biotech, bioweapons and pharmaceutical corporations are all in favor of less restriction on animal testing to experiment with their genetically engineered products. These same corporations will be in SF 4 the BIOtech 2004 conference June 3-9th, no doubt attempting to force their chemically altered products on animals and people..
Why are these corporations becoming so powerful, besides US gov subsidies?
Biotech scientific establishment has a hold on the youth from an early age, some of the intro biology textbooks published by Peter Raven may hold clues why biotech is accepted by so many people. The Raven biology textbook contains info on how to genetically engineer life forms by inserting a viral/bacterial plasmid into the DNA of another living organism. This presents the genetic engineering method as acceptable and students are encouraged to pursue research in that field. ("Biotech's where the money is" said my biology teacher at community college) Raven is also head of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, heavily subsidized by Monsanto. Raven called out to the scientific community to document all the living plant species on the plant and record their taxonomy info. This is a form of biopatenting, claiming intellectual property rights of the genetic sequence of plant DNA/RNA. Medicinal plants are sought after the most, pharmaceutical products come from derived plant chemical compounds. By claiming ownership of the plant's DNA, it becomes easier for the corporations to manipulate the molecular biochemistry of the plant itself..
The pharmaceutical corporations step in next, finding various chemical compounds in the medicinal plant that they attempt to isolate and duplicate in the form of a pill. Not only medicinal plants are used, others are used because they have strong chemicals used as cleaning and/or solvents. These are also tested on animals to determine their safety to humans..
Genetically engineered products will be tested on animals also, and there's nothing the animal rights activists can do about it. Security fences shield the biotech corporation from any outside influence, private security patrols the electric fence perimeter. Society believes the animals suffer for the benefit of humans, so most people are not outspoken against the cruelty of these institutions..
The problem is greater than animal testing, it comes from the pharmacuetical/bioweapons/biotech corporations itself. This is the root cause of the problem, animal testing is one of the side effects, along with Prozac molecular compounds in the sewer water that is taken up and later discovered in the tissue of ocean fish..
To stop animal testing corps like HLS and Chiron, we must stop the pharma/GE/biotech corporations that make the products they test on animals in the first place..
Medicine is a healthy lifestyle and natural herbal remedies (no animal testing needed), avoiding petrochemical pollution that makes people sick with cancer in the first place..
On a personal note, i am a former biology student at Humboldt State University. The material forced upon us by the state institution is all about continuing this disgusting molecular manipulation of life. My reasons for withdrawing from class for moral reasons were deemed unacceptable by the chemistry teacher Joshua Smith and the head of the Chemistry department. Assume the same for biology chair Milton Boyd, a man more concerned with securing grants from biotech corporations than the well being of students and the ecosystem. The interaction made me feel worthless and irrelevent, like my life had lost meaning since i was no longer interested in performing research for the scientific establishment..
So i fail their pro GE science classes, how does that compare to farmer's lives being stolen by GE corps or primates chewing off their thumbs while being experimented on in cages?
The cold hearted attitude of HSU establishment science saddens me but am also glad to be free from this oppressive institution that is anything but a free education. This gives me more time to study permaculture and holistic understanding of nature like deep ecology. Unfortunately these fields are not as well funded because corporations cannot become wealthy if people plant corn, beans and squash (3 sisters) on their own instead of depending on expensive equipment to genetically engineer plant seeds..
We will reclaim the commons and free animals from their cages when we shut down the biotech corporations in SF..
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I was suprised to be told recently that patents were being considered for applications of particular chemicals, which is a great facilitator to biopiracy, ripping off and patenting traditional ethnobotanical uses. Formerly, for many years, you could not patent something that was found in nature, as I understand it at least- that was a given reason why natural medicines were not joining in with man-made pharmaceuticals under the umbrella of "respectability" that man-made stuff enjoys.
Keep an eye out for things that help achieve a proprietary monopoly on the genetic or plant material themselves. There's a staggering bunch of import / export / phytosanitary / conservation laws, and I cannot find anyone who truly seems to even understand them, including the people who enforce them, or who know whether the laws posted on their respective sites are even current. The only people they seem to not discourage from participating in conservation are the corporations seeking to monopolize the gene pool in various ways, which of course also try to take the form of vague blanket regulation on anything potentially "medicinal"- unbeknownst to most people giving an approving nod to this stuff, that may be most of the plant kingdom, actually.
All of these laws may have some vague basis in legitimate need, hence they are able to take on the very noble guise of protecting us from invasive plants, blights, and pests, but they generally seem streched far beyond the limit of reason. If someone / anyone cared to check the mud in my boots for plant diseases as I was coming from Canada, in addition to possibly being supposed to check (or fumigate, without labelling them as to whether they and their packaging been chemically treated?) every packet of seeds that came from Canada, for example, I might begin to see the sanity. At this point I mainly see a wealth of possible ulterior motives advantageous only to industrial monopolies.
While little may be actually prohibited per se, the permit process, the expenses, and the confusion are demonstrably deterrent to conservation of this material- looking for someone to ship a particular plant from the UK that is not available here (and there are many such plants, and many European growers are small and working in limited space and therefore geared to production of small plants not large seed producing plants) may be like looking for a needle in a haystack.
Some of the people making use of public comment periods on some of these laws are active gardeners in the larger Rock Gardening societies. Many of these societies have seed exchanges which are affected in many ways by these laws, and they have a vested interest in having an impact on the laws so that they can keep their seed exchanges going. These seed exchanges can also be opportunities to obtain seed of certain medicinal or potentially medicinal plants, cleverly disguised as rock garden ornamentals, although the supply of a certain seed may be a few packets that came from a single gardener in a given year, and nothing will be very consistent without more active participation in that process.
They also have a vested interest in challenging absurdities in the laws, i.e., laws that refer to regulation of seed by quantity, where some seed is too infinitesimally small to count. Again, I can't seem to find where anyone fully understands these laws including their enforcers, but this seems like a good place to look for those who are trying, and fighting this fight on that particular field of this battle. Or so that is what the battle looks like on that front, to the best of my understanding...