Do you agree with this case posted below?How do technologies related to microorganisms

suggest ethical conflicts?

How do these conflicts relate to social justice?

It used to be that there were farmers, seeds, and dirt. The three formed a triad that endured for centuries, with the resulting crops feeding the world. In time “farmers” were not just Mom-and-Pop operations, with the parents and some collection of children doing the bulk of the work required to sustain the family’s livelihood. They became agents of agribusiness overseeing operations on a global scale.

The dirt that provided the fertile soil was no longer that which nature supplied at this place or the next. It was replaced by a mix of soil, chemicals, and additives—a result of the efforts of chemists and others who perfected the formulae out of which the seeds would sprout and mature, preferably strong, vital, and pest-free. With that, the very soul of agriculture changed in ways that defied turning back the clock. And the seeds; what of them? They used to be one thing we could count on. Not any more.

The US Supreme Court case of Diamond v. Chakrabarty (1980) set the stage for the patenting of living organisms and the commercialization of life. The decision has had long-reaching effects—far beyond the “oil-eating” bacteria that Ananda Mohan Chakrabarty modified. The Court held that “live, human-mademicro-organisms” (emphsis added) could be patented. Indeed, “Anything under the sun that is made by man can be patented,” the Court stated (s. III). Journalist Marie-Monique Robin (2008) reports that: “based on U.S. precedents, the European Patent Office in Munich granted patents on microorganisms in 1982, on plants in 1985, on animals in 1988, and on human embryos in 2000.” As far as the United States goes: “The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office grants more than seventy thousand patents a year, about 20 percent of which involving living organisms,” according to a 2008 report

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