[extropy-chat] Madcap runs into the rocks !! (extremophiles in industry)

[spike]

> bounces at lists.extropy.org] On Behalf Of M.B. Baumeister
> >
> > http://www.mauinews.com/story.aspx?id=12506
> >
> > Amara
> > (with a lump in her throat)
> 
> 
> We humans often imbue inanimate objects with personalities, making the
> loss painful...

I can show you a motorcycle with an actual personality:
it knows its master.  For some odd reason it will only
start and run for me.  Others who have attempted to
operate him have met with unsatisfactory results.

Most motorcycles are shes, but this one is male, for
it is a stallion.  I call him Rocinante, for this
was the name of Don Quixote's horse and John Steinbeck's
truck.

My wife and I returned yesterday evening from a ten day 
motorcycle tour of the west on Rocinante.  We went to 
Yellowstone Park to look at old growth forests, but there 
were few, actually none of these to be found.  But I was 
astounded by the geysers and geological features.  I was 
with a group which included a PhD in geology.  This made 
the trip worthwhile just to listen to him.

I learned of a bacterium that was taken from one of
the hot springs that can live in boiling water (at
that altitude it is ~93C).  The GM people were using
it to create industrial products and pharmaceuticals.  
This ran afoul of a law regarding the use of a national 
park for commercial products.  The case is still
ongoing, and carries many important implications for
intellectual property law.

If you get a chance for a vacation, I highly recommend 
Yellowstone Park.

spike


Here's what I found on the extremophiles:


BY CHRISTOPHER SMITH
 THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

Yellowstone National Park will receive a royalty of 0.5 percent for 
industrial and pharmaceutical products derived from the microscopic bugs 
found in geysers and thermal pools under secret terms of a first-ever 
"bioprospecting" deal.

That is way too low, according to watchdog groups that have brought suit 
against the National Park Service over the park's contract with a private 
firm. But Yellowstone officials say the royalty amounts are better than 
nothing, which is all the park has received from past discoveries of 
microbes that yield valuable commercial products.

The Park Service has refused to make public the financial specifics of 
the agreement between Yellowstone and Diversa Inc. of San Diego, a 
biotechnology firm. But The Salt Lake Tribune recently obtained a copy of 
the payment schedule, which details royalty amounts ranging up to 10 
percent for commercial uses besides industrial and pharmaceutical 
products.

With Vice President Al Gore looking on in August 1997 at Yellowstone's 
125th anniversary celebration, Diversa officials and Yellowstone park 
managers signed the novel "benefit sharing" contract. Today, the 
Yellowstone-Diversa pact is the subject of two federal lawsuits in 
Washington. A coalition of environmental and technology watchdog groups 
have sued the Park Service, contending Yellowstone illegally 
commercialized natural resources owned by all Americans without the 
consent of the public.

In March, a federal judge hearing one of the lawsuits ruled in favor of 
the watchdog groups, suspended the Diversa contract and ordered the park 
to conduct an environmental impact study on bioprospecting with public 
input.  A second suit challenges the Park Service's refusal to disclose 
the amount of money Yellowstone will receive from Diversa for allowing 
the company to license and sell products and research derived from 
organisms collected in the park and then cloned in Diversa's labs. Last 
year, several organizations,including The Tribune and the 
Washington-based Natural Resources News Service, unsuccessfully appealed 
the Department of Interior's ruling that the royalties were confidential.

However, The Tribune independently obtained a copy of the secret royalty 
amounts, which shows Diversa will give Yellowstone:
-- A $20,000 payment annually for five years, minus any royalties accrued 
by the park from net sales or revenues of commercially viable products 
derived from Yellowstone microorganisms.
-- Royalties of 0.5 percent of net sales of industrial or pharmaceutical 
products resulting from Yellowstone microbes, 3 percent of net sales of 
"research reagent or diagnostic" products made from Yellowstone genetic 
resources and 8 percent of net sales of "native enzymes purified from 
cultured microorganisms" found in the park.
-- A royalty of 10 percent of net revenues realized by Diversa from the 
licensing, assignment or sale of copyrighted work -- such as books, 
journal articles or genetic code -- created using the results of research 
from Yellowstone biological resources.
-- Equipment and up to 10 days of scientific training, worth an estimated 
$15,000 annually.

