Similarly, diverse medical systems are already being pirated by the privatisation of medicines and cures, like neem and turmeric. As with farmers, these are manipulated and then sold back at exorbitant, uncompetitive prices to the providers of the source material and knowledge. Stop the EU Life Patent Directive. We witness how corporations are distorting the original idea of patents by using them to pirate and take possession of society's collective biological and cultural heritage. We witness how corporations are using patents on life to gain private rights over the ingredients of society's food and medicine.
Patents therefore make society dependent on corporations for their food and medicine.
We witness how patents on life are driven by the biotech industry's desire to claim private rights on the living materials it wishes to manipulate. Patents on Life therefore stimulate genetic engineering, which is an untested, unpredictable and potentially dangerous new technology. The public are having this experiment imposed on them, and are forced to take all the risks of a technology which they are already resisting. By sterilising the seeds of our food and medicine, the corporations violate the essence of life - its capacity to reproduce. We witness how life forms and their parts are being degraded into commodities, to be manipulated into products, out of which profit can be maximised, no matter how much suffering is caused.