Human Genomics

Who Owns Nature?

New report warns of corporate concentration, commodification of nature; highlights global resistance grounded in "Food Sovereignty"

ETC Group today releases a 48-page report, "Who Owns Nature?" on corporate concentration in commercial food, farming, health and the strategic push to commodify the planet's remaining natural resources.

In a world where market research is becoming increasingly proprietary and pricey, ETC Group's report names names, discloses market share and provides top 10 industry rankings up and down the corporate food chain. Not all the corporations identified in ETC Group's new report are household names, but collectively they control a staggering share of the commercial products found on industrial farms, in our refrigerators and medicine cabinets.

An international advocacy... Read more

(PDF2 above contains the complete poster)

News Release Coalition Against Biopiracy Wednesday, 21 May 2008 www.captainhookawards.org www.etcgroup.org

Captain Hook Awards for Biopiracy 2008

The Coalition Against Biopiracy* exposes Hooks and celebrates Cogs

Winners announced at the UN’s Biodiversity Convention in Bonn

Today the world learned which corporations, governments, institutions and individuals earned a spot in biopiracy’s hall of shame when the Coalition Against Biopiracy (CAB) announced the winners of the 5th Captain Hook Awards at a lunch-time ceremony during the Ninth Conference of the Parties (COP9) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in Bonn, Germany.

“The Maritim Hotel, where the CBD meets this week and next, was the perfect place to... Read more

ETC Group 3 March 2008                             www.etcgroup.org Special Report on Human Genomics Direct-to-Consumer DNA Testing and the Myth of Personalized Medicine: Spit Kits, SNP Chips and Human Genomics The topic of this report is the burgeoning Direct-to-Consumer (DTC) genetic testing industry, which is promising consumers a guidebook for maintaining health as well as a gene-based horoscope predicting future illness. Issue & Impact: “Personalized medicine” is based on the belief that we can – or, one day soon will be able to – detect, prevent and treat disease according to an individual’s genetic profile. “Gene-informed,”[1] individualized medicine is being touted as a boon to health and longevity around the world, though its efficacy and usefulness have yet to be demonstrated.... Read more

ETC Group

News Release

8 December 2007

www.etcgroup.org 

Extreme Monopoly:

Venter’s Team Makes Vast Patent Grab on Synthetic Genomes

Six months ago ETC Group exposed the Venter Institute’s controversial patent applications on the world’s first human-made living organism built entirely from synthetic DNA (dubbed “Synthia” by ETC Group). Newly published patent claims reveal an even bigger grab for ownership of synthetic life.

A suite of patent applications lodged by J. Craig Venter and his colleagues claims exclusive monopoly on a wide swath of synthetic biology and demonstrate a not-so-subtle move to position Venter’s company, Synthetic Genomics, Inc., as the ‘microbesoft’ of synthetic life. Find out about Read more

Nanotech Rx

Medical applications of Nano-scale technologies: What Impact on Marginalized communities?

Issue: Medical applications of nano-scale technologies have the potential to revolutionize healthcare by delivering powerful tools for diagnosing and treating disease at the molecular level. But the current zeal for nano-enabledmedicines could divert scarce medical R&D funds away from essential health services and direct resources away from non-medical aspects of community health and wellbeing. Although nanomedicine is being touted as a solution to pressing health needs in the global South, it is being driven from the North and is designed primarily for wealthy markets. Using nano-scale technologies, the pharmaceutical industry’s ultimate goal is to make every person a patient and every patient a paying customer by “medicating” social ills with human performance enhancement (HyPE) drugs and devices. Nanoenabled HyPEs could usher in an era of... Read more

19th May 2006 NEWS RELEASE

Global Coalition Sounds the Alarm on Synthetic Biology, Demands Oversight and Societal Debate

Today, a coalition of thirty-eight international organizations including scientists, environmentalists, trade unionists, biowarfare experts and social justice advocates called for inclusive public debate, regulation and oversight of the rapidly advancing field of synthetic biology - the construction of unique and novel artificial life forms to perform specific tasks. Synthetic biologists are meeting this weekend in Berkeley, California where they plan to announce a voluntary code of self-regulation for their work (1). The organizations signing the Open Letter are calling on synthetic biologists to abandon their proposals for self-governance and to engage in an inclusive process of global societal debate on the implications of their work (see attached Open Letter).

