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Rows of green tasselled corn behind a row of bright yellow signs that read

From the beginning, the colonizers of the Americas – like the colonizers of other lands around the globe – have focused on making as much cash as possible from natural resources; from life. The field of eugenics in the United States emerged from this context, using practices of plant and animal breeding to develop living beings that were believed to be stronger, more “fit,” and more productive – i.e. more profitable. The idea that you can control natural selection in order to create offspring with specific characteristics has been the motivation for agricultural initiatives for generations. And the idea that life can be owned and controlled for profit underlies too many of the new initiatives that market themselves as beneficial.

Agricultural profit does not just come from cutting down trees, growing valuable cash crops, or raising the fattest cows, pigs, and chickens; it also comes from owning as much of what you are growing, raising, or sowing as possible. And not only owning, but exclusively owning. There is an ongoing battle between the sovereignty and autonomy of life and the violence of its ownership. Patent law was one of the strategies for colonization brought to Turtle Island by European settlers. The first informal patent law was mandated in Florence, Italy in the 15th century by the engineer who designed and then constructed the dome of the Florence Cathedral. The first British patent was given a few years later to a glass-maker for a new glass-making technology. This soon led to the Crown giving patents for different designs, including granting trade monopolies to individuals to build wealth for themselves and the monarchy. Interestingly enough, this is how corporations emerged.

Ships with many masts painted in muted colors against the slate blue water of a harbor

Originally, a “corporation” referred to a group of people who pooled their resources to build wealth together. Specifically, these corporations emerged to participate in the violence of colonial extraction. The Dutch East India Company, founded in the Netherlands in 1602, is generally understood as the world’s first corporation. Pooling their money to lease ships and sailors, corporations allowed “regular” people to compete with European monarchies for the race to claim and extract profit from as much land as possible. One of the impacts of this new strategy was to “normalize” this kind of violence.

In 1624, in an attempt to organize the explosion of claims to land and resources, the British Crown created the Statute of Monopolies, the patent law that would then shape patent law in the United States. The first patent on Turtle Island was granted in 1641 to cover a process for making salt. In 1790, the first Patent Act was passed in the United States and was called, "An Act to promote the progress of useful Arts.” Since then, patent law has been revised multiple times. This story looks at how patent law has been used to justify the ownership of life.

When the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was established in 1862 along with the Homestead Act, one of its primary responsibilities was to collect and then distribute seeds. In managing this process, the USDA created a set of standards to determine which seeds should be planted on land in the United States and which should not. Prior to the creation of the USDA, most seeds were either brought to the continent by immigrant farmers and then tested on new soils or stolen from (or sometimes exchanged with) Indigenous nations who had been developing their own agricultural strategies for thousands of years. All of these seeds were then shared between and among farmers as new hybrids were created. Seed sharing operated as an informal bartering system, designed to share knowledge and strengthen various strains.

Fine detail of seeds of many colors, textures, and shapes against a black background.

The United States Department of Agriculture – with its focus on developing agricultural strategies to both feed the U.S. population and meet global trade agreements – sent seeds to farmers for free. They then encouraged farmers to experiment with hybrid strains on behalf of the government. Farmers who created new and hardier hybrids were rewarded. This experimentation lasted until the next stage of agricultural professionalization, when the practice of developing hybrid crops moved from farms to laboratories.

Also in 1862, the Morrill Act passed, permitting universities to begin creating “seed breeding” programs. This was the start of the movement away from farmer autonomy, which then led to the privatization of seed saving. Private companies worked with the universities supported by the Morrill Act, which then opened gateways for the commercialization of seed breeding.

The hybridization of seeds

“Hybrid seeds” are created by intentionally mixing or selecting genes that a plant already has. “Genetic modification” is the process of introducing new genes into a genome and therefore shifting the genetic makeup of a plant or other organism. Both of these are forms of hybridization.

In 1905, George Shull was appointed by eugenicist and botanist Charles Davenport to work at the Carnegie Institute’s Station for Experimental Evolution at Cold Spring Harbor, New York, which would become one of the centers for the eugenics movement in the United States. Shull, a botanist and a geneticist, was interested in self-pollination, or the capacity for a plant to reproduce without needing cross pollination from other plants. His primary focus was corn, and he soon produced the first hybrid corn seed. Shull would later partner with the company known as Monsanto, which would expand on hybridization by creating genetically modified seeds and holding hundreds of biotechnology patents. Companies like Monsanto emerged to profit from the market of hybridized seeds and flourished by selling hybridized seeds at a cheaper rate – but at the expense of farmers and cultural practices of farming, as well as land and seed sustainability.

