Browning Steffan: Patents Bill — In Committee Third ReadingText is incorporated into the Bound VolumeBrowning Steffan: Patents Bill — In Committee Third Reading[Sitting date: 27 August 2013. Volume:693;Page:12957. Text is incorporated into the Bound Volume.]STEFFAN BROWNING (Green): I will address that aspect straight away in this contribution on the Patents Bill. In terms of biofuels bacteria and other organisms certainly are intended to be used by some. They will be being used. Whether they need to be modified and whether they need patenting is a whole different matter. We are very very keen on public-good science and not everything should be tied up in commercial entities or operations. I can think back to when we had the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research and our Crown research institutions which were seriously about public-good science and were very collaborative. Clearly we are working as a country to try to get some sense of that back.This need it seems to have everything put into a commercial context is very unfortunate—the novel and the utility. It should still be part of public-good science and we have to be careful because this suggestion that there is a suppression on innovationby stopping organisms or traits of organisms from being patented is misleading. It is the same with ethanol from methanol conversions and shouldLanzaTech be the only one going down that path when it is such an international need as we acknowledge that we need to look at other forms of energy then that is a very very sad day. We have institutions and we have science in this country that does not need to be bound to somebody who ultimately would get a patent and then monopolise that. If it is so important—and it is—to work around the area of biofuels it should not be able to be monopolised or controlled by a single corporate or owner.So I have put forward Supplementary Order Paper 124 on this crucial area of making sure that companies cannot patent life nor certain elements of life because it goes right back to public expectations. That includes genes and proteins that exist in nature. We accept that patents are a statutory right. They were created hundreds of years ago for good purpose but that was around things not life. Patents should not be permitted over things that are fundamentally part of the natural world. No one has invented life or the elements of life so it follows that no one should be entitled to a patent in New Zealand over life—in fact anywhere.Some of this comes back to some early decisions—I say “early” but not hundreds of years ago. It was really in 1980 when life first got patented. It is a case known asDiamond vChakrabarty and it concerns a decision about a bacterium.Chakrabarty had isolated a particular bacterium. Even then he was able to get the patent but he admitted that he simply shuffled genes about. He said he changed bacteria that already existed. He did not create a new form of life; he merely intervened in the normal processes by which strains of bacteria exchange genetic information. Genetic modification of course is an extension of that. It goes much further. That same genetic modification has caused the monopolisation of major parts of the global food supply. So if you think of soy corn and canola they are some real fundamentals in terms of the international food supply and they are monopolised and they are controlled because there are patents on some aspects of the technology behind them.We cannot afford intentionally or not to allow for the patenting of life forms or the elements of life that exist in nature. A colleague over here was right in saying that we believe it will encourage biopiracy of indigenous resources and it turns those life forms into just mere commodities to be used for profit. This is life that pre-existed us as well and to be putting that into some commercial separate ownership is inappropriate. It also puts up barriers to the free flow of scientific research and in the material I circulated I pointed out that there was a case—and it has just been won in the Supreme Court in the United States—where a breast cancer cell and an ovarian cancer cell had been patented and that was blocking research in that area. Anything around life any genetic material is everybody’s and again my colleague spoke about the fact that the helix of DNA is part of the natural world. Sure we are getting to understand it and there is some fantastic science and there are individuals who are discovering new aspects all the time but that is ours that is everybody’s and it should not be included.The issue as I was saying about breast cancer and ovarian cancer and those genetic mutations that were identified resulted in a huge uproar. There were multiple groups scientific associations and medical people who pushed against that decision until it was reversed. We have to be careful here in New Zealand when we look at some fantastic new approaches and patents around computer software and programs. Here we could make another clear statement in a similar league by supporting this Supplementary Order Paper. Allowing the passing of this bill without supporting the Supplementary Order Paper will lead to the continued blocking of open research and to profit making from our collectively owned genes and resources and importantly it will continue the process of stealing those resources including the intellectual property ofMāori.Some industries seek out organisms and they draw upon this intellectual property to get control and to get control of the food chain. One of them of course is internationally known as Monsanto and it has just created case after case in the courts. It has put farmers out of business and it has really distorted where farming where agriculture where the food supply should naturally lie. It has also had an effect on the availability of the diversity of seed available to everyone from farmers down to home gardeners. There is a huge reduction in the amount of genetic material available because these monopolies that have got greater and greater control through some patents and just some small angles have also ended up buying up the seed companies and have restricted others’ access to those same seeds.So what would the amendment do? The amendment would specify that life is not a patentable invention. Currently the bill already excludes some aspects of life—those exclusions being human beings and their biological processes. That is great. That is a very good exclusion but it does not go far enough. The invention of a method of treatment of human beings by surgery or therapy is a very good exclusion. The invention of a method of diagnosis practised on humans is another. The list of exclusions includes computer programs which is a fantastic shift. Plant variety because it is already very deeply and solidly covered under the Plant Variety Rights Act still leaves many life forms and those elements of life are still part of it.Plants and humans aside the bill does not go anywhere near far enough. Animals bacteria viruses cells and algae all need that extra protection of the Supplementary Order Paper—and their traits. Even a piece of DNA of genetic material from those is something that is ours. It is everybody’s. Everybody on this planet owns that and letting someone manipulate it even slightly is something quite different from inventing a thing. There is a moral level. [Bell rung] Life is not—I suppose I have done my time.