The financial rewards Yellowstone receives in return for allowing Diversa 
to commercialize park resources -- believed by some experts to be a 
multibillion-dollar biotechnology gold mine -- struck critics of the 
agreement as astonishingly low.

"This is a rotten deal," said Joe Mendelson, legal director for the 
International Center for Technology Assessment in Washington, which 
brought suit on behalf of the watchdog organizations against the Park 
Service over the Diversa deal.

"Yellowstone held all the cards and they gave it away for a song and a 
dance," he said. "These are not federal lands where it's legal to harvest 
timber or mine coal, this is a national park to be protected for future 
generations. And to the extent they're allowing a commercial exploitation 
inside a national park at a far lower royalty rate than you find on lands 
legally allowed to be commercially exploited, it is just preposterous."


Royalties paid by private companies to the U.S. Treasury for the right to 
harvest natural resources for commercial sale from public lands are 
traditionally higher than half of 1 percent. The standard royalty rate 
that energy companies pay the federal government to extract oil and gas 
from Bureau of Land Management-administered property is 12.5 percent. But 
Yellowstone officials and the private consultant the park hired to help 
broker the Diversa contract defended the royalty schedule as a good deal 
for American taxpayers that protects the unique resource while 
guaranteeing financial compensation should any discoveries be made.


"For us, any amount is better than zero," said Yellowstone Park 
Superintendent Mike Finley. "We were issuing research permits and seeing 
no return. As we gain experience with this, we will probably get closer 
to that magic number we should be at, but we were comfortable with this 
range [of royalties]."

Preston Scott, director of the World Foundation for Environment and 
Development, a Washington-based organization hired by Yellowstone to help 
park officials negotiate the Diversa contract, said it's impossible to 
compare a bioprospecting "benefits sharing package" to a standard 
public-land resource royalty contract.

"There's not a proven commodity here, because you're dealing with so many 
variables before you know if you even have a product that can come to 
market," he said. "Under this agreement, if Diversa discovers nothing, 
the park still gets a $100,000 minimum contribution and Diversa gets 
nothing. But in my experience, no matter what financial arrangements you 
make, 50 percent of the population will say the royalties are too low and 
50 percent will say they are too high."

There is no recognized standard benchmark for royalties paid for 
bioprospecting access, since the industry is emerging,dynamic and highly 
speculative. One newly published book, The Commercial Use of Biodiversity 
by Kerry Ten Kate and Sarah A. Laird, includes a survey of average 
royalty rates paid by biotech firms. Forgenetic material that results in 
a commercially viable product,the authors found companies paying at least 
5 percent and as much as 10 percent royalties -- substantially higher 
than the 0.5 percent in the Yellowstone deal.

But many experts believe it's difficult to draw any conclusions about 
whether one benefit-sharing contract is better than another.


"I wish there was an easy approach to judging the fairness of these 
agreements, but there is not," said Michael A. Gollin, a partner 
specializing in intellectual property law at Venable,Baetjer, Howard and 
Civiletti in Washington. "A company like Diversa is investing millions of 
dollars in research based on natural resources, which is something the 
government can't andwould not ever do. The government is leveraging the 
resource into a useful product, hopefully for the betterment of quality 
of life in a way they can't otherwise do, providing a social benefit 
beyond upfront payments and royalties."

National and international laws governing the collection and 
commercialization of genetic material are evolving, as is public opinion 
of genetic research. The field is highly controversial -- many activist 
organizations take the position that tinkering with genetic codes, the 
fundamental building blocks of all life on the planet, is asking for 
trouble. Some question whether national parks should be viewed as 
genetic-material supermarkets.