In the 1920s, the first hybrid seeds came on to the market. The first company selling hybrid-seeds, Pioneer Hi-Bred, established itself to build a market around these hybrid seeds, often selling them at a reduced rate from other seed distributors. Pioneer was part of the collective that began lobbying the federal government to end the free seed distribution programs that had been run by the government since the United States was established. This sped up the move towards the commercialization of all seeds, including hybrid. In the present moment, it can be hard to understand what a profound cultural shift this represented. Saving seeds for the next season had always been part of the rhythm of farming. A community’s (or family’s) ability to care for and feed its own people was dependent on this constant cycle of planting, harvesting, seed saving, and planting again. While weather and disease patterns could affect this cycle, seeds – and therefore food – were still always free for those who could grow them. But by the 1920s, when most of the easily farmable land had already been bought and sold, commercializing seeds was the next step in turning land into more profit.

In 1930, the Plant Patent Act was passed to allow asexually reproduced and vegetatively reproduced plants (plants that reproduce from seeds alone and don’t need cross-pollination) to be protected by patent. Plants could be patented when they were planted with hybrid seeds and also when they were reproduced by grafting, budding, cuttings, layering, or division – but not by seeds that require pollination.

The patenting system was developed to protect new inventions, so that a person could own the product of their creativity for a period of time. This prevented someone from spending hours of labor (and money) creating a new product and then losing their potential profit to someone who stole the design and produced it at a lower cost or made it flashier or more attractive. However, patent law emerged to cover industrial design, not the genetics of life. It was a significant move to begin patenting life and genetics. This industrialization of life – or the turning of life into a commodity for buying and selling – was a continuation of the same strategies that underlie colonization, the institution of slavery, and eugenics. The industrialization of life has led to the manipulation and privatization of seeds in order to make the highest profit.

Corn

Vibrantly colored purple, yellow, red, and blue corn on the cob.

One of the first patented hybrid seeds was for corn. In particular, these early corn hybrids shifted how the corn plant developed its fruit. Natural corn, or the corn that first evolved in Mexico before spreading across the Americas, is open-pollinated. This means that it is pollinated by passing bees, wasps, and birds who pollinate one stand of corn with the pollen from corn from somewhere else, causing the plant to naturally evolve over time. Hybrid seeds reproduce through closed pollination. This means that the corn grown from a hybrid seed remains exactly the same as its parent: no evolution is possible. Hybrid seeds enable farmers to plant the same crop, year after year, knowing exactly the plant that will grow. This technology further opened the way for the industrialization of agriculture, as crops could now be sold more easily before they were even planted, because everyone knew exactly what the crop would be – no surprises, no genetic diversity. This marked another distinct point of transition to the professionalization of seed breeding. At this point in time, farmers could choose between buying hybrid seeds for crop certainty or relying on traditional methods of seed saving, where farmers would sow the seeds of the previous year’s crops. The first method was more expensive but more tightly controlled the yield, and the other strategy was free of cost but could not guarantee the same crop in each year.

International agricultural research centers were developed to create new “high-breeding” (and therefore more profitable) varieties, with funding from groups such as the Rockefeller Foundation or the Ford Foundation. Initially, many of these varieties were developed to address a growing international consciousness about global hunger, particularly in the 1960s and 1970s. New cereal plants were created that could withstand drought and flooding conditions, increasing the yield for communities living in places where environmental conditions made stable farming difficult. At the same time as these high-yielding plants were being created and marketed, they were usually accompanied by an increase in the commercial use of pesticides and fertilizers. The two went hand-in-hand: both hybrid seeds and pesticides and fertilizers were developed to control the environment in which crops grew. This meant that increased pollution went hand-in-hand with increased availability of food.

In 1961, the International Convention for the Protection of New Varieties of Plants mandated that the genetic material of a plant should remain freely available to everyone for the purpose of establishing new varieties. It also stated that farmers had the right to save and replant seeds. This Convention pushed against the hybrid seed lobby as it strategized to control agriculture from seed to harvest and then back to seed again.

In 1970, the Plant Variety Protection Act gave plant breeders intellectual property rights protection for any newly developed hybrid. At the same time, exemptions were made for researchers, who were allowed to work with the new hybrids to develop further and newer strains. Farmers still maintained the right to save seeds – but commercial seed companies continued to build legal strategies to own the entire life cycle of the seeds they were producing. This strategy became increasingly visible in the 1980’s, as privatized hybrid seeds began overtaking the crops of seed savers, marking a total cultural shift in farming.

