Genetic Engineering
Danyl Strype
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This is a complex and controversial topic.There are movements like Biopunk that consider the right to edit genetics and create modified life forms as being morally equivalent to the free software rights to edit source code, and create modified software. However, considering the self-replicating nature of life, it could also be said that GMOs (Genetically Modified Organisms) are more analogous to computer viruses than to the application software developed by the libre software movement.
One place this field touches Pirate issues is the emergence of gene patents in recent decades. For most of the history of the patent system, living things were not considered inventions that could be patented, and we need to take a well-informed position for or against life patents. There are also consumer rights and transparency issues to be considered, such as whether food products containing GMOs should be labeled, or whether the genome of GMOs should be "open source" or at least freely available to researchers, for example health researchers wanting to do study whether a GMO has any different effects on the body than its non-GMO counterpart.
Danyl Strype Fri 13 May 2016 4:51AM
" the membership is happy to continue it's existing policies of rejection of all patents on life"
The fact that this is already policy, while important, wasn't mentioned in the proposal, nor at any time during the whole discussion, which is a pretty shocking omission! I accept shared responsibility for that though, because I could have re-read the existing patents policy before starting a patent-related GE discussion (where are our canonical policy documents kept, stewarded by whom?). To be fair though, I only started this GE thread to prevent that topic hijacking another thread where it had come up. I didn't expect it to become so contentious :)
"to seek guidance from overseas pirates who have had more debate on the matter, for PPNZ to import policies for debate and eventual adoption."
Indeed, it seems like sound practice to have a mechanism (eg the proposed SunStone policy think tank) for efficient policy sharing between different Pirate parties. As long as we keep in mind that our local context will often require adaption and sometime total rejection of what other parties have agreed on for their local context (and vice versa). For instance, European and US Pirates might consider a ban on environmental release of GMOs to be impractical in the short term because there is already so much GMO contamination. Whereas Aotearoa has almost no known GMO contamination (putting aside the revelations made by Nicky Hagar in 'Seeds of Distrust'), and already has tight restrictions on outdoor experimentation with GMOs and a public mostly opposed to even them, so a ban on environmental release would be much more politically feasible here (if party members were to consider that wise policy).
Danyl Strype Fri 20 May 2016 4:33AM
I deleted the comment I just made here relating to drug patents. We have another thread where we can discuss the related patent issues in more detail, and I think it's best to keep this thead focused on discussing and developing policy on genetic engineering, and maybe biotech in general. We may also need a thread on farming and/or food, because an ecologically-informed understanding of the future of food production without dependence on fossil fuels is essential for fully understanding this issue.
Andrew McPherson · Wed 11 May 2016 8:05AM
@hubatmcjuhes while I appreciate that the proposal maybe more clear to you if phrased in my inadequate German with the assistance of Google translate, I will expand the concise conclusion as follows :
As the proposal doesn't exceed a 50% threshold, and in fact is deadlocked in the result, the reasonable conclusion is that the members are neutral on the proposal.
Therefore, I propose that this is an indication that the membership is happy to continue it's existing policies of rejection of all patents on life, and to seek guidance from overseas pirates who have had more debate on the matter, for PPNZ to import policies for debate and eventual adoption.
This should be considered a better diplomatic result than adoption of an outcome which could be perceived as biased, hence the party is neutral at this particular round of proposals, and no change is made yet.
Please feel free to make your own proposal should you wish to do so.