Life © ® ™

I hum and sing even when I am not conscious of it. One time, in a mad rush to fill my hunger, I opened one of those packets of powdered soup. It was "spring vegetable soup." I emptied the contents of the pack into hot water, then as I stirred it while humming, I read the instructions at the back: "Pour into really hot water. Stir to the right. Then stir to the left. Then hum a tune. That’s the spirit." I suddenly became very conscious I was humming to myself. Reading that, the experience of the afternoon’s twin delight of having soup and song, with a disposition to match, just turned to something tasteless and ordinary. The entire experience has just been packaged, stamped with a trademark and protected by patents and copyright. Though I have to give the company involved credit for packaging creativity, I will never again be able to have soup and song in such gay abandon, knowing that in a factory somewhere, hundreds of thousands of these packets, will carry the "soup and song" attitude just like another chemical ingredient and it will fade just like those inane popular dance songs that spread like wildfire and cease like a tiresome act. "Owning" stuff can really put a damper on the experience of spontaneity, discovery and mystery. And owning stuff is what economics and all its related disciplines in finance, business and trade can do to discoveries in nature and science. It can own them. I am sure that business gurus have their own PowerPoint-captured creed as to the good tidings brought about by the marriage of science and economics. I will leave them to their business and will only take up two enterprises involving nature and science which I think border not only on the ridiculous, but also on the sad and unsettling.

If you were a monkey in a Costa Rican jungle, you would be scratching your head more vigorously than usual observing humans in their current nasty legal patent battles to lay claim to the modern translation of how Tarzan got from Tree A to Tree B to rescue his Jane who somehow never really caught up with jungle ways. Yes, the "canopy walk," as it is called, is just a human version of cable cars in treetops. The Costa Rican patent for this particular mechanism, in fact, says that the canopy walk is "an elevated forest transport system using harnesses and pulleys on a single horizontal line, using gravity for propulsion." The improvement from Tarzan’s version is that there is now a horizontal cable across treetop platforms and of course, seatbelts. Please tell me what I am missing here but isn’t the shortest distance between two points a straight line and isn’t this and the need for it to be horizontal, not any clearer and more obvious than if the two points were vertical trees?! It is the most obvious mechanism for the remembrance of our primate past. When Darwin said that man was "perhaps, arboreal in habits," he must have been too fancy in his language but if these guys missed the message, Darwin simply meant we used to swing from tree to tree. With this patent, we now need to pay fees in order to remember our biological past recreated and re-enacted using simple things like harnesses and pulleys which we use for other things anyway, and of course, something inescapable and free (unless you have been paying Newton’s heirs) like gravity. The patent-holder’s side has even reportedly gone to the extent of cutting the cables of those who refused to pay the patent fees. Economics even got the law to protect and sanction patenting the obvious or at the very least, a known evolutionary behavior. This disturbs me because if that were so, what should stop us humans from patenting "swimming" or "running" in the evolutionary future or in this next case I came across, "being"?

Genlife (Genlife.com) is a biotech company that offers to store your DNA or your pet’s DNA for "as long as you like" for a set-up fee and annual storage fees ranging from $180 for human DNA and $890 for your pet’s DNA (go figure why it is cheaper for humans). If you are feeling lucky, you can get the bonus pack where you can get to store both and save $85 on set-up fees. Wow. It opens with this line: "GenLife’s gene banking service is an easy and affordable way to preserve your DNA while you are still in good health." It includes assurances like "you will receive a certificate of storage and a subscription to our monthly newsletter containing the latest update in the genetics industry." For your pet’s DNA, banking it with GenLife will "grant you the option of reproducing your pet after they are no longer with you, or at the time of your choosing." If you were not a careful reader, you would think you are reading about regular banking services for your money but what really disturbed me was not the underlying science of genetics which has progressed in leaps and bounds, especially since the mapping of the Human Genome in the early 90s but the way economics has one again diluted the sense of awe and wonder of discovery because of the intention and the language used by companies to lay claim to life and mystery by storage.

The most disturbing plan I found in GenLife was the Phoenix Plan, their "reproductive cloning" plan. The Phoenix is a mythical bird that rises from the ashes. I applaud the daring of the writer of this company for his/her use of metaphor but deeply lament his/her respect for mystery. GenLife invoked research that indicates that the clone that will arise from the double helix of the one who was cloned will fully retain individual characteristics. But as if to distance itself from that statement just in case that will not be proven true, the Plan states that it will endow your future clone with a "carefully planned financial endowment, education, and, if desired, an extensive historical and genealogical account of your life." Translation: they will give your clone a CD of your biography (not just DNA), complete with pictures in JPEG format, as if one’s "full individual traits" are transmittable by burning a CD copy.

I think storing your own DNA now because you think that you, in all that you are, past, present and future, could be replayed, is like patenting self-importance at worst, and mystery at best. You want to control the use of something that otherwise roam life relatively free and by chance, thinking you can tuck destiny, in its unknown proportions of choices and mysteries, in your own pants. You think you have better control of your destiny when you are surrounded by "experienced professionals" who charge you annually for keeping who you are, in terms of your personal double helix.

Science does not lay real claims on life, economics does. But we are creatures both of science and economics, given to awe and to own, among other things, and we form opinions constantly at war with each other, within each one of us. I would tell you how I try to make sense of it but am afraid you have to pay patent fees for it and I assure you it is not even for something you yourself did not know about already.

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