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When Did Republicans Obtain the Patent On Morals?

MÁS EN ESTA SECCIÓN

Fighting Sargassum

Community Colleges

COMPARTA ESTE CONTENIDO:

A historic and lengthy legal battle was carried out by indigenous peoples of the Amazon before American tribunals against a pharmacist who patented under his name nothing less than their ancestral knowledge.

Hundreds of years it took the indigenous peoples to determine that a plant named "Yage" could cure certain illnesses… and legend says that this American scientist came to the rain forest and offered the natives a pack of cigarettes while they without any reserve explained to him the healing properties of that plant also known as "Ayahuasca".

In his laboratory –and this is not simply a story- that knowledge was turned into medication to be merchandized, even to the very Indians that shared their secrets.

The issue here is not tobacco, neither "bio-piracy", but the act perpetrated by multinational companies of stealing traditional remedies and plants, instead of investing millions of dollars and years of research to attain that very knowledge.

In that instance after winning the legal battle, the Indians reiterated their basic argument: that such indigenous traditional knowledge could not be subject to a commercial patent because "IT BELONGED TO MANKIND".

When it comes to Republicans we ask, when did they obtain the patent for morals?  Doesn't morality belong to mankind?  Is it not inherent to human beings? If the case were that it was actually owned by one political party that would mean the rest simply does not have it, neither other nations.  This week it was surprising to still see how, as mere robots, completely alienated, some attending the Republican convention when interviewed insisted they were voting for "morals, family values and ethics" without any further analysis.

Since when do Republicans, conservatives, or any single group exclusively abide by such tenets?  These should rest with each individual, within his inner person.  So when did they obtain that patent? How much did they pay for morals exclusive rights?  Is someone not professing to be Republican lacking morals?  Should we change parties? If someone is not Republican or conservative it is implied then that such an individual doesn't care about family and lacks values altogether?

The United States is undergoing a serious economic crisis but what seems to really matter when the time comes to vote is whether the candidates favor abortion or not?  Until when is American politics going to remain so stagnated?

The question is: How will favoring or not favoring abortion going to solve the problem of homes lost to foreclosure, the energy-oil crisis, the collapse of America's international prestige, among the many failings of this anti-moral, anti-ethical, and entirely estranged from family values administration?

This editorial is not meant to favor Democrats, neither is it against morals, which we regard as the very basis of human respect.  The issue here is that morals cannot be subject to ownership by any particular individual –neither political parties, or one particular religion-, it should dwell in every individual, but unfortunately not everyone cares for it.  Therefore morals should be restored, just as that Amazonian plant "Yage", for the wellbeing of mankind.

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