Being Human in Biotech Age Film Series

2015-2016 | 2016-2017

Patents based on traditional knowledge are often ‘biopiracy’. A new international treaty will finally combat this

By Miri (Margaret) Raven, Alana Gall, Bibi Barba, and Daniel Robinson, The Conversation | 06.02.2024

Aggregated News

Last week, at a conference in Geneva, the member states of the World Intellectual Property Organisation agreed on a new treaty aimed at preventing the for-profit piracy of traditional knowledge.

So-called “biopiracy”, in...

Other Countries

‘Eugenics on steroids’: the toxic and contested legacy of Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute

By Andrew Anthony, The Guardian | 04.28.2024

Aggregated News

Two weeks ago it was quietly announced that the Future of Humanity Institute, the renowned multidisciplinary research centre in Oxford, no longer had a future. It shut down without warning on 16 April. Initially there was just a brief...

Society

The Unexpected Plight of Whistleblowers

By Emily Beitiks, Guest Contributor | 05.10.2024

Biopolitical Times

If you’re looking for a book where good triumphs over evil, The Occasional Human Sacrifice: Medical Experimentation and the Cost of Saying No, isn’t it. But hear me out: you were looking for the wrong book, and you will understand why if you give this a read.

Carl Elliott, Professor of Philosophy and Medical Ethics at the University of Minnesota, provides a nuanced look into the history of medical research scandals and the whistleblowers who bring these stories...

Arts & Culture

Why the Newest Lindbergh Baby Conspiracy Theory Isn’t All That Out There from a Disability History Perspective

By Emily Beitiks, Guest Contributor | 02.09.2024

Biopolitical Times

The 1932 kidnapping and murder of Charles Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son was called the “crime of the century” at the time, and has inspired more and less plausible theories about what really happened ever since. The San Francisco Chronicle has recently covered a new wave of interest in the case, based on retired judge Lise Pearlman’s 2020 book that builds on a theory that’s been around for decades: that the celebrity aviator himself was implicated, and the man executed for the...

Eugenics