Incentives 122

The Practice and Process of Collecting 126

5 The Fate of the Collections 150

From Reproduction to Replication 151

"Build it for us" 156

Combinations and Permutations 160

The Diminishing Role of in situ Collecting 166

The Advent of Microsourcing 172

Re-mining ex situ Collections 176

The Emerging Trade in Collected Genetic and Biochemical Materials 183

Hire Plants: Renters and Brokers 190

Transacting Bio-Information: Licensing and "Pay-Per-View" 195

6 Taming the Slippery Beast: Regulating Trade in Bio-Information 200

Compensatory Agreements: The Rise of a Proto-Universal Culture of Regulation? 203

Networks, Capillaries, and the Geography of Knowledge Systems 207

Compensatory Agreements: Investigating Terms and Conditions 214

Infrastructural Support and Technical Training 218

Future Benefits: Royalty Payments 224

Taming the Slippery Beast 229

Regulating the Unlicensed Copying of Bio-Information 233

Concentration and Control: Patenting Collected Materials 239

The Complexities of "Co-Inventorship" 243

7 Back to the Future 249.

Notes:

Revision of author's PHD thesis entitled The fate of the collections--University of Cambridge, 1998.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 297-308) and index.

ISBN:

0231121741

OCLC:

54529485