Pacific Genes & Life Patents PDF Download

Author: Call of the Earth Llamado de la Tierra (Organization)
Publisher: Call of Earth Llamado de La Tierra and United Nations Univer
ISBN:
Category : Cultural property
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Sixteen papers profiling the direct experiences of Pacific indigenous communities who have had an acrimonious encounter with science, biotechnology and intellectual property rights from inside the communities concerned.

Author: Matt K. Matsuda
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3031454499
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 298

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Author: Mark Munsterhjelm
Publisher: UBC Press
ISBN: 0774826622
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 293

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Book Description
Colonized since the 1600s, Taiwan is largely a nation of settlers. Yet within its population of 23 million are some 500,000 Aboriginal people. Genetic research has permeated both the political and popular spheres as Taiwanese nationalists and Chinese nationalists argue over the significance of migration theories and as the media proliferates genetic theories on predispositions to alcoholism. As this book demonstrates, genetics serve, on the one hand, to reinforce claims to a unique national identity and, on the other hand, to reinforce anti-Aboriginal prejudices. Increasingly, genetic research on Aborigines is being integrated into biotechnology planning, both in the country and through controversial US patent applications. The legacy of this work has been mass violations of the rights of Taiwanese Aborigines. Examining a troubling revival of racially configured genetic research and the questions of sovereignty it raises, Living Dead in the Pacific details a history of exploitation and resistance that represents a new area of conflict facing Aboriginal people both within Taiwan and around the world.

Author: Warwick Anderson
Publisher: University of Hawaii Press
ISBN: 082487742X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 321

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Book Description
How, when, and why has the Pacific been a locus for imagining different futures by those living there as well as passing through? What does that tell us about the distinctiveness or otherwise of this “sea of islands”? Foregrounding the work of leading and emerging scholars of Oceania, Pacific Futures brings together a diverse set of approaches to, and examples of, how futures are being conceived in the region and have been imagined in the past. Individual chapters engage the various and sometimes contested futures yearned for, unrealized, and even lost or forgotten, that are particular to the Pacific as a region, ocean, island network, destination, and home. Contributors recuperate the futures hoped for and dreamed up by a vast array of islanders and outlanders—from Indigenous federalists to Lutheran improvers to Cantonese small business owners—making these histories of the future visible. In so doing, the collection intervenes in debates about globalization in the Pacific—and how the region is acted on by outside forces—and postcolonial debates that emphasize the agency and resistance of Pacific peoples in the context of centuries of colonial endeavor. With a view to the effects of the “slow violence” of climate change, the volume also challenges scholars to think about the conditions of possibility for future-thinking at all in the midst of a global crisis that promises cataclysmic effects for the region. Pacific Futures highlights futures conceived in the context of a modernity coproduced by diverse Pacific peoples, taking resistance to categorization as a starting point rather than a conclusion. With its hospitable approach to thinking about history making and future thinking, one that is open to a wide range of methodological, epistemological, and political interests and commitments, the volume will encourage the writing of new histories of the Pacific and new ways of talking about history in this field, the region, and beyond.

Author: Krishna R. Dronamraju
Publisher: World Scientific
ISBN: 9812775013
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 485

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Book Description
The principal message of this book is that thermodynamics and statistical mechanics will benefit from replacing the unfortunate, misleading and mysterious term "entropy" with a more familiar, meaningful and appropriate term such as information, missing information or uncertainty. This replacement would facilitate the interpretation of the "driving force" of many processes in terms of informational changes and dispel the mystery that has always enshrouded entropy. It has been 140 years since Clausius coined the term "entropy"; almost 50 years since Shannon developed the mathematical theory of "information"--Subsequently renamed "entropy." In this book, the author advocates replacing "entropy" by "information," a term that has become widely used in many branches of science. The author also takes a new and bold approach to thermodynamics and statistical mechanics. Information is used not only as a tool for predicting distributions but as the fundamental cornerstone concept of thermodynamics, held until now by the term "entropy." The topics covered include the fundamentals of probability and information theory; the general concept of information as well as the particular concept of information as applied in thermodynamics; the re-derivation of the Sackur-Tetrode equation for the entropy of an ideal gas from purely informational arguments; the fundamental formalism of statistical mechanics; and many examples of simple processes the "driving force" for which is analyzed in terms of information.

