The directive also conflicts with the European Patent Convention, which provides the overall framework for patent law in Europe. This clearly states that plant varieties shall not be patentable, and the European Patent Office follows the Convention and openly acknowledges the conflict between the two on this issue. The Convention also clearly states that surgery, therapeutics and diagnostics shall be excluded from patent cover. Several attempts were made to put this wording into the directive and they were always rejected on the grounds that the Convention contains them. However, the decision to develop a directive rather than revising the Convention strongly suggests that corporations intend the directive to take precedence over the Convention by default in all the areas of interest to them.
Research is motivated by profit rather than public interest.
There would be few farmers, and they would have been reduced to contract labour, and made entirely dependent on large companies for materials and markets. Food production, in this world, is only marginally connected to agriculture and much of it takes place in laboratories and factories. Incomplete animals and then humans are developed to provide spare parts or to act as factories for the production of drugs. Most people are excluded from this world, and those who have not been able to maintain their own way of life exist in hunger and disease within devastated ecosystems. Alternatives to this customized world such as organic food, local production and distribution, alternative medical practice and medicines have been eliminated through patents, official seed lists, and other corporate-friendly regulations enforced through the World Trade Organization, which by then would have become effectively the world government.