Biopiracy: Th e Curse of the Nutmeg

• Main Author: Öhrström, Lars
• Format: Book Part
• Language: unknown
• Published: Oxford University Press 2013
• Subjects: Hudson; Indian; North Cape; North East Passage
• Online Access: http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/oso/9780199661091.003.0008

Governments and private donors often try to control public research by handing out very specific grants, expecting closely related output such as patents, new companies, and inventions in the specified directions. Researchers, in general, vehemently oppose such policies, arguing that much better patents, new companies, and inventions will result if they are left to their own devices, making decisions on where to use their spatulas, syringes, and microscopes. Grant applications are therefore sometimes written using an obedient language adhering to whatever policies and applications are in vogue at the time, but with a more or less concealed plan B containing the real scientific questions we think should be in focus. This is by no means a new phenomenon, and one of the most flagrant misuses of a research grant must have been that of Captain Henry Hudson in 1609. Issued with a ship, men, and provisions by the Dutch East India Company (VOC, Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie), the agreed research plan was to explore a route to the Indies by sailing north of Scandinavia and Russia—the so-called north-east passage. He did make an attempt, but somewhere east of Scandinavia’s northernmost point, close to North Cape, he had a better idea and turned his ship west. He crossed the Atlantic and, among other things, explored what was to be named the Hudson River. This gave the Dutch Republic a claim to a large island called Manna-hata by the local population, one suspects much to the regret of Hudson’s English compatriots. This urge to go east was partly driven by the enormous profits there were to be made in the spice trade—both on returning home, and on shipping items such as cloves, pepper, and nutmeg within Asia. In a way one can (being a bit chemo-chauvinistic) regard the spice trade as a chemical trade, as a number of very specific molecules make up our sensation of spices compared to the experience of eating rice for example, another important part of the East-Indian trade. To a first approximation, rice is a mixture ...