Author: Mary Louise Fleming
Publisher: Elsevier Health Sciences
ISBN: 0729580911
Category : Medical
Languages : en
Pages : 400

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Book Description
This text introduces students to the core concepts and principles of public health: the nature and scope of public health; its history; an introduction to health determinants and epidemiology; evidence-based practice in public health and understanding public health data plus more.

Author: Silke von Lewinski
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
ISBN: 9041124926
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 564

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Book Description
For indigenous cultures, property is an alien concept. Yet the market-driven industries of the developed world do not hesitate to exploit indigenous raw materials, from melodies to plants, using intellectual property law to justify their behaviour. Existing intellectual property law, for the most part, allows industries to use indigenous knowledge and resources without asking for consent and without sharing the benefits of such exploitation with the indigenous people themselves. It should surprise nobody that indigenous people object. Recognizing that the commercial exploitation of indigenous knowledge and resources takes place in the midst of a genuine and significant clash of cultures, the eight contributors to this important book explore ways in which intellectual property law can expand to accommodate the interests of indigenous people to their traditional knowledge, genetic resources, indigenous names and designations, and folklore. In so doing they touch upon such fundamental issues and concepts as the following: collective rights to the living heritage; relevant human rights norms; benefit-sharing in biological resources; farmers rights; the practical needs of documentation, assistance, and advice; the role of customary law; bioprospecting and biopiracy; and public domain. As a starting point toward mutual understanding and a common basis for communication between Western-style industries and indigenous communities, Indigenous Heritage and Intellectual Property is of immeasurable value. It offers not only an in-depth evaluation of the current legal situation under national, regional and international law including analyses of the Convention on Biological Diversity and other international instruments, as well as initiatives of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), and other international bodies but also probes numerous further possibilities. While no one concerned with indigenous culture or environmental issues can afford to ignore it, this book is also of special significance to practitioners and policymakers in intellectual property law in relation to indigenous heritage. This book, here in its second edition, presents the most recent state of knowledge in the field.

Author: Maile Renee Arvin
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478005653
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 198

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Book Description
From their earliest encounters with Indigenous Pacific Islanders, white Europeans and Americans asserted an identification with the racial origins of Polynesians, declaring them to be racially almost white and speculating that they were of Mediterranean or Aryan descent. In Possessing Polynesians Maile Arvin analyzes this racializing history within the context of settler colonialism across Polynesia, especially in Hawai‘i. Arvin argues that a logic of possession through whiteness animates settler colonialism, by which both Polynesia (the place) and Polynesians (the people) become exotic, feminized belongings of whiteness. Seeing whiteness as indigenous to Polynesia provided white settlers with the justification needed to claim Polynesian lands and resources. Understood as possessions, Polynesians were and continue to be denied the privileges of whiteness. Yet Polynesians have long contested these classifications, claims, and cultural representations, and Arvin shows how their resistance to and refusal of white settler logic have regenerated Indigenous forms of recognition.

Author: Shelley Marshall
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317136810
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 417

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Book Description
As trade and production have increasingly crossed international boundaries, private bodies and governments alike have sought new ways to regulate labour standards and advance goals of fairness and social justice. Governments are harnessing social and market forces to advance corporate accountability, while private bodies are employing techniques drawn from command and control regulation to shape the behaviour of business. This collection brings together the research and reflections of a diverse international mix of academics, activists and practitioners in the fields of fair trade and corporate accountability, representing perspectives from both the industrialized and developing worlds. Contributors provide detailed case studies of a range of social justice governance initiatives, documenting the evolution of established strategies of advocacy and social mobilization, and evaluating the strengths and limitations of voluntary initiatives compared with legally enforceable instruments.

Author: Harriet A. Washington
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0767931238
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
From the award-winning author of Medical Apartheid, an exposé of the rush to own and exploit the raw materials of life—including yours. Think your body is your own to control and dispose of as you wish? Think again. The United States Patent Office has granted at least 40,000 patents on genes controlling the most basic processes of human life, and more are pending. If you undergo surgery in many hospitals you must sign away ownership rights to your excised tissues, even if they turn out to have medical and fiscal value. Life itself is rapidly becoming a wholly owned subsidiary of the medical-industrial complex. Deadly Monopolies is a powerful, disturbing, and deeply researched book that illuminates this “life patent” gold rush and its harmful, and even lethal, consequences for public health. Like the bestselling The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, it reveals in shocking detail just how far the profit motive has encroached in colonizing human life and compromising medical ethics.