"Is 'intellectual property' an appropriate way to describe all life and 
life forms in Yellowstone?" said Beth Burrows of the Edmonds Institute in 
Edmonds, Wash., which joined with the Center for Technology Assessment 
and the Alliance for the Wild Rockies in suing the Park Service over the 
Diversa agreement.

"Is this what we expect from our park stewards? In this case, one of 
environmental justice at its fundamental level, there was a backroom deal 
and the American public was not consulted," she said.

The Yellowstone bioprospecting contract underscores the increasing 
dilemma that federal land managers confront in the face of a 
bio-technological revolution. An increasing number of companies around 
the world are searching out, cloning, manipulating and patenting genetic 
sequences derived from microbes living in everything from Antarctic ice 
floes to a handful of backyard garden soil.Resulting products have ranged 
from new medicines to a stouter-tasting beer. Nature preserves, such as 
some national parks, contain a wide range of biological diversity with 
unique genetic materials that are emerging as one of the world's most 
valuable resources. Yellowstone's famous thermal features --mudpots, 
steam vents and acidic pools -- are especially attractive to 
bioprospectors because they hold "extremophiles," organisms that can 
tolerate extreme climates of heat and harsh chemicals.

Pharmaceutical giant Hoffman-LaRouche focused attention on Yellowstone's 
potentially lucrative microbial resources by using Thermus aquaticus, or 
"Taq," a microbe first identified in one of the park's thermal pools, as 
the basis for the process now known as "DNA fingerprinting." It 
revolutionized biotechnology and has yielded billions of dollars in 
revenues, yet Hoffman-LaRouche has not and is under no legal obligation 
to share any proceeds with Yellowstone.

"If Yellowstone had been getting 0.5 percent royalty from 
Hoffman-LaRouche on the hundreds of millions of dollars earned on Taq, 
the park and the American public would be doing very well right now," 
said Scott.

Diversa also was under no obligation to share any potential wealth with 
Yellowstone, but company officials have said they wanted to make 
arrangements in advance to avoid future disputes, should a valuable 
bioprospecting discovery be made.The company was one of many that had 
routinely collected samples of water or mud from Yellowstone's geysers 
under free, no-obligation scientific research permits issued by the park.

"We have a research mandate but we saw these discoveries happening and 
the park was not sharing in the revenue stream," said Finley. "As 
superintendent, I could have stopped all research activity, or I could 
have kept things business as usual and not gotten any return for the 
park, or I could do what we did and try to get us some financial gain 
while better understanding the resources we have here."

But Mendelson scoffs at the argument the Diversa deal was the only 
alternative. "The research permitting system in place in Park Service 
regulations does not allow for commercial interests to come in and 
exploit the resource, but, instead of enforcing that,Yellowstone simply 
said, 'We can't do anything about it so let's make a deal,' " said 
Mendelson. "And then they claim they are protecting the resource. That's 
garbage. Allowing commercial exploitation is not protecting the park."

(C)Salt Lake Tribune 1999

***************************
***************************

>   Yellowstone, Mexico Deals Spell Trouble for Firm
 
Wednesday, September 29, 1999


       BY CHRISTOPHER SMITH

       THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE

A bio-tech company probing Yellowstone National Park's  geysers for 
commercially valuable microbes under a controversial agreement with the 
Park Service is now in hot water in Mexico over a similar 
"bioprospecting" contract.

Diversa, a San Diego-based biotechnology company, was given the right in 
a secret 1997 contract to commercialize products from Yellowstone's 
unique heat-loving micro-organisms. The company cut a similar deal last 
year with Mexico's NationalAutonomous University (UNAM).

Now, Mexican officials are charging that the Diversa deal violates 
environmental-protection laws and returns only a "pittance" in royalties 
to the Mexican people in exchange for bioprospecting in undisclosed areas.

