To whom...,
I guarantee you that the main danger to the Neem tree is if Western
new-agers decide that it is latest answer to their physical and psychic
torments. There won't be a Neem tree left standing if moneyed, hippie
half-wits decide that this is the latest hocus-pocus that will solve their
problems while helping them retain their vegetarian virtue.
Most of the patents will turn out to have no value. Furthermore,
it is not entirely clear how wide patents on organisms and their genomes
are. It may be that "use" patents will be the way in which discoveries
about genomes are protected. Patenting an entire genome has already been
challenged as overly broad and vague. What's far more likely to come out
of the biological patenting wars are typical use patents with royalty
arrangements for people who made the initial discoveries. However, I
personally think that people who believe they are going to make money by
patenting genomes are going to get hosed. Use patents have been the
standard for generations, and I think that it is merely the novelty of the
process of decoding genomes that has allowed decoders to assert that codes
are intellectual property as such.
I'm sure the Neem tree is a very useful thing to people who have
no industry or science. I wouldn't get upset about it except to plead
with people not to encourage the cutting down of the poor trees through
trade in herbalist superstition.
peace