Monsanto was one of the primary corporations behind this shift. Monsanto was established in 1901 as a chemical company, and was part of the team that developed the atomic bomb. Riding on the mid-20th century scientific optimism of “Better Living through Chemistry,” Monsanto turned its attention to the genetic modification of seeds with the intention of dominating this market. Their focus on the genetic modification of seeds represented the next step in owning the life cycle of a plant. Through a dizzying number of company purchases and mergers, Monsanto became the leading U.S. agribusiness by 2000, with a focus on seed production with a specialization in corn, soybean, cotton and wheat – the primary U.S. American commodities.

The impact of Monsanto’s genetically modified seeds continues to be wide-reaching and destructive to other companies today, as well as destructive to native plants. One of Monsanto’s creations has been “terminator seeds,'' seeds that last only a single generation, which force farmers to buy seeds year after year rather than save their own seeds from each year’s yield. Terminator seeds decrease crop diversity by halting a plant’s evolution. These seeds can escape into neighboring fields and then cross-pollinate and spread the sterile gene into other varieties. As a result, they have the capacity to wipe out entire agricultural populations. This impacted U.S. crops first, and then Mexican and Canadian crops after the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) gave Mexico and Canada full access to these genetically modified seeds.

The expansion of biotechnology: reshaping the genetic material of seeds and genes

X-shaped red and blue DNA, showing how genes are spliced and combined.

During the 1980s, two researchers found a process for creating recombinant DNA in and then secured a patent for these modified genes. Researchers were now able to use enzymes and other technologies to isolate genes and then change them. The process of recombining genes into new and different patterns exploded the field of biotechnology. Suddenly, genetics was profitable. The laboratory could now be a place for creating new forms of life by shifting the genetic makeup of something that would otherwise have to evolve over time. Research grants exploded, and multiple forms of genetic technology began to emerge.

The patenting of seeds was the first battle in a larger fight to determine what is “natural” and what is manufactured. In 1980, Dr. Ananda Chakrabarty, a genetic engineer at General Electric, modified a bacterium to support its capacity to decompose the hydrocarbons found in crude oil. General Electric applied for a patent for this new bacterium, but the patent was rejected on the grounds that living things could not be patented. General Electric brought the case to the United States Supreme Court. In Diamond v. Chakrabarty, the Supreme Court ruled that Chakrabarty’s work fell outside of the original ruling. In particular, they stated that Chakrabarty was not trying to patent something found in nature but instead a human-made bacterium that he had developed in a laboratory. This, they said, was eligible for a patent. This Supreme Court decision opened wide the field of biotechnology, clearing the way for an expansion of genetically modified seeds – and an explosion of human gene therapies as well.

Also in 1980, the Bayh-Dole Act was passed to allow public institutions to obtain patents on public or funded research. This eroded the line between research conducted using public dollars for the public good and research done for profit by private companies. Suddenly the field was filled with public-private partnerships, in which public funds are channeled into industry to advance research – as private companies simultaneously advance their own goals and often appropriate the resulting technology for profit. This led to the massive expansion of Science, Technology, Engineering & Math Programs (also known as STEM) in schools and universities, as educational institutions grew more and more focused on accessing these high dollar private grants.

More companies began to systematically invest in genetic engineering during the 1980s. For the first time, exclusive patents on genetic modifications and isolated genetic information made it possible to stop competitors from using the same genetic traits in plant breeding. Genetic engineering opened the door wide on seed patents. Now, a seed company could claim it had created a life form rather than it evolving through natural selection. In 1991, the Union for the Protection of Plant Varieties began to prohibit farmers from exchanging or selling any patented seeds. In other words, the re-use of patented seeds was restricted, meaning individual seed saving was now illegal. This was an attack on seed saving as a basic human right.

With the expansion of genetic modification and biotechnologies – and with the increase in research partnerships between private and public institutions – it didn’t take long for the first patents to be submitted for animals as well. Once genetic modification became possible, it impacted the entire agricultural industry. In 1987, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office announced that it would accept patents for animal breeds produced through gene splicing and other new reproductive techniques. Those advocating for the patents proclaimed that they would support the development of chickens that laid more eggs, leaner beef and pork, and dairy cows with higher milk production.

