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Abstract:
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"Emphasizing the context of what has often been referred to as
'scarce natural resources', in particular forests, meadows, and fishing stocks,
Elinor Ostroms important works, including Governing the commons (1990) and
Understanding institutional diversity (2005), present an institutional framework
for discussing the development and use of collective action with respect to
environmental problems. In this article we discuss extensions of Ostroms approach
to human genes and genomes and explore its limits and usefulness in this field. We
argue that while there are radically different contexts and cases and governance
regimes still to be debated, what we call 'genomic stuff' genomic material,
data, and information often can best be regulated by modes of stewardship and
self-regulation of appropriators. We exemplify this claim by a discussion of gene
patenting, the 'Genome War', and the so-called HapMap project. The issue of
how to best govern the genomic stuff of humans, we suggest, is complicated by
the situation that the appropriator and the appropriated can be the same, inviting
fundamental questions about politics and ethics."
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