Misuse of Intellectual property rights
is crippling biotechnology
Open source genetics needed to feed the world, says Scientific American
top 50 leader
Tuesday 25 November 2003
Australian geneticist Richard Jefferson is calling on the
global biotechnology community to adopt open access genetics – freeing up the
tools of modern genetics and biology from the shackles of excessive patenting.
In Australia Jefferson may be a quiet achiever, but
internationally he’s in demand. Today he was recognised as one of the top 50
technology leaders of 2003 by Scientific American, the prestigious science
magazine.
According to Scientific American, “The Green
Revolution—the steady increase in crop yields that started in the 1960s—is
starting to bump up against limitations of land use, water supply, pest control
and existing plant genetic variety. Biotechnology may be able to help, but so
far it has pretty much passed the developing world by. Few have done more to
change that than Richard Jefferson.”
Richard Jefferson founded CAMBIA, the Center for the
Application of Molecular Biology to International Agriculture, in Canberra in
1991. CAMBIA employs 40 scientists and is a Charles Sturt University affiliated
research centre.
Jefferson credits the extraordinary quality of the
international staff at CAMBIA for this recognition. “The vision, creativity and
hard work of the many individuals who have strived to make CAMBIA a success have
really earned this recognition for our efforts”.
Jefferson is a Schwab Foundation Outstanding Social
Entrepreneur. He was invited to speak at the World Economic Forum in Davos
earlier this year, and has been invited back in 2004, where key aspects of
CAMBIA’s new Open Access program, called BIOS, will be announced. He works with
The Rockefeller Foundation; The UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO);
The World Intellectual Property Organisation (WIPO); CGIAR; and many others.
To quote Wired Magazine, where CAMBIA “a force in
agricultural technology’ and Jefferson’s ideas feature prominently in the
November issue - intellectual property is “a legal regime that has become so
stifling and restrictive that thousands of free-thinking programmers,
scientists, designers, engineers, and scholars are desperate to find new ways to
create.”
Jefferson says, “The real issue is the contribution that
wise use of biotechnology can make to global health and nutrition– if we free up
access to the tools for the people who really need them.”
“Inadequate nutrition is responsible for more than eighty
percent of global health problems,” he says, “and yet astoundingly, most dialogs
about health only discuss infectious disease”.
“While in the West, children are suffering the
consequences of over-consumption, in developing countries children are not
getting enough nutrition to allow their brains and bones to develop properly.
Millions of children are starving, or will never reach their human potential.”
According to the UN Food and Agriculture Organization’s
annual report, “The State of Food Insecurity in the World 2003” released today,
latest estimates signal a setback in the war against hunger.
http://www.fao.org/english/newsroom/news/2003/24779-en.html
“Food aid is only a short term fix. Developing countries
need food and crop security. Our teams want to give them the tools to create
their own cropping systems suited to their environment their societies and their
economies.”
“CAMBIA’s tools
will also assist farmers and biotech companies in the West – freeing farmers
from an excessive dependence on a small number of giant agribusiness companies,
and stimulating the formation of myriad smaller biotechnology companies that can
focus on results rather than trying to lock up technology with intellectual
property.”
Contact
Richard Jefferson
on +61 2 6246 4502 or r.jefferson@cambia.org
Background information available at
www.cambia.org
CAMBIA is the Center for the Application of Molecular Biology to International
Agriculture
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