The Merck pharmaceutical company has patented microbial samples from nine countries. And Merck is not alone in its corporate ownership of micro-organisms. Each year the drug industry spends billions searching the world's soils for valuable micro-organisms. The biopirates are also on the lookout for profitable, patentable plants. In one remarkable example, several Northern corporations have been granted more than thirty us patents on the neem tree of India - and not only on the tree, but also on the indigenous knowledge about its many uses.
Pharmaceuticals are among the most lucrative areas for the international biopirates.
Only a small fraction of them have been investigated as a source of potential new drugs, and the rapid destruction of tropical forests has hastened corporations' screening, appropriation and patenting processes. The result is an ever-increasing use of patenting and licensing agreements by transnational corporations to secure a monopoly over valuable genetic materials that can be developed into profitable drugs and energy sources. For decades the United States and other industrialized countries have been buying the blood of the poor in the Third World and selling it on the open market. Now scientists and researchers are racing to locate, identify and find commercial uses for human genes from various indigenous populations. The search for valuable human genetic material is fuelled by the fact that human genes and cells are now patentable.