ENVIRONMENT: Biotech Industry Cautioned Over Good Intentions

By Stephen Leahy Reprint | | Print |

Stephen Leahy

TORONTO, Canada, Jun 14 2002 (IPS) - Biotechnology companies intend to foster the development of medicines for the world’s poorest people and ensure that developing countries benefit when local plants or remedies are used for new drugs. In exchange, they want open markets, harmonised regulations, and respect for their intellectual property rights.

“Our industry needs to formulate its first foreign policy, one which is cognizant of the miserable judgements and mistakes of other industries and avoids them,” said Carl Feldbaum, president of the Biotechnology Industry Organisation (BIO), a corporate group.

“Our goal must be to ensure the widest possible dissemination of biotechnology’s benefits while respecting the diversity of the world’s nations and peoples,” Feldbaum told the BIO 2002 conference, held here this week.

The industry gathering drew some 15,000 participants from 52 countries. A few blocks away, about 1,000 people attended an outdoor protest against genetically modified organisms (GMOs).

“It’s far too soon for the products of biotechnology to be in foods, medicines or fields,” Canadian geneticist, author and environmental activist David Suzuki told the gathering.

“In future, biotechnology may in fact have a very important role in food, health and environmental issues,” Suzuki said, but for now not enough is understood about how it works or the risks involved.

Feldbaum said he believes that future has arrived and promised to help create an “orphan-drug programme for diseases of the developing world.” This would offer incentives to companies to develop medicines for diseases common in the South despite the poor prospect of profits.

Drug and biotech firms have generally failed to develop new treatments for diseases of the South, like malaria and tuberculosis, and have been roundly criticised for pricing AIDS drugs beyond the reach of the poor. More than 90 percent of research and development by the pharmaceutical industry goes to diseases of concern in the North, said Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, director of the United Nations Human Development Office.

While BIO will lobby governments for money for the orphan drug programme, the Institute for Global Health has been working with the United States and the European Union to grant a company that develops a new medicine an extended period of market exclusivity in the South. Under the plan, the company would keep drug prices low and, in exchange, receive a good return on its product investment, albeit over a longer time frame.

Distribution of new drugs will require more trusting and trustworthy relationships with foreign governments, the World Health Organisation and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) like Medicins sans Frontieres (MSF, or Doctors Without Borders), said Feldbaum.

He also acknowledged the industry needs to clean up its act regarding “bioprospecting”, the use of genetic resources in indigenous plants, animals, and peoples for drugs and other products.

BIO is developing voluntary guidelines for companies to respect cultures and ensure fair compensation to indigenous peoples. “Some of these matters require international co-operation and treaties,” said Feldbaum.

If biotechnology is going to help the South, then it needs to focus on creating virus resistant, drought-tolerant and nutrient-enhanced traditional crops like millet, sorghum and cassava, said Fukuda-Parr.

“Of course, farmers living on less than one dollar a day don’t represent much of a market,” she said. There is great need for much more public investment in research and development to ensure that biotechnology meets the agricultural needs of the world’s poor, she added.

While more than 10 billion dollars has being invested by private companies into crop research, the public-sector Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR) has only been able to raise less than 400 million dollars, she said.

While the South can benefit from these new technologies, they have little capacity to manage the environmental and health risks with safety testing or regulation, Fukuda-Parr said, adding: “The introduction of new technologies like biotechnology must be coupled with capacity building.”

Another important consideration is to ensure that the benefits enrich the poor and not those who are already rich, she said.

Feldbaum said companies genuinely want to help but need governments to stop using regulations restricting GMO crops and international treaties, like the Biosafety Protocol, as trade barriers.

“We would hope that global regulatory systems (would) not be hijacked in spasms of anti-Americanism,” he said.

However, he added, none of this matters if governments refuse to respect biotechnology-based intellectual property. Patent portfolios are virtually the only assets for the more than 90 percent of companies that have yet to sell a product. Without a strong international system for intellectual property protection, countries cannot expect to benefit from the new technology.

Others remained more circumspect.

Industry should listen to its critics, said Fukuda-Parr. “There are genuine concerns. The scientific evidence around environmental and health risks are up for debate,” she said.

“It’s a revolutionary technology that’s just in its infancy, but it’s being rushed into commercialisation to make money for corporations,” said Suzuki, adding that the promoters of the technology, including scientists, must be honest about the limitations and the risks.