Medicinal
marijuana is fast becoming more accepted as a a legitimate treatment thanks to
scientific studies and patient's testaments. A recent change in legislation has
created fears that Monsanto are about to try and cash in on this new treatment.
Despite
the fact that the U.S. Government are unwilling to change national laws, five
states are about to vote to change their marijuana laws in November, and it
looks likely that they will vote to join the states that have already legalized
it. With more states choosing to legalese, there is a real fear that big
pharmaceutical companies that are notorious for being profit-driven at the
expense of health will wade into this new market.
In
2015, it came to light that Monsanto, the agrochemical corporation wanted to
get involved in the marijuana business.
The
news was met with a great deal of contempt from medicinal marijuana
enthusiasts, and was followed by a statement from Monsanto that they had no
interest in expanding into this field. In April, Spokeswoman, Charla Lord told
the Willamette Week “Monsanto has not, is not and has no plans for working on
cultivating cannabis.”
But
activists kept a close watch on Monsanto's movements and sure enough their
suspicions were correct when it was revealed that they had made the first ever genetically modified strain of
marijuana, and was also looking to patent the product.
In
an effort to stop Monsanto having the monopoly on this,a pioneering
biotechnology startup based in Portland have launched an online interactive
guide that maps the genetic evolution of the marijuana genome, thus making it
public property and harder for Monsanto to lay a claim to it.
The
startup is called Phylos Bioscience, and it has been collecting samples of
marijuana strains for over two years in order to sequence the plant’s DNA. The
are developing a software that presented a 3-D visualization of the data, and
it is about to be revealed.
Named
'Galaxy' the interactive guide allows you to take a tour round a
three-dimensional projection of the genetic information they have drawn from
the plant.
Phylos
Bioscience hope that by making this information public, they can keep the
information in the hands of the underground societies where it began, and out
of the hands of the commercial companies.
Sales
and Marketing Manager of Phylos Bioscience, Carolyn White has said “Sample
collection was a huge part of this process. One side was a collaboration with
growers, dispensaries and labs to collect modern samples, and the other a
process of hunting down ancient landrace strains from all over the world.”
“We’ve
collected samples from all over the world, and cataloged the genetic
information encoded in their DNA,” Dr Holmes, Phylos’s chief science officer
and molecular and evolutionary biologist and Phylos Bioscience co-founder told The New York Times.
Because of this data collected by Phylos Bioscience, it
could mean better protection of intellectual property rights of marijuana
growers and keep it away from the likes of Monsanto.
Source : organicandhealthy.org