"The researchers meeting in Berkeley acknowledge the dangers of... Read more

Background Document

Synthetic Biology - Global Societal Review Urgent!

Synthetic biology (the attempt to create artificial living organisms) should be self-regulated say scientists at Berkeley assembly. Civil Society organizations say "No!"

"If biologists are indeed on the threshold of synthesizing new life forms, the scope for abuse or inadvertent disaster could be huge." Nature, October 2004

Scientists working at the interface of engineering and biology - in the new field of "synthetic biology" - worry that public distrust of biotechnology could impede their research or draw attention to regulatory chasms. Synthetic biologists are trying to design and construct artificial living systems to perform specific tasks, such as producing pharmaceutical compounds or energy. In October 2004, the journal Nature warned, "if biologists are indeed on the threshold of synthesizing new life forms, the scope for abuse or... Read more

The Coalition Against Biopiracy exposed the globe's nastiest biopirates and rewarded the most steadfast resistors at the Captain Hook Awards on 24 March during the meeting of the 8th Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity in Curitiba, Brazil. This ETC Group Communique provides a detailed description of the 2006 award winners.

New from ETC Group – January 2006

New Publications

ETC at World Social Forum in Caracas

Coming Soon: ETC Blog

State of the World 2006 includes a chapter on nanotechnology written by ETC Group. "Shrinking Science: An Introduction to Nanotechnology" provides an overview of tiny tech and its colossal societal impacts. ETC's chapter concludes: "In the coming decades, technologies converging at the nanoscale will revolutionize the design and manufacture of new materials, blur the distinction between living and non-living matter, and change the very definition of what it means to be human. The challenge is to go beyond the tired and familiar approach of technocratic regulations related to 'risk' and to gain an innovative capacity for democratic control and assessment of science and technology."

Copies of the State of the World 2006 can be ordered here: Read more

ETC GroupNews Release16 December 2005www.etcgroup.org

ETC Group Releases New Report on Corporate Power, Oligopoly, Inc. 2005

As governments at the 6th WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong bristle with the thorny politics of trade, the report that ETC Group releases today, Oligopoly, Inc. 2005, serves as a reminder that what looks like buying and selling between countries is most often the redistribution of capital among subsidiaries of the same parent multinational corporation.

ETC Group's new report is available at www.etcgroup.org

 In Oligopoly, Inc. 2005 ETC Group revisits the sectors analyzed in Oligopoly, Inc. 2003 and finds that corporate concentration - not only in food and agriculture, but in all sectors related to the products and processes of life - has increased remarkably since the last review two years ago. Since then:

* the world's top 10 seed companies have increased their... Read more

In Oligopoly, Inc. 2005 ETC Group finds that corporate concentration -- not only in food and agriculture, but in all sectors related to the products and processes of life -- has increased remarkably since ETC's last review two years ago. The report also reveals that a subterranean struggle is underway at the nano-scale to control the fundamental building blocks of life and nature. Corporate investment in nanobiotechnology (or, synthetic biology) could give ultimate control to a very different set of corporate actors.

July/August 2005
Special Report - Communiqué No. 89

At the Gleneagles Summit earlier this month, the G(whiz)8 pronounced 'More Science' to be the South's solution to poverty and global warming. Behind the scenes, the leading nano nations are rushing to set the rules for global nanotechnology governance.

ETC Group announces the release of "A Tiny Primer on Nano-scale Technologies ...and The Little BANG Theory", a 20 (small) pages pocket guide to nanotechology- a suite of techniques used to manipulate matter at the scale of atoms and molecules.

