To hear its critics talk, W.R. Grace & Co., based in Boca Raton, Florida, is nothing less than a den of international pirates. Its crime: patenting a pesticide made from seeds of the Indian neem tree. "Genetic colonialism," thunders the self-proclaimed scientific watchdog Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, who is leading a coalition of 200 scientific, academic and farm organizations from 37 countries that filed a petition last week to have the patent revoked. Not only is Grace's pesticide based on an ancient and widely known extraction process, the coalition claims, but it will force Indian farmers...
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