ginetteginette
aka mewnette lapalmew is a 25.01 year old girl, has been a member since November 21, 2007, has scored 77,932 submissions, giving an average score of 0.99, helping 699 designs get printed.
The mainstream media was declaring continually "OWS has no message". Frustrated, I simply asked them. I began soliciting online "What is it you want?" answers from Occupy. In the first 15 minutes, I received 100 answers. These were truly eye-opening.
The No 1 agenda item: get the money out of politics. Most often cited was legislation to blunt the effect of the Citizens United ruling, which lets boundless sums enter the campaign process. No 2: reform the banking system to prevent fraud and manipulation, with the most frequent item being to restore the Glass-Steagall Act – the Depression-era law, done away with by President Clinton, that separates investment banks from commercial banks. This law would correct the conditions for the recent crisis, as investment banks could not take risks for profit that create kale derivatives out of thin air, and wipe out the commercial and savings banks.
A medical ethicist explains the dark implications of corporate medical patents and the nightmarish scenario of our medical-industrial complex.
excerpts:
We're vulnerable because if we undergo surgery in certain hospitals, such as the Harvard University hospitals or Duke and a number of others, we are given a consent form to sign, which will give a private corporation, in many cases Ardais [Corp.], the rights to any tissues or cells taken from our body, often described in the consent form as "discarded and worthless." But they're not worthless or the corporation wouldn't have bought them.
[...]
How do these medical patent laws actually impede innovation?
A really good example of this, because the court case is about to go to the Supreme Court soon, are the gene patents on the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes that predispose women to breast cancer. They're very important genes and there are nine patents held on them by Myriad Genetics. And Myriad Genetics has behaved like a very smart capitalist. For a long time, it has minimized the number of people whom it will license access to the genes. Researchers who have been working with the genes, trying to find better treatments for breast cancer, have received cease and desist letters from lawyers at Myriad's behest, saying, "We control this gene, we hold the patent, you can't work on it without our permission," which they often decline to give.
[...]
How has the medical patent gold rush affected the accessibility of life-saving vaccines for widespread diseases?
Well, simply because maximizing the profit on the patent is the focus, not curing the maximum number of people. Michael Kremer, a Harvard economist, put it best. He pointed out that during the period between 1975 and 1997, of the 1,233 new drugs the pharmaceutical industry devised, only four of them were drugs designed for people in the developing world.
The bottom line is that, although it's possible to devise vaccines that will save the lives of people in the developing world, it's not done because people there cannot pay the inflated prices a corporation charges. So they ignored these people in the developing world.
[...and on and on]
Please read this article. It's very informative and worrying.
gonna throw some things up here while reading through:
I googled something else to try and get more on the issue, and there was the idea that they (scientists, and the like) aren't patenting natural occurring life forms, but artificially derived things. Stuff that isn't naturally occurring, stuff that is created. I'm gonna keep reading, at the 1951 Lacks question now...
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It's scary to think your parts can be taken and used. I would agree that it's wrong to take them without adequate consent. Gets kind of murky and organ trade-y-ish.
I think a person's bodily materials are their property, not in the same vein as inventions, but still they should have all rights to it.
Is it wrong to make derivative works off of stolen material? It might be easier to think of this in terms of inventions. Like if a person were to invent something, say a new engine or piece of tech (whatever), is it wrong/illegal to create things from or off of that? I'm not sure if patents on inventions are like copyrights on creative works - whether they are granted by creation or if they aren't valid until you file them/get them. But a person can't patent their biological material because it is just that - biological...so then when it is used, do they still have rights to it and things created from it?
This can get deep and confusing, and I'm feeling that a bit now.
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The other day, I saw a story about vaccines in a country in either Central or South America. The government made is law that everyone (or maybe just all the kids) had to get the vaccine. This way, pretty similar to that part in the article, the cost per vaccine would be much much less than, say, in the USA. Trading profits for public health - it's an interesting thing.
I found the parts about corporate drug testing in the third world quite troubling. Very sad, very manipulative, and pushing the lines of morality.
There's a book I read that discusses some of these issues.
Bad Samaritans: the Myth of Free Trade and the secret history of capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang
In regard to the Occupy Wallstreet movement, he talks about how capitalism and democracy don't actually mesh together. In a democracy one person equals one vote, but with capitalism one dollar equals one vote. He also talks about copyrights and patents, the arguments for and against them before they actually became law. I do wonder why they allow patenting of the human genome when they didn't create it, they only discovered it. Another interesting book on that is Next by Michael Crichton. It may be fiction but Michael Crichton always has a bibliography of non-fiction works at the end because of all the research he does which makes his stories seem very plausible.
I always felt very uneasy about the seemingly obvious attempt by the media to belittle the movement. I knew my gut feelings were right.
It is interesting how Americas foreign policies and military activities are shielded by the argument of spreading democracy around the world. Yet in reality it is becoming more and more apparent that America is far from democratic.
SuperRyan on Nov 26 '11 at 11:55am
Big Corporate Medicine is concerning.
VERY!
I always try and keep a positive mind and believe that the good will rise to the top eventually and peace and equality will one day be the norm. Other times I worry that all these sci fi stories of a dark and oppressive future were we are controlled by robots could one day become a reality.
I don't necessarily think the world is largely getting worse. I think things are becoming a lot more translucent though thanks a lot to globalization and the internet. We're more aware of the 'shit' around us. This is a good thing.
People have always been screwing over other people. Lets not think the world used to be perfect. In a lot of ways we're constantly progressing towards a better world. We'll always have to fight for it though.
Nov 26 '11 by