ETC Group News Release 14 February 2005 www.etcgroup.org

Syngenta to let Mega-Genome Patent Lapse: "Daisy-cutter" Patent Bomb Busted

Following 72 hours of negotiations by e-mail, telephone and in-person, the Swiss Gene Giant Syngenta confirmed to ETC Group last Friday, February 11, that it would allow its multi-genome patent application covering the flowering sequences in at least 40 plant species to lapse at the European Patent Office (EPO), the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) and around the world. Syngenta's announcement follows a month-long campaign launched by ETC Group and supported by farmers' organizations, trade unions and other civil society organizations.

The patent was called the "daisy-cutter" after the world's largest conventional bomb, which has parachuted from US Air Force cargo planes to clear troop-landing sites in Vietnam and during the Gulf and Iraq Wars. The daisy-cutter... Read more

Technology Trends: ETC Group Workshops on New Technologies, Agriculture and Corporate Power at World Social Forum, Porto Alegre (Brazil) 26th -30th January 2005

It's the worlds biggest Jamboree of grassroots social action and new ideas. Once again ETC Group (Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration) will be hosting and speaking at various events at the World Social Forum (Porto Alegre Brazil 26th-30th Jan). Our workshops aim to empower Social Movements and Civil Society to identify and resist the damage from the new waves of corporate technologies and industrial concentration breaking globally across society. We will be providing workshops addressing concerns stretching from nanotechnology, genomics and human enhancement technologies to new forms of Biopiracy (theft of cultural and genetic resources by the gene giants) as well as sharing the celebration of the ongoing defence of biodiversity and food sovereignty by indigenous and small farmers. As well as... Read more

ETC Group News Release November 23, 2004 www.etcgroup.org

ETC Group releases Down on the Farm: The Impact of Nano-Scale Technologies on Food and Agriculture

The ETC Group, an international research and advocacy organisation based in Ottawa, Canada, today announces the publication of Down on the Farm, the first comprehensive look at how nano-scale technologies will affect farmers, food and agriculture. Nanotechnology refers to the manipulation of matter at the scale of atoms and molecules, where size is measured in billionths of metres and quantum physics determines how a substance behaves. According to Hope Shand, ETC Group’s Research Director, "Over the next two decades, technologies converging at the nano-scale will have a greater impact on farmers and food than farm mechanisation or the Green Revolution."

Down on the Farm dishes out... Read more

Nanotechnology, the manipulation of matter at the scale of atoms and molecules, is rapidly converging with biotech and information technology to radically change food and agricultural systems. Over the next two decades, the impacts of nano-scale convergence on farmers and food will exceed that of farm mechanisation or of the Green Revolution. No government has developed a regulatory regime that addresses the nano-scale or the societal impacts of the invisibly small. A handful of food and nutrition products containing invisible and unregulated nano-scale additives are already commercially available. Likewise, a number of pesticides formulated at the nano-scale are on the market and have been released in the environment. "Down on the Farm" is the first comprehensive look at how nano-scale technologies will affect farmers, food and agriculture.

O Impacto das Nanotecnologias na Alimentação e na Agricultura

Novembro de 2004

A nanotecnologia, a manipulação da matéria na escala dos átomos e moléculas está rapidamente convergindo com a biotecnologia e tecnologia da informação para alterar radicalmente os sistemas de alimentação e agricultura. Nas próximas duas décadas, os impactos da convergência da escala nanométrica sobre os agricultores e alimentos serão maiores que os da mecanização agrícola ou da Revolução Verde. Nenhum governo desenvolveu um regime de regulamentação que considere os aspectos relativos � escala nanométrica. "A Invasão Invisível do Campo" é o primeiro relatório que analisa as profundas implicações das tecnologias nanoescalares para os agricultores, a comida e a... Read more