The charges are nearly identical to those lodged against Diversa's deal 
with Yellowstone by various watchdog groups that have brought suit 
against the National Park Service in federal court over a 
precedent-setting "cooperative research and development agreement" signed 
by Yellowstone park officials.

In March, a federal judge in Washington ruled the contract represented a 
"dramatic change" in national park policy and was conducted without 
adequate public input.

The deal marked the first time a national park would stand to profit from 
commercializing natural resources within park boundaries. But how much 
profit remains a secret. Yellowstone officials have refused to release 
the specific amount of royalties the park would receive from Diversa 
under the deal. The lawsuit is continuing.

In Mexico, officials say they, too, may bring suit against Diversa and 
the National Autonomous University over that bioprospecting deal.

"It is very clear this agreement violates Mexican environmental 
legislation, Mexican patent statutes, and, insofar as the payments to the 
university, the royalties are remarkably low to be ridiculous," said 
Alejandro Nadal, a lawyer, journalist and professor with the Center for 
Economic Studies at El Colegio de Mexico.

In Tuesday's editions of one of Mexico's largest newspapers, La Jornada, 
Nadal and UNAM lawyer Alberto Szekely each wrote counterpoint columns 
about the agreement.

Nadal labeled it the "looting" of Mexico's genetic resources, while 
Szekely defended the arrangement as an opportunity for collaborative work 
with royalties directed to the preservation of the environment.

A Diversa spokesperson on Tuesday said the company was not aware of the 
allegations made against the UNAM contract and the firm stood by the 
agreement as a way to better understand the microbial diversity in 
Mexico's various habitats. When Diversa announced the UNAM contract in 
November, the company  issued a press release stressing the agreement was 
"fully compliant with Mexican law and international treatises."

In the speculative world of bioprospecting -- where scientists seek out 
new genetic material in everything from underwater thermal vents to  
rotting whale carcasses -- Mexico is considered a gold mine. While Mexico 
has only 1.3 percent of the world's land area, it holds 14.4 percent of 
the world's plant species.

But Nadal claims Diversa was given the keys to the kingdom for a 
"pittance." Access to Mexico's biodiversity was given by UNAM -- which 
may not even have legal authority over the Mexican federal lands -- in 
exchange for equipment valued at $5,000, technical training in 
bioprospecting, $50 for each sample collected, royalties of 0.5 percent 
on pharmaceuticals derived from the samples and 0.3 percent royalties for 
any other products derived from the samples.

"This is barely enough to hire a research assistant for one semester, yet 
not a finger was raised by the university to obtain a higher level of 
royalties," Nadal said during a telephone press conference Tuesday.

Beth Burrows, director of the Edmonds Institute in Edmonds, Wash. -- one 
of the U.S. organizations that has brought suit against Diversa's 
Yellowstone bioprospecting deal -- said the negotiation tactics used in 
Mexico are identical to what happened in America's most famous national 
park.

"These companies are used to going in and finding someone 
who will take a handful of beads for Manhattan," said Burrows, who joined 
Nadal in Tuesday's press conference. "In both cases, there was an end-run 
around the laws created to make sure the owners of these lands have a say 
in determining what happens to the resources."

Nadal also claims that details of Yellowstone's royalty schedule were 
used in the UNAM negotiations by Diversa. Although he did not have 
documentation of the Yellowstone royalty schedule, he said the park was 
receiving as much as 10 percent of net sales from Diversa products, 
substantially higher than the Mexican agreement.

"This is really discriminatory treatment, by all means," said Nadal.
Diversa contends the UNAM contract compensation amounts released by Nadal
Tuesday are incomplete and do not include all elements of the agreement. 
Plus,
company officials say the Mexican contract includes a "most favored 
nation" clause that allows parity with any other Diversa contract
--including Yellowstone's --that would pay UNAM amounts equal to other 
Diversa clients.

(C)Salt Lake Tribune 1999