CLONING HEADS FOR AFRICA
New African , Nr. 383, UK- IC Publications
Limited; London, March 2000, page 15.
AFRICA/EU
I
Cloning heads for Africa
New European Union (EU) rules limiting the range of biotechnological
activity may prompt some biotech firms to look for new locations where
they can operate more freely. Africa tops their list.
The Inter Press Service (IPS) reported from Paris recently that the
strict EU regulations prohibiting activities such as cloning humans, modifying
the genetic identity of humans and artificially reproducing embryos that
have the same genetic information as other people, are likely to send biotech
industrialists and researchers to new locations in Africa.
Operations banned in Europe also include “inventions whose exploitation
or publication would violate public order or morals, and any modification
of the genetic make-up of animals that would cause them to suffer or to
become physically handicapped where this is of no substantial medical usefulness
to man or animal”.
There are also restrictions to the manipulation of vegetable species
and animal breeds.
“To get around this arsenal of constraints, multi-national [companies]
are reportedly looking towards Africa as the place to operate with total
impunity. They are said to be banking on the elimination of trade barriers
under the World Trade Organisation (‘WTO) and moves to dismantle barriers
to investment touted by various developed nations,” the IPS reported.
This holds real dangers for Africa, say some European legislators interviewed
by the IPS at the European Parliament in Strasbourg, France.
Catherine Lalumiere, president of the Radical Alliance (AR) group in
the European Parliament, fears that in a world where improved communication
technology wipes
out distances, there is a high risk that the biotech companies will
go to Africa and carry out research and activities banned elsewhere.
She and other parliamentarians are calling for a United Nations conference
of decision-makers, researchers, industrialists, bioethics committees and
human rights groups to draw up an international code of conduct in this
area.
The Dutch MEP (Member of the European Parliament), Gijs De Vries, agreed
that such a conference would be vital because “the life sciences, whose
aim thus far was to defend certain basic values, would become ‘death sciences’
on a continent that has to face other problems.”
Biotechnology has become a huge money-making affair. In Europe alone,
the biotech market is expected to top $66bn in two years time. In 1997
it was a mere $8bn.
“If we still hope to find solutions to the invasion of genetically
modified organisms and the rapid advances made daily in research, for which
Africa is, of course, unprepared, such a meeting needs to be held urgently,”
agreed Carlo Casini of the European People’s Parry.
German MEP, Wilfried Telkamper, a member of the Green Group in Strasbourg,
says, “83% of the bio-diversity and 80% of the resources needed for bio-tech
inventions are in African countries in particular, and in the South in
general, bear in mind that these resources are very often exploited without
the agreement of the local populations.” he adds.
But while MEPs in Strasbourg are trying to get a summit on biotechnology
onto the global agenda, the European Commission in Brussels is planning
to spend Ecu 2O6bn in 152 projects related to biotech development. The
Commission is yet to say where.