Salam,
Saya telah kirimkan copy artikel tersebut pada 3 peminat pertama. Namun,
reprint artikel itu mungkin bisa diminta langsung dari Gordon Conway yang
president dari Rockefeller Foundation yang alamatnya bisa ditemukan halamam
webpage yayasan ini (WWW.rockfound.org). Bersama ini juga saya sertakan
tulisan Gordon Conway di webpage yayasan ini serta satu artikel lagi
menyangkut paten yang bisa diminta dengan mengirim e-mail ke
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Bagi yang bisa menjelajah internet, perlu coba-coba lihat yayasan ini sebab
bidang yang di danai oleh lembagai ini sangat luas dan jumlah dana yang
diberikan ke orang/lembaga di Indonesia sangat sedikit dibanding yang
diberikan ke orang/lembaga negara lain. Atau mungkin bisa saja minta
informasi tentang yayasan itu dan bidang yang didanai serta cara mengajukan
proposal langsung dengan mengirim e-mail.
Semoga bermanfaat.
Witjaksono
Postdoctoral Research Associate
Tropical Research and Education center
University of Florida
18905 SW 280th Street
Homestead Florida 33031-3314
USA
_______________________
THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION
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RECENT FOUNDATION NEWS
Let Us Not Jeopardize The Real Promise Of GM Crops
By Gordon Conway
Vitamin A and iron deficiencies, maladies practically unknown in the
United States and other industrialized countries, could potentially be
banished among people in the developing countries whose staple diet is rice,
thanks to a new variety of genetically modified (GM) rice that dramatically
improves the dietary supply of vitamin A and iron.
At least 400 million women of child-bearing age suffer from anemia as a
result of iron deficiency. This can lead to physical and mental retardation,
premature births, and natal mortality. And more than 100 million children do
not get enough vitamin A, the lack of which worsens the course of many
infections and is the leading cause of blindness in developing countries.
Some 2 million children die each year indirectly as a result of vitamin A
deficiency.
The new GM "golden rice" which, following comprehensive tests, will be
made freely available for use by poor farmers in rice-eating regions within
several years, was funded by the Rockefeller Foundation and the European
Union.
This most recent advance in biotechnology could noticeably reduce
childhood and maternal morbidity and mortality rates through much of the
developing world. But an even larger challenge looms. In the next two
decades there will be an additional 1.5 billion people to feed. But crop
yields have ceased to grow as fast as they did during the Green Revolution,
and the availability of arable land in Africa, Asia and Latin America is
dwindling. If the proportion of the population of the developing countries
mired in permanent or intermittent hunger remains at current levels, by the
year 2020 the number of undernourished could exceed one billion.
The tools of biotechnology are going to be essential if crop yield
ceilings are to be raised, the environment preserved through reduction of
pesticide use, the nutrient value of basic foods increased and farmers on
less favored lands provided with varieties
better able to tolerate drought, salinity and lack of soil nutrients.
Biotechnology is surely the most powerful tool ever put in the hands of
agricultural research, or medical research for that matter. It is the same
tool that has provided more than one hundred medical products including
insulin, hepatitis vaccine and various products for cardio-vascular disease.
But where scientists and development organizations see better health
and nutrition for many hundreds of millions, others see danger. There are
some genuine concerns about corporate ethics and potential impacts on health
and the environment. But many of the fears are imaginary or misplaced.
The recent announcement by Monsanto that it will disavow use of the
"terminator" seed sterility technology is a welcome step toward assuaging
some of these concerns particularly in developing countries. Terminator
technology prevents plants from producing fertile seeds, forcing farmers to
buy more seed rather than using seed from the previous year's crop. Storing
harvested seed for sowing lay behind the success of the Green
Revolution. Terminator technology would have threatened our attempts to feed
the world in the next century.
But there remains a real danger that these controversies, if they
continue, may so polarize consumers, producers, industry,and government in
both the developed and developing countries that it will become impossible
for developing countries to realize substantive benefits from plant
biotechnology. Other concessions must be made by the biotechnology
companies.
Most important they need to share their technologies and genomic
information with public plant breeders working for poor farmers and conform
to the plant variety protection system, which allows farmers to save seed
for their own re-use and plant breeders to use them in research designed to
produce further varietal improvements, rather than resort to the use of
restrictive patents.
It is also very important that those who enjoy the comforts of living
in industrialized societies do not act to limit human initiative in an area
of research that is so vital to so many. Even so, we should proceed with
biotechnology at a pace moderate enough to measure unforeseen effects,
before they do harm that is.
Let's hope that biotechnology's harvest will be less hunger and greater
health for the many.
# # #
Gordon Conway, an agricultural ecologist, is president of the
Rockefeller Foundation.
THE ROCKEFELLER FOUNDATION
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RECENT PUBLICATIONS
Enclosing the Global Plant Genetic Commons
by Robert Herdt
Prepared for delivery at the China Center for Economic Research, May
24, 1999, based on a paper delivered at the Institute for International
Studies, Stanford University, January 14, 1999.
Copyright � 1999
Property rights are assured by the collective standing behind one's
claim to the benefits stream generated by property. Changing technology and
institutions have interacted throughout history to create property rights
from what had previously been public goods. The discovery of knowledge about
DNA and the useful products that can be created through applications of that
knowledge has generated conditions that have led to intellectual private
property claims on many new processes and products. Large multinational life
sciences companies seeking to capitalize on these developments have
purchased many heretofore independent seed companies, leading to a high
level of concentration in the seed industry. These issues are treated
differently is various countries and many developing countries have limited
capacity to deal with them. Policies to
address the challenges created by this set of events are outlined in
Enclosing the Global Plant Genetic Commons.
Robert Herdt is Director for Agricultural Sciences, The Rockefeller
Foundation, 420 Fifth Ave, New York, NY, 10018. The views presented here are
those of
the author and not necessarily those of the Rockefeller Foundation.
For printed copies of the report, please write to:
The Rockefeller Foundation
420 Fifth Avenue
New York, NY 10018
Attn: Communications Department
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your name, phone number and complete mailing
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