The first animal to receive a patent was the “Oncomouse,” a mouse genetically modified to develop tumors that mimic human diseases. The Oncomouse was developed and patented to be used in human medical research, with the intention of producing new medical treatments for various human diseases which could then also be patented.

We must remember that resistance is always also present, and there has been significant resistance to the normalization of genetic modification and the patenting of life. Across this period of rapid change, there were countless legal and civic fights to prevent these expansions of the concept of ownership. They have come from multiple directions: from animal rights activists, from communities fighting on religious grounds, and from people fighting for the protection of traditional knowledge. Some of those fights have resulted in the retraction of patents that courts found cruel, such as the patent for a rabbit with permanently wounded eyes that was created as a subject for medical research on human eye conditions.

Biopiracy, intellectual property rights, and cultural memory

The competition for the exclusive ownership of life itself has become known as “biopiracy,” a term coined by Pat Moody, a Canadian environmentalist, in 1990. Moody defined biopiracy as the illegal appropriation of life – microorganisms, plants, and animals (including humans) – and the traditional cultural knowledge that accompanies it. Biopiracy can be understood as an intensification of colonization, in which countries primarily from the Global North look to seize and control the resources of the Global South. Around the same time, the term “bioprospecting” emerged to refer to the process of looking for biological material to use for research, development, and profit. While these terms are new, the practices are as old as colonization itself. The first known bioprospecting in the Americas was in 1570, when Franciso Hernández, a physician, led the first colonial scientific expedition in what would become known as Mexico and Central America, collecting plants and turning to Indigenous healers to teach him how to use them.

A map of the world showing the vast majority of countries in green (indicating they have ratified the convention) and the United States in purple.

Both national and global organizations have attempted to understand and manage the explosion of biotechnology within the contexts of intellectual property rights, land access, and the right to ownership. In 1992, the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity sought to establish a standard for the biological diversity of plant and animal species through international collaboration between “developed” and “developing” nations, while acknowledging the rights of local communities. Thirty countries initially agreed to the standards set forth by the convention, including many in Europe, but the United States refused – and remains one of the only countries that has failed to ratify the standards today.

The convention marked an important shift away from the widespread understanding that life forms are part of the heritage of all humanity and therefore unable to be owned. This belief system unfortunately did not stop people, corporations, and states from constantly attempting to claim legal ownership over forms of life, including trespassing on tribal lands and taking what they found to create new medicines and other products. The convention attempted to address bioprospecting by advancing the idea that sovereign nations (including tribal nations) have the right to control the genetic and biological resources found within their borders. The members of the convention created the Nagoya Protocol in an attempt to protect Indigenous knowledge. The Protocol includes a requirement to secure Prior Informed Consent (PIC) before claiming a natural resource – whether that resource is a plant, mineral, or anything else – in order to prevent the exploitation of Indigenous knowledge and resources without some kind of consent. Once PIC is gained, then there is a process of defining Mutually Agreed Terms to ensure that the process of harvesting or research is done with the shared agreement of all parties.

Like other treaties previously signed between colonizing and Indigenous nations, these agreements look good on paper but don’t take into account the thousands of ways that prior destabilization, multiple forms of coercion, and the true force of the survival imperative can impact moments of negotiation. While the Nagoya Protocol offers more protections for Indigenous nations than existed previously, they are still a reform that does not go nearly far enough in honoring and protecting traditional knowledge.

The boundaries of how life can be patented, claimed, and owned have been struggled over in multiple ways. In 1993, a group of scientists at Stanford University’s Morrison Institute launched the Human Genome Diversity Project (not to be confused with the Human Genome Project led by global researchers). The Human Genome Diversity Project sought to lead the field of study on the diversity of genetics in human populations around the world, looking at how migration and evolution has impacted the human genome. However, they have been widely critiqued for unethical practices, including taking genetic materials without knowledge or consent from global Indigenous tribal nations. In 1995, Debra Harry of the Northern Paiute people challenged the scientists for their lack of ethics and dismissed their search to document “human evolution” by naming that Indigenous peoples already possess strong beliefs and knowledge regarding their own creation and histories. Her work, in solidarity with others, led to the founding of the Indigenous People’s Council on Biocolonialism.

A teaspoon full of ground turmeric root, a deep yellow on a green background.

In 1995, in response to the growing interest in turmeric within the United States, two researchers successfully submitted a patent for the healing properties of the plant. Soman K. Das and Harihar Kohli of the University of Mississippi Medical Center filed claims to cover the use of turmeric to heal surgical wounds and ulcers. In 1997, the patent was withdrawn after the Indian Council of Scientific and Industrial Research fought against the right of the United States to patent this plant.

