Micro - Michael Crichton [26]
Rick, now standing with his arms folded, murmured to Karen King, “The guy is a modern Spanish conquistador. He’s looting this ecosystem for gold.”
Karen gave him a scornful look. “And just what are you doing with your natural extracts, Rick? You’re boiling the hell out of tree bark looking for new drugs. Why is that any different?”
“The difference,” he said to her, “is the huge sums of money involved. And you know where the money in all this is, right? It’s in patents. Nanigen will take out thousands of patents on the compounds they find here—and giant drug companies will exploit the patents, earning billions—”
“You’re just jealous ’cause you don’t have any patents.” Karen turned away from Rick, while Rick glared at her.
He called after her, “I’m not doing science to get rich. Unlike you, apparently…” He realized she was ignoring him. Pointedly.
Danny Minot struggled at the tail end of the group. For some reason, Danny had brought his tweed jacket to Hawaii, and he was wearing it now. Sweat poured down Danny’s neck and drenched his button-down shirt, and he skidded from place to place on the trail in tassel loafers. He blotted his face with a pocket square and pretended to ignore his misery. “Mr. Drake,” he said, “if you happen to be familiar with post-structuralist theory—uh—you might be aware of how—ugh—whoof!—how we can’t actually know anything about this forest…For you see, we create meaning, Mr. Drake, when really there is no meaning in nature…”
Drake seemed unfazed by Danny. “My view of nature, Mr. Minot, is that we don’t need to know the meaning of nature in order to make use of it.”
“Yes, but…” Danny went on.
Meanwhile, Alyson Bender drifted back a few paces, and Peter ended up walking with Rick. Rick nodded toward Vin Drake. “Do you believe this guy? He’s like Mr. Biopiracy.”
“I’ve been listening to your remarks, Mr. Hutter,” Drake said, twisting his head around suddenly, “and I have to say it’s completely false. Biopiracy refers to the taking of indigenous plants without compensating the country of origin. The concept is attractive to the ill-informed do-gooder but fraught with practical difficulty. Take the example of curare, a valuable medicinal drug, used in modern medicine today. Surely someone should be compensated? Yet there are dozens of different recipes for curare, developed by many tribal groups stretching across Central and South America—a vast area. The curares differ in ingredients and cooking time, depending on what is meant to be killed, and on local preferences. How, then, do you compensate native medicine men? Did the shamans of Brazil do more valuable work than the shamans of Panama or Colombia? Does it matter that the trees used in Colombia migrated—or were transplanted—from native Panama? What about the actual formula? Is the addition of strychnos important or not? How about the addition of a rusty nail? Is there any consideration for public domain? We allow a drug company twenty years to exploit a drug, then make it public. Some say Sir Walter Raleigh brought curare back to Europe in 1596; certainly it was well known in the 1700s. Burroughs Wellcome sold curare tablets in the 1880s for medical purposes. So by all odds, curare belongs in the public domain. And finally, modern surgeons no longer use curare from native plants anyway. They use synthetic curare. You see the complexities?”
“This is all corporate evasiveness,” Rick said.
“Mr. Hutter, you seem to enjoy being the devil’s advocate against my points,” Drake said. “I don’t mind. It helps me sharpen my arguments. The truth is, using natural compounds for medicine is just the way of the world. The discoveries of every culture are valuable, and all other cultures borrow from one another. Sometimes discoveries are traded for a price, but not always. Should we license the horse stirrup