Abstract

Capitalism’s Expansion into the Realm of the Biosphere. The extension of the rule of industrial property over living organisms and their components – genes and cells, both human and non-human – since the end of the 1970s, has gone along with the emergence of new markets in science, biotechnology and in health. The article argues that the filing of patents to protect private claims on living matter is a development which promotes the establishment of a monopoly control over inventions in the fields of medicine and agronomy, while at the same time fostering a restriction in exchanges within the scientific community. The article therefore argues the case for a declaration that genomes, human and non-human, be considered as a common good, in terms both of the research carried out for the improvement of plants and health and of the accessibility of the medical innovations resulting from such research