Remarks by Sarah Sexton

Remarks by Sarah Sexton

Tarrytown Meeting political economy working session

Many of us articulate our concerns about developments involving human genetics in terms of morals, ethics, rights and privacy, but find it more challenging to consider the financial and economic dynamics and contexts underpinning research. Anthropologist Kaushik Sunder Rajan has written in his study of Biocapital that "one can understand emergent biotechnologies such as genomics only by simultaneously analyzing the market frameworks within which they emerge."[1]

In addition, several issues of concern also trouble other social movements. The use of patents and other forms of intellectual property, for instance, are at the core of international tax evasion, which deprives governments of public funding.

Consideration of financial and economic processes and of alliances with other movements may enhance the ultimate objective of ensuring Health For All.

Two analysts of how TRIPs – the "most important intellectual property agreement of the 20th century" – was incorporated into the World Trade Organisation in the mid-1990s concluded that those opposing its inclusion and struggling for the preservation of the commons "do so in isolation from each other."[2]

Another analyst of economic fundamentalism has pointed out that "those who focus on narrow sectoral concerns and ignore the pervasive economic agenda will lose their own battles and weaken the collective ability to resist."[3]

If we overlook some of the processes, policies and practices in which the biotech and health industries and the research underlying them are embedded, we might draw up excellent guidelines to protect people in specific instances, but might also unwittingly strengthen other processes that work to override health and rights.[4]


[1] Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Biocapital: The Constitution of Postgenomic Life, Duke University Press, Durham, NC and London, 2006. P.33.

[2] Peter Drahos with John Braithwaite, Who Owns the Knowledge Economy? Political Organising Behind TRIPS, Corner House Briefing 32, September 2004, http://www.thecornerhouse.org.uk.

[3] Jane Kelsey, Economic Fundamentalism, Pluto Press, London, 1995, p.372.

[4] See the comments of Margaret Jane Radin, Contested Commodities: The Trouble with Trade in Sex, Children, Body Parts and Other Things, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, MA 1996, p.154.

"If we are worried about people entering into 'desperate exchanges' – poor people selling their kidneys – we are worried about maldistribution of wealth as well as commodification in the abstract.

"If we are worried that kidney-sellers will be disproportionately poor people of color, then we are worried about wrongful racial subordination as well.

"If we are worried about poor women selling their babies, then we may be worried about maldistribution of wealth and wrongful gender subordination as well as commodification in the abstract."