2021.11.9

     In today’s class, we continued on watching Michael Moore’s documentary, “The Corporation”.

     Firstly, it is a highly controversial topic whether or not patents should be granted to living things. In 1980, the Chakrabati case had accepted to grant patents to organisms for the first time. Proponents claim that monopoly rights can make researches more active and trigger industry development in return. Although I understand the advantages, it still feels unethical and unnatural to own, sell or buy living things. Through writing this blog post, I started to have a strong interest in Biotechnology. BT is an industry that technically utilizes life science such as tissue culture, cell fusion, and genetic recombination to unravel the work of life. In addition to fermentation known from BC, BT is industrialized in a wide range of fields such as health / medical care, food/agriculture, environment/resource energy, electronics/information. This class became a motive for me to learn very fundamental knowledge of the new technology.

     Secondly, some corporations are selling products to terrorists and dictators. For example, IBM was selling its little old recording machine. It was used to manage all the Jewish people in the camp, and the company can not deny the fact that they are partly responsible for terrible ethnic cleansing. I am once again surprised by the fact that corporations sometimes outweigh money more than people’s lives. Moreover, these corporations include very famous and powerful brands that many people buy from. In Japan, there are no such things as Cancel Culture and I am very scared that this can hinder people from using their consumer power and make them keep on supporting unethical corporations.