Marie Curie doesn't live here, Japanese women say

Rex Dalton, Kelowna A Californian bioprospecting company thatmet resistance to its search for commerciallyvaluable organisms in US national parks isnow turning its attention to Canada.

Diversa of San Diego announced its latestplan at the World’s Indigenous Peoples con-ference, held last week in Kelowna in BritishColumbia, Canada. The conference broughtresearchers, lawyers and tribal leaderstogether to discuss the status of intellectualproperty rights on traditional knowledge.

The company’s proposal — believed to bethe first of its type in Canada — is to studyorganisms at paper- or pulp-processing facil-ities on private land at an undisclosed loca-tion. But company officials say they wouldalso like to search public land in Canada.

Government officials say they would wel-come this as a starting point for wider explo-ration, which might lead to the commercialexploitation of either land or knowledge heldby Canada’s indigenous people.

In 1997, Diversa secured an agreementwith the US National Park Service to startbioprospecting at Yellowstone National Parkin Wyoming, triggering a still-unresolveddispute over this use of national parks. TheEdmonds Institute, a small environmentalgroup based in Washington state, sued thegovernment, successfully calling for an environmental review of the deal, which isdue to be completed next summer.

Diversa’s plan to explore in Canada couldset the stage for a similar conflict in a nationwhere suspicion of bioprospecting runsdeep, especially among indigenous people.At the Kelowna conference, some speakersdescribed the search for commercially usefulnatural organisms as “biocolonialism”.

Beth Burrows, director of the EdmondsInstitute, says she assumes that the Canadiangovernment and public-interest groups “willdo all they can to make sure the public ismade aware of every step taken, every dealproposed and every agreement made — allin sufficient time for all the public to com-ment on how their commons are used”.

Last month, Diversa officials wrote to the

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768 NATURE | VOL 419 | 24 OCTOBER 2002 | www.nature.com/nature

Bioprospectors turn their gaze to Canada

Marie Curie doesn’t live here, Japanese women sayDavid Cyranoski, TokyoJapan’s female researchers want respect andequal opportunity — without having to meetunreasonable standards of achievement.

That is the prevailing sentiment thatarose from the landmark first meeting of aJapanese liaison council for gender equalityon 7 October, which brought together 29academic societies to find ways of improvingthe status of female researchers in Japan.

Education minister Atsuko Toyama —one of four women in the government’s 18-member cabinet — opened the meeting,which members hope will mark the start of aserious effort to tackle a long-term problem.The percentage of women scientists tails offinto single figures in the upper levels of bothindustrial labs and universities.

Speakers outlined various ongoingefforts to create a more even playing field,including the introduction of crêches at society meetings and appeals togovernment, universities and grantingagencies to create more transparentevaluation and recruitment systems.

But the meeting heated up when severaldelegates objected to a mission statementhonouring cancer researcher Marie Curiefor “having proven the outstanding abilityof women in the natural sciences”. “Thestatement implies that only special womenwith tremendous abilities can compete withmen,” said Kay Domen, a researcher on bluesemiconductor lasers at Fujitsu QuantumDevices. “Regular women also need to beable to compete.” It is now being revised.

The committee’s first task is to conduct anationwide survey. One of the organizers,Kazuo Kitahara, president of the PhysicalSociety of Japan, says she is confident thatthe committee will get a grant from theeducation ministry to collect statistics onthe number of women in different fields,their success in obtaining grants, and eveninformation about the prevalence of sexualharassment. Female researchers say that alack of detailed information has exacerbatedtheir problems (see Nature 410, 404–406).

Despite some scepticism from meetingparticipants about its chances of making a

difference, the committee has at least raisedawareness. For example, the Society ofChemical Engineers, Japan, now recognizesthat only 2% of its members are female — andnone of these women holds a senior positionin industry or academia. “Until now we hadnever thought about building a society basedon equal participation by men and women,”the society admitted in a statement. ■

Reaching for the prize: but high positions still elude most women scientists in Japan.

government agency Environment Canadaseeking authority to begin bioprospecting.

Jock Langford, senior policy adviser atEnvironment Canada, says the agency ispleased that Diversa contacted the govern-ment before starting work on private land.Government officials are reviewing the mat-ter to see which agency has jurisdiction overlands selected by Diversa, he adds. Indige-nous groups might also become involvedthrough their long-standing claims to dis-puted land, some of their representatives say.

Leif Christoffersen, Diversa’s biodiversitycoordinator, says that there seems to be nolaw governing bioprospecting on privateland in Canada, but that the status for publicland is unclear. “We are interested in explor-ing public lands, but not until we establish alink with the ministry,” says Christoffersen.

Diversa is seeking organisms that mightform the basis of a viable biotechnologyproduct. The Taq polymerase enzyme for thepolymerase chain reaction, for instance, nowused routinely by thousands of researchers,originated from heat-resistant bacteriafound at a geyser in the Yellowstone Park.

Diversa has previously cast its net indeveloping countries, including Costa Rica,Indonesia, Kenya and South Africa. In Mexico, the company retreated after tribesobjected to other bioprospectors. Diversastill holds samples from there in a freezer, butsays that it is not using them for research. ■

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Dip in profits: Diversa’s Eric Mathur collectingYellowstone Park microbes before work stalled.

© 2002 Nature Publishing Group