Researchers from some North American and European universities
recently launched a project called the Human Genome Diversity
Project (HGDP) to collect blood samples, tissue and hair samples
from "endangered communities" all over the world.
The Cordillera People's Alliance, an alliance of 120 Indigenous
Peoples' organizations in the Cordillera region in northern
Philippines, with the support of Asian and other indigenous and
non-indigenous organizations is calling for a halt to this
project for the following reasons:
1. This is a more sophisticated form of collecting and
preserving Indigenous Peoples like those collections of yet
unreturned mummies taken from their burial caves in violation of
Indigenous People's rights.
2. The $23-35 million to be spent over five years can be better
put to providing basic social services needed for Indigenous
Peoples' survival and rights protection. Fund raising for the
HGDP endangers further the chances of receiving funding for more
crucial projects.
3. After the rest of the world have squandered their own
resources, the resources that Indigenous Peoples have sacrificed
lives and limb to maintain are suddenly being made common
heritage for the appropriation of transnationals that rarely
benefit Indigenous Peoples. Developed drugs are often sold to
Indigenous Peoples at exorbitant rates.
4. Research projects done amongst Indigenous Peoples have often
been used against them. The potential biological warfare uses are
great.
5. Indigenous Peoples used as subjects are often not fully
briefed -- many indigenous women have been sterilized or injected
with drugs without being informed. There is a likelihood that
Indigenous Peoples' poverty will be exploited for to acquire test
subjects.
6. The Biodiversity Convention and the Biotechnology Chapter of
Agenda 21 and the trade-related intellectual property rights of
GATT will facilitate the issuance of patents to transnational
developers of biotechnology. Many indigenous developed goods have
suffered such a fate putting them beyond the reach of IPs.
The Philippine Solidarity Group of Toronto (PSG), cognizant of
these reasons, fully supports the call to halt the Human Genome
Diversity Project.
To emphasize the urgency of this call, we note two revealing
points. The HGDP draft insensitively referred to Indigenous
Peoples as "isolates of historic interest" and Luigi Luca
Cavalli-Sforza wrote in Genomics (11:1991) "[the] genetic
diversity of people ... may lead to clues to the evolution of our
species ... ." Taken together with the trend of this project,
Cavalli's phrase has the disturbing ring of eugenics -- a
discredited field that seems to keep returning like the phoenix.
Further, PSG encourages other groups to show solidarity for
Indigenous Peoples' struggles for aboriginal land rights and for
self-determination. It is precisely because of ethnocide -- the
landgrabbing, the destruction of indigenous cultures and outright
physical elimination of indigenous communities for transnational
and local big corporate and financial interests -- that
indigenous peoples become "extinct."
In Solidarity,
Philippine Solidarity Group - Toronto