Life For Sale as Never Before:
The Human Genetic Map Released
Explorers have discovered a vast, untouched frontier, as full of riches
and resources as anyone could imagine. This new world promises to change the
human experience more than anything has for hundreds, if not thousands of
years. Some of our most fundamental problems will be solved, we'll understand
life as never before, and there's a whole lot of money to be made.
It should be no surprise, someone else already lives there. Fortunately,
they are of no use to us and aren't even human beings. They stand no chance
of stopping our abuse of their home.
Sound familiar? It ought to, because the practice of "discovering" a "new"
place and colonizing it have been justified with the same language for
hundreds of years. The process continues today. Now it is the building blocks
of life itself that are targeted for exploitation. Indigenous people will
suffer in this new wave of colonization, as will a whole new (and beautiful)
level of life. On Monday February 12th, after years of research all around
the globe, the genetic structures of human DNA were shown to the public for
the first time.
The taming of these fundamental mysteries is closely related to the
destruction of the earth's last biocentric, indigenous cultures. As if
colonization of the Genetic Frontier isn't frightening enough, this conquest
is decimating tribal people and their ecosystems.
In recent years, both the publicly funded (by the National Institute of
Health and, strangely, the Department of Energy) and privately funded efforts
(by Celera Genomics, arguably the most powerful genetics corporation in the
world) working to map the genetic structure of human beings ("the human
genome") have been accused of a crime called Biopiracy. First-world
scientists have traveled to undeveloped parts of the world to extract DNA
from healthier, more robust indigenous peoples and the ecosystems they live
in. The scientists then patent the DNA they acquire from these samples, never
sharing the huge profits with those from whom the resources originated. No
medicines are shared, because even if indigenous people could somehow afford
them, the science is aimed at curing the diseases of industrial civilization.
In the skewed logic of colonialism, indigenous cultures not exploiting
their resources for maximum profit and industry are declared to be wasting
them. The resources are taken and the people destroyed. This is how
colonizing cultures have treated tribal people and their land all around the
world. It this case, it is not the geneticists who wipe out indigenous
societies, but they take from them whatever is of value; then the indigenous
cultures are destroyed by neoliberal economics, "The War On (Some) Drugs,"
foreign aid development projects, or simple military force.
Everyone can look into history now and understand what Europeans did to
Native Americans 500 years ago was wrong. Many people today, if they learn
about it, realize that biopiracy and contemporary destruction of indigenous
people and their ecosystems- are morally wrong as well. How many of us,
though, pondered the ominous events on the horizon when Rick Weiss, a
reporter for the Washington Post wrote on Sunday February 11th the following
passage in celebration of the human genetic map's public release.
"Most of the rest of the human genome is filled with weird lifelike
entities that have settled in the genome like squatters. Among them are
microscopic bits of foreign DNA that live like parasites on human DNA and
even smaller bits that sponge off those parasites."
"Although scientists have known that such critters existed in the human
genome, only now have they been able to see how many there really are, how
they are distributed among people's genes, and how these complex communities
evolved inside the cells of human ancestors over millions of years.
"Taken together, the new findings show the human genome to be far more than a
mere sequence of biological code written on a twisted strand of DNA. It is a
dynamic and vibrant ecosystem of its own, reminiscent of the thriving world
of tiny Who's that Dr.Seuss's elephant, Horton, discovered on a speck of dust.
"Some parts of the genome are rich in human genes, like biodiverse
tropical rainforests, where genes crucial for human life- and some that cause
disease- perform their various jobs in the body...Hundreds of other [genes]
are expected to turn up in the next few years, speeding the development of
new drugs and diagnostic tests."
Other regions of the genome are essentially genetic 'deserts,' where
there's nary a human gene for as far as the eye can see but where life, of a
sort, perseveres nonetheless. Like genes, the entities living in these vast
stretches of the human genome are made of DNA, the doubly coiled molecule of
heredity. But they don't contain coded messages to make anything useful for
the human body.
"Most are able to persist and replicate within the human genome but are so
dependent on the genome that they can never leave it."
It might seem trivial to worry about life forms so small, standing in the
way of such a wealth of information, power and profit. But who amongst us is
willing to leap into exploiting the next "biodiverse tropical rainforest"
inhabited by "complex communities" so dependent on their "dynamic and vibrant
ecosystem" that they "can never leave it?" We certainly can't call such life
forms "squatters!"
More important is the question: who will stand up and stop those who are
exploiting this new frontier, as well as the human bodies and "full- sized"
ecosystems that these genetic communities created in the first place? Will we
be able to prevent the same ignorant, cruel histories of destruction seen in
colonialism's first wave from being repeated today? A movement has already
begun, and it is based in the communities who have the best perspective and
most at stake in the issue.
In 1995, 17 organizations created by indigenous people from North, South
and Central America ratified the Declaration of Indigenous Peoples of the
Western Hemisphere Regarding the Human Genome Project. It reads, "Our
responsibility as Indigenous Peoples is to insure that the continuity of the
natural order of all life is maintained for generations to come. In the long
history of destruction which has accompanied Western colonization we have
come to realize that the agenda of non-indigenous forces has been to
appropriate and manipulate the natural order for the purposes of profit,
power and control. Genetic technologies, which manipulate and change the
fundamental core and identity of any life form, are an absolute violation of
the principles of nature and create the potential for unpredictable and
therefor dangerous consequences. Therefor, we the indigenous people
participation in this meeting, reject all programs involving genetic
technology. We oppose the patenting of all natural genetic materials. We hold
that life cannot be bought, owned, sold, discovered or patented, even in its
smallest form. We denounce all instruments of economic apparatus such as
NAFTA, GATT and the WTO, which continue to exploit people and natural
resources to profit powerful corporations assisted by governments and
military forces of developed countries. We call on our brothers and sisters
of the indigenous nations around the world and concerned people in the
international community to stand up and unite in our efforts to protect the
natural diversity and integrity of all life."
By 1996, according to the Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism,
the US Department of Commerce had already applied for patents of the
genetic "cell lines" of indigenous individuals from Panama, Papua New Guinea
and the Solomon Islands. Referring to Indigenous populations as "isolates of
historic interest (IHI's)" the Human Genome Diversity Project moved to
collect DNA samples from indigenous people around the world, immortalize them
with cell replication technology, and store them in gene banks in order
to "avoid the irreversible loss of precious genetic information." This
presumes, of course, that the people themselves will be destroyed.
The Indigenous Peoples Council on Biocolonialism writes, "In this new age
of bio-prospecting, indigenous knowledge and biological resources are
extremely threatened by appropriation. Tribes must prepare to protect their
biological resources from exploitation."
Herman Merivale once wrote, "The history of European settlements in
America, Africa and Australia, presents everywhere the same general features-
a wide and sweeping destruction of native races by the uncontrolled violence
of individuals, if not of colonial authorities, followed by tardy attempts on
the part of governments to repair the acknowledged crime.... Desolation goes
before us, and civilization lags slowly and lamely behind."
Merivale made that observation not from the vantage point of history, but
in 1861. According to anthropologist John H. Bodley, it was between the years
1800 and 1930 that indigenous societies around the world lost between 80 and
95 percent of their populations due to colonization. The last of those
people, and the intact ecosystems they live in, are being ravaged once more
as European culture seeks to plunder the tropical rainforests and complex
communities of the newly discovered genetic frontier. Countless philosophers
have theorized why some cultures seem obligated to perpetually expand, at
every one else's expense. We need to get to the bottom of these issues in our
culture, so that the recurring narrative of colonialism can be challenged.
The author can be reached by e-mail aaceugene@hotmail.com