Body Corporate

Body Corporate is a recent Four Corners program that describes the impact of patented genes by corporations.

When companies patent isolated genes, medical tests are much more expensive than they otherwise would be. Furthermore, scientific research is often held back, due to the huge sums involved in working with patented genes.

This is just ridiculous. The drive for profit impacts so many areas of our life. But when it stops people getting the best healthcare they can, or makes medical tests extremely expensive or stops people from doing medical research, then something is horribly wrong.

In the documentary, it was pointed out by some people that, unless people knew they could make a profit out of it, medical research wouldn’t continue at all. Now I can be quite cynical at times. But I do have enough faith left in humanity to believe that some of the people conducting medical research out there aren’t actually doing it solely to make a profit. They’re doing it because they want to make a difference. They want to help people.

And if medical research is going down the way of ‘making profits’ maybe that’s because we’ve let profit-making invade every area of our life. And making if we stopped allowing corporations to make a profit off anything and everything, people would be a lot freer just to get out there and help people.

The documentary is still available on ABC iView and can be found here:

http://www.abc.net.au/iview/#/program/633654