In the same year that turmeric was patented, the Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) was passed as part of the agreement establishing the World Trade Organization (WTO). In the mid-1990s, many nations in the Global North were focused on consolidating and building agreements between nations that would center the profit-building goals of global capitalism. TRIPS created standards of ownership that the signers agreed to abide by. When it was passed, there were no provisions for the traditional knowledge of Indigenous communities. Instead, the protocol was written to benefit Western companies as they raced to claim patents, including patents for many of the plants and healing practices developed by generations of Indigenous ancestors. When challenged, many of those upholding TRIPS claimed – with painful irony – that Indigenous knowledge was not protected under the standards because that knowledge was not new or innovative, which patent claims require.

A taxidermied white sheep on display in a glass case.

In 1996, scientists at a research institute in Scotland cloned the first sheep, Dolly. They created an embryo from one of her adult cells in a laboratory. Shortly after this success, the scientists that cloned Dolly – Keith Campbell and Ian Wilmut – attempted to file two patents in the United States. The first was a patent for the system of cloning itself, called somatic cell nuclear transfer. In this process, an exact genetic copy of a living being is created by combining an ovum, or egg, and another cell from elsewhere in the body. The second patent Campbell and Wilmut submitted was for all life forms created as a result of the somatic cell nuclear transfer process. The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office turned down the second application, citing a federal law that denies patents for anything that occurs through the “laws of nature, natural phenomena and abstract ideas.” Campbell and Wilmut fought the patent in the courts; in 2014, the U.S. Court of Appeals agreed with the Patent Office, confirming that there could be no patent for the life created as a result of this process.

In 1997, the University of Minnesota, in partnership with Quest International, a Dutch corporation, obtained a patent for the ingredients in pozol, a traditional Mayan fermented drink known for its many health benefits, including the treatment of giardia. Both the University and Quest refused to recognize the generations of Indigenous knowledge that led to the development of this drink. Indigenous people in Mexico responded by demanding that the government of Mexico put into place protections for Indigenous knowledge and traditions so that forms of biopiracy like this patent didn’t occur again.

A grassy rice field seen at close distance. The sky is clear and can also be seen reflected in the water.

In 1998, a collective of Anishinaabeg nations began publicly sharing stories of researchers from the University of Minnesota who were trying to genetically modify wild rice, or manoomim. Long a staple of Anishinaabeg culture and diet, tribal members expressed concerns about the impact of genetic modification on natural wild rice beds. In 2005 and 2006, bills prohibiting the release of genetically modified wild rice and requiring a study of wild rice were introduced to the state legislature; however, these bills did not pass. What followed was a continued series of legal rulings that attempted to prevent the introduction of genetically modified wild rice into natural rice beds; however, none of the bills prevented the research from continuing.

In the year 2000, the World Health Organization released this definition of traditional medicine: ‘‘the sum total of the knowledge, skills and practices based on the theories, beliefs and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health, as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illnesses” (WHO, n.d.). This includes plant medicine and the seeds that carry the life of those plants from one generation to the next. In this same year, the global market for “herbal medicine” reached 60 billion dollars. Across the globe, databases of traditional knowledge are being created in the attempt to assert previous knowledge should those practices and traditions be stolen next.

In 2003, after 13 years of research, the Human Genome Project (a different project from the Human Genome Diversity Project at Stanford University already mentioned) announced that it had completely sequenced the human genome. This means that they had identified, mapped, and sequenced almost all the genes that make up human DNA. The sequenced information is available in a database and is considered information in the public domain. The sequencing project does not examine every kind of human genome, however – the research was done on a limited selection of DNA from volunteers of European, African, and Asian ancestry.

In 2011, as part of a reform on patent law, the Leahy-Smith America Invents Act was signed. The Act stipulated for the first time that the patenting of human life is explicitly excluded from all patent law. As genetic research continues to expand, all non-human life is open for consideration for patents, so long as it can be proven that the life form has been manufactured and not created through natural means.

