By IPS Correspondents
WASHINGTON, Sep 17 1996 (IPS)

Indigenous groups from South America and the Pacific hope testimony they presented here this week will persuade scientists to suspend a project which collects samples of their blood for genetic research.

Members of indigenous communities from Colombia and the Solomon Islands presented their objections to the Washington-based National Academy of Sciences, which will advise the U.S. government whether to continue funding the project scientists say will provide rich insights into the human species.

The Academy heard complaints that the potentially lucrative Human Genome Diversity Project (HGDP) was going ahead without the informed consent of its main target groups: indigenous peoples.

“We, the indigenous people, reject this scientific arrogance,” Abadio Green Stocel, President of the National Indigenous People’s Organisation of Colombia (ONIC), told the Academy. “Our communities don’t know where the samples taken from us are today.”

His testimony came Monday at a public hearing attended by members of the Academy’s ‘Committee on Human Genome Diversity’.

The question is, said committee chairman Dr William Schull, “Is there a happy meeting ground or are the differences (over the project) irreconcilable?”

Identifying herself as an “an indigenous Solomon Islands mother of two”, Ruth Liloqula demanded to know who owned the HGDP and gave it the mandate to act internationally. She warned that the project opened the way for private monopoly control over the genetic material.

“How many countries have been consulted in the planning of this project?” she asked the scientists. “How does this project intend to inform indigenous people about the activities it is going to carry out?”

As first spelled out in 1991 by five U.S.-based scientists, including population geneticist Luca Cavalli-Sforza at Stanford University and molecular anthropologist Allan Wilson at the University of California, Berkeley, genetic samples would be collected from 700 diverse groups to provide insights into cultures, languages, the prehistoric movement of peoples, and the genetic basis of people’s susceptibility to different diseases.

The plan calls for cell lines and DNA to be prepared from samples of blood, hair, or saliva taken especially from populations that are geographically isolated or have a distinct culture and language. Researchers argue that these populations have more valuable information than genetically mixed, urban communities.

John Moore, a North American representative of the HGDP from the University of Florida, said he was mainly interested in human evolution and adaptations to various regions of the world.

Moore, who testified that it was important to work with populations with a range of historical features, pointed out that the North American Committee of the HGDP was developing an ethical protocol to guide the collection of DNA samples.

“It is only a draft, and we’re revising it constantly,” he said. “And we wait anxiously for the report of this committee, because it would say what direction we should take.”

The Rural Advancement Foundation International (RAFI), a group based in Ottawa which campaigns against Western corporations’ exploitation of plant species from developing countries, has led the drive against the project over the past three years.

Though HGDP officials insist the project itself has no commercial ambitions, RAFI says the plan should not go forward until it adequately addresses the ethical and commercial implications of warehousing the DNA of remote peoples for medical research.

Scientists developing treatments for AIDS, leukemia, obesity, asthma, Alzheimer’s and other diseases use DNA from human chromosomes, which make up the human genome and carry all of an individual’s inherited genetic information.

Patented genes have long been a mainstay of biotechnology companies. Many drugs on the market — those that fight anaemia, promote growth, and prevent heart attacks — are produced with patented genes and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in annual sales.

“RAFI believes that moral, ethical, and legal issues have not been adequately addressed by the HGDP,” the organisation’s Hope Shand told the Academy. “Among these are issues of human rights, national sovereignty and patent claims on human genetic material.”

The issue erupted last year when the U.S. National Institutes of Health received the patent on a human cell line drawn from an indigenous person from Papua New Guinea.

“It is, to our knowledge, the first time that the government of one country has been allowed to patent the genetic material of an indigenous citizen of another country,” says Shand. “The patenting of human genes will become even more controversial if money is to be made from poor people whose physical survival is in question.”

RAFI says that the draft ethical protocol developed by the North American Committee of the HGDP lacks “plausible enforcement mechanisms, and that if commercially viable DNA samples are discovered, there was nothing to stop drug companies from descending on the population that donated the samples.

It says a number of questions are yet to be answered:

“Who is the HGDP? Who will be bound by this protocol?” she asked. “We have been told the HGDP is not operational — that it’s simply a proposal. Yet scientists and academics often identify themselves as members of the HGDP.”

The Academy will present its recommendations on the project in January.

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