Rozhovor Ľuby Lacinovej s Vandanou Shivou: Neupadám do depresie
Interview with Vandana Shiva

Summary/Abstract: In the interview Vandana Shiva, co-founder of Diverse Women for Diversity (DWD), Indian activist and director of Research Foundation for Research and Technology speaks about her views on science and biotechnology. A big problem of contemporary science is lack of responsibility of individual scientists for the way their inventions are used. Science is becoming more a profit-seeking tool than quest for better understanding. On the example of eugenics projects she analyses the consequences of the attitude which is using the knowledge of the biological processes for perfecting their technological control. This way, industrialized medicine is taking control of women body and of human reproductive process. Vandana Shiva explains the consequences of legalizing patents on biological processes, cultural plants and individual genes for Third World women. In fact, these people are robbed of their traditional knowledge and resources and pushed into dependence on transnational corporations holding those patents. Corporative way of agriculture endangers the biodiversity by replacing huge variety of local crops by one or two species. Consequently, local food culture based on variety of traditional foods is destroyed, too. The exploitation of the natural and human resources of the Third world is a product of globalization process with its international agreements like GATT, WTO and MAI, which take control away from state governments and give absolute freedom of acting to transnational corporations. Vandana Shiva treasures the activism of local Indian communities and of women around the world, who are interconnected in the DWD network. She stresses women model of power: you have as much power, as you empower other.

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