President advocates no borders for science

President Michael D Higgins has challenged industries holding patents on medical and technological breakthroughs that could benefit poor nations to free up their scientific knowledge for the common good.

Speaking at the University of Washington in Seattle, President Higgins urged a move towards a “science without borders”, saying wealthy countries had a head-start in technological innovation and there was a moral question around the belief that this advantage should be exploited for commercial gain to the detriment of weaker nations.

“The question of access is central. We have a choice: to make available the benefits of science in a spirit of solidarity and under the ethic of sharing the benefits of advances in knowledge and understanding, or to reduce knowledge to a tradable commodity, which becomes another dimension to the imbalance and inequalities we inherit from history.”