Another critical case in this debate was the U.S. Supreme Court case Association for Molecular Pathology v. Myriad Genetics, Inc. in 2013. Myriad Genetics had identified the sequence for the genes BRCA1 and BRCA2, genetic mutations that cause increased risk for breast and ovarian cancer. If a person is found to have these gene mutations, preventative removal of their ovaries and breast tissue can potentially mitigate the risk of cancer and increase survival exponentially. Myriad Genetics saw immense potential profit gains in being the first to receive a patent for the sequenced gene of BRCA1 and cornering the market on genetic testing and research. When other companies challenged Myriad as the sole proprietor of this gene sequence, the case was brought to the Supreme Court. The court ruled unanimously that "a naturally occurring DNA segment is a product of nature and not patent eligible merely because it has been isolated” (Kesselheim et al, 2013). This freed up the market for more companies to research further options for people living with breast cancer, providing a cost reduction for genetic testing for the gene mutation. However, while the Supreme Court ruling prevented patents on naturally occurring DNA, the ruling did allow patents on “complementary” DNA, or DNA that has had some modification. As a result, Myriad Genetics was given the right to produce and patent BRCA cDNA, a synthetic DNA they already use for this research. It remains to be seen what kind of impact that will have on the market for breast cancer research in the future.

A wheat-pasted sign of a soup can that reads

Profit from research in genetic technology continues to drive the market, with new companies emerging and large corporations growing larger. In 2018, pharmaceutical and biochemical company Bayer bought Monsanto, thereby consolidating the seed and agrochemical markets and making Bayer the owner of one third of all of the world’s seed banks. There have been over 150,000 legal cases filed against Bayer and Monsanto concerning the birth, health and environmental impacts of the chemical glyphosate used in “Roundup” weedkiller and other herbicide brands, and many additional cases against DuPont and other agricultural corporate leaders. Monsanto has fought to protect its profits at all costs. After a series of legal fights, Monsanto won the right to sue farmers who, while saving their own seeds, ended up planting varieties cross-contaminated by Monsanto’s genetically engineered crops. The genetically modified varieties are aggressive and will cross-pollinate with other varieties it encounters, thereby turning the original plant into a Monsanto brand. There are also multiple cases currently in the courts working to ban the use of Monsanto’s bovine growth hormone for expanding milk production. This hormone has already been banned in countries around the world, and its impact on children entering early puberty has been documented.

The lessons we are seeing from the profiteering off of life

Large corporations increasing their capacity to extract profit from land, seeds, genes, and the cycles and cultural memory of organic life is creating imbalances in how life evolves that we don’t yet fully understand. What will the long term impact be on traditions that include seed saving, farming, and plant medicine? What will the long-term impacts of genetically modified foods be, foods that are being designed to target world hunger without adequate testing of their impact on the environment? What if we were to focus on how to transform environmental toxins and climate change while also looking for plants that produce food and do not harm or overtake ecosystems? What if we supported the joy of researching new DNA sequences that can interrupt disease while centering awareness of environmental impact and building consent with those who have been the traditional keepers of what is being studied? And then what if we made the results of this research accessible to everyone and not only those who can afford them?

At least a third of all pharmaceutical drugs are derived from plants, many with minimal chemical shifts between when they were harvested and when they arrived at the drug store in pill form. Many of the practices and treatments that support and protect our loved ones come from these plants, identified as medicine through the traditional teachings of people who have received no long term benefits from sharing this information. Instead, many of the lands where these plants originate have been decimated, and many of the people indigenous to those lands forced out. Now, many of these medicinal plants are also in danger of extinction, including the Pacific yew and the South Pacific sea sponge, both used in the development of anti-cancer treatments.

Land cannot and should not be owned. Life cannot and should not be owned. Evolution is the way that life responds to changes in the context and conditions that surround it. When we focus on research that brings change to life faster than the speed of evolution, it is vital that we take these actions with humility and respect for the life that is impacted by these changes and the lives that will benefit. Always.

**Simultaneously, while life is being patented, questions of controlling life through abortion, stem cell research, and assisted reproductive technologies sit in relation to this conversation. As we watch all of the changes around us unfold, HHP will be tracking these debates on the privatization of life and bodies. The timeline contains some of these stories, including the arc that brought us to this moment, and future work will carry this deeper.

Sources Cited:

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Harris, P. (2013, February 12). Monsanto sued small famers to protect seed patents, report says. The Guardian. https://web.archive.org/web/20230608063315/https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2013/feb/12/monsanto-sues-farmers-seed-patents

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Rossi, N. (2023, October 6). From Commodification to Conservation: Restoring Agrobiodiversity through Seed Breeding - Part I. National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition. https://web.archive.org/web/20231217164208/https://sustainableagriculture.net/blog/from-commodification-to-conservation-restoring-agrobiodiversity-through-seed-breeding-part-i/

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The Story of the Patenting of Life