He Who Controls the Present Controls the Future
by Jorge Vargas
Knowledge, society has learned, is power. If you don’t know about a topic, you simply can’t express yourself intelligently, and won’t be able to challenge a person on empirical grounds. More importantly for the matter of global economic development, if you know a product, you’re the only one who can produce, manufacture, and sell it, and therefore, you can monopolize it and set whatever price pleases you most.
One of the biggest issues regarding the Free Trade Agreement of the Americas (FTAA) has circled around the concept of patents. The Webster’s New College Dictionary defines patent as “a grant made by a government to an inventor, assuring the sole right to make, use, and sell the invention for a certain period of time.” A patent is a form of holding power over a particular knowledge. At first, the concept of a patent seems fair-minded, and it is, to an extent.
One could easily offer an opposing definition for patents: they are a means to keep those with knowledge in power while depriving those without it. They are a means to keep knowledge and science in the hands of a select few, while forcing the rest to live off of the scraps passed down from that elite. They are a means forcing more than half of our planet into servility by controlling not only knowledge, which is not necessary for a joyful life, but health and scientific progress, both of which, we have learned, tend to make life slightly easier and more pleasant.
No nation in the world is challenging the legality and fairness of patents – or at least, none should be – but what is being challenged is what sorts of things can be patented and when does a patent start being so dangerous that it has to be taken away. What is being challenged, for instance, is the patent protection that allows companies producing anti-retroviral drugs to have a monopoly on the handling of the HIV/AIDS epidemic, which has shattered the entire African continent and now lies ready to cause similar damage in the Middle East, China, and Brazil, along with some others, including most of the Caribbean nations.
Coming from the Third World, I consider myself able to speak authoritatively about the plight facing the people of Latin America, Africa, and the continent of Asia. It’s also not a secret that the average person in those regions struggles to barely get by. While the average middle-class person in the US is thinking of buying a second car, the average middle-class person in the Third World usually can do no more than dream about buying the first car.
With that background, and the fact that the people running the big pharmaceutical companies of the First World know it, how can these individuals go on claiming property rights that allow them to raise prices? With what conscience can the US government demand respect for those rights if all they do is hold a monopoly not only on business but on the personal welfare of more than half the world’s population?
It’s difficult to find out at precisely what price, or at what point, patents pass from being fair to being dangerous, and that’s a valid argument for keeping patents regardless of any possible changes in a situation. However, these briefcase-carrying business executives, these men in suits should be intelligent enough to realize that when a person is dying of a disease which has a cure but which that person can’t possibly afford, the ‘patent’ has changed its name and become an ‘abuse’.
If Brazilian doctors were to suddenly develop a cure for cancer or for HIV/AIDS, but charged extravagant amounts of money with no one in the US being able to afford it, citing patent protections if any company attempted to create its own version of the panacea, would the US respect that patent? Would the United States of America, with the strongest military in the world and its most dynamic economy stop to think about committing business espionage and finding a way to steal the research and the science from the Brazilian firm in order to produce a drug that’s more accessible to US citizens?
Of course not, why would the US respect such a patent. It would be a right to maintain one’s health and the government would be charged with protecting its people from the evil foreign company. Who knows, the US might even blockade the ports of Brazil. But no one would assume, not even for an instant, that the US would respect the patent protection, and rightfully so. It need not be stated that the fact that the US expects other nations to respect patents which harm the citizens of those nations is a sign of outright hypocrisy.
However, pharmaceuticals aside, the capitalist-driven notion of patents has reached ridiculous extremes. In recent negotiations between Peru and the United State regarding a free trade agreement between the two nations, one of the biggest concerns was the right to patent the discovery of animals. Fortunately, the patent protection was not passed, although the US was in favor of enacting such provisions whereas Peru was heavily opposed. What purpose, aside from profit, would drive the US to make such a simple-minded request that came very close to allowing the US to lose the entire agreement?
Perhaps those nations which have become so wealthy that even knowledge is given a price would be best off if they keep in mind that, at the end of the day, patents are merely paper and if pushed, the nations of the Third World will do everything in their power to break those patents in order to help themselves. Perhaps it would behoove those nations to keep in mind that although they can play games and patent animals, provisions allowing companies to charge extravagant prices to starving masses for basic necessities – and important anti-retroviral medication is a basic need, regardless of whether it’s written on the US Constitution, another worthless piece of paper, or not – will only serve in creating further enemies for the ‘First World’ in the future.
Or perhaps it’s time for both worlds to wake up to the reality of the situation: Money talks. Money dominates our world and those who have money want more of it, and those who don’t have money will be cheated at every twist and turn in the road. The First World thinks itself superior – who can stop it? – while the Third World must bow down and starve, while hatred is bred in its womb to attack the First World in the future. Until those in a position to change the cycle accept the truth of it, nothing will change, and it’s pretty clear which world is in charge of the situation.
Patents are a great way to stimulate the quest for expanding knowledge
and can even prove useful in bringing about economic growth, both of
which are noble tasks, but when most of the world is in poverty and
too many people face starvation, those noble tasks can take a back seat
to humanity which this writer must concede, with distaste but without
hesitation, is lacking in every corner of our planet. This is not a
call to arm against patents so much as it is a wake-up call to all reading
this that perhaps our world which we value so much isn’t living up to
the ‘What a Wonderful World’ imagery painted by Louis Armstrong’s singing
but rather to a more realistic image in which greed does, unfortunately,
consume all.
