Inside their rough, sun burnt and jaundiced skin, pirates are terrible people. They rob people and generally wreak havoc, it's risky business. The pirates of the high seas, however, are no match for the bio-pirates of biodiverse environs around the world. It is definitely despicable to rob merchants who are simply trying to import their fine European booty into the Caribbean islands, but at least they are clear in their cruel intentions.
For the peoples in developing countries, it is mission impossible to prevent and control the outsiders, researchers from pharmaceutical corporations from taking its natural resources and traditional cures and turning them into the color of money without any reciprocal benefit for the countries that provide them. What makes this especially troubling is that because US patents must be recognized in foreign countries due to TRIPs, the people of the developing nations are expected to pay US premiums for the drugs. The firm(s) responsible for this piracy benefit from assymetrical information and can make all the right moves in establishing their patents simply because only a minority report the medicinal benefits of the local fauna because they do not have the means to do so. The corporations can succeed in doing this because US patent law grants patents on the basis of what is novel to the US, and I believe that policy is not appropriate. While the US was born on the fourth of July, this is a globalized world and even the patent department must recognize that other nations and peoples have had knowledge long before that. While patent protection is crucial, we must be mindful to only provide that monopoly protection to developments that are truly developments, and not just presentations of something that many people already know
In some corporations, such as Novartis, a few good men are making all the right moves by producing, marketing, and distributing a derivative from the qinghao tree which has traditionally been used as a treatment for malaria at low to no cost to people in developing countries. Bio-piracy is not something we should continue to accept. While bio-piracy may not be preventing people from obtaining medication for AIDS, it is still related to the issues caused by the current situation of international patent law. We must not stand by with our eyes wide shut while people are robbed of what is rightfully theirs by corporations who do not give a care to the people they rob.
In summary, this is what makes the men of bio-piracy far and away worse than the peg-legged, rum-swilling, arrrrghh pirates of yesteryear.
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