information should be in clincial trial registries, and if any should
be withheld.   Zee

This matter of secrecy is a giant stumbling block in the way of social
evolution.

Secrecy is antithetical to science and to democracy. It is, on the
other hand, essential to the sequestration of power, inequity and (of
course) profitability. The problem with how we behave in industrialized
society is that, openly and covertly driven by corporate and commercial
priorities as our behaviour has become, a new kind of secrecy has also
become generally accepted, and even presumed to be necessary. We have
polluted our social discourse so profoundly we hardly recognize the
contamination for what it is.

Corporate power is stealth power. It is governance by an invisible
hand, a hand unrevealed and out of the public arena. Secrecy in the
name of commercial necessity is a magic wand waved over the affairs of
the state; every area that it touches becomes a source of perversion of
real human values.

At one time, secrecy was a weapon primarily used in war between
communities or nations. The "Secret Service" of any nation was an
entity whose function was to use secrecy to assist one nation in
gaining an advantage over another. Armed forces tried to employ secrecy
to win military engagements. With the growth of international
cooperation against commonly reviled behaviours (e.g. mass murder,
extortion, tyranny of one sort or another) "secret services" and the
military-like actions they undertake have been broadened to work
globally (e.g. Interpol, the UN in peace-keeping). But the goal has
been, until recently, to limit or punish behaviours that were readily
offensive to all peoples.

Now, however, secrecy has been purloined by the corporate sector, and
transformed into a new instrument of control. Now, instead of being
used to promote generally recognized human values (e.g. stopping
murderous or violent behaviour), secrecy is invoked whenever a real or
imagined infringement on profitability is detected. Because
corporations are playing governments like marionettes on strings, the
level of acceptable secrecy has swiftly expanded to infiltrate all
sorts of operations that it never influenced before.

And this form of secrecy has made secrecy in general banal. Secrecy has
come out of the closet. Now, instead of being invoked on a serious
basis, to deal with a grave threat to a nation's or the world's
stability, it is invoked casually, daily, routinely, constantly.
Secrecy is everywhere, creating a Kafka-esque maze from which most of
us can't escape. Governments -- closely tied to corporate interests --
hide behind it all the time. Any group or social organization that has
the slightest corporate involvement suddenly is talking "secrecy" all
the time.

We have permitted secrecy to become a neutral, value-free commonplace,
sprung from that most value-free of all institutions, the corporation.
It is quietly poisoning the marrow of our bones. Like a carcinogen that
appears innocuous at first, its long-term effect is devastating.

I would distinguish of course between privacy -- which protects
individual, breathing, vulnerable persons -- and secrecy, which used to
protect those actions that were construed to be necessary to achieve
desirable social goals (today, in terms of non-corporate secrecy, with
increasing oversight), but in general, today, protects profits and
market share.

Why do manufacturing secrets need to be protected at all? If I make a
widget, why shouldn't someone else make a widget too? -- the same
widget, in fact? Is that not the vaunted "marketplace" in action? We
all eat bread (except for the wheat-sensitive among us). Bread is made
everywhere. There is no shortage of bread, nor of bread makers, nor of
bread eaters. If I have a secret recipe, then let others try and
imitate it (Stradivarius and Amati violins come to mind); if they can,
then we are all better off, and if they can't....well,  then we all
want a Strad, not because it's protected by secrecy, because it's
stupendous and its maker was amazingly gifted.

Acts of creativity are one thing; if I write a song, or a play, or
decipher a long-lost language, I deserve credit and full recognition of
my virtue and talents.

But do I deserve a potentially limitless profit, extending initially
over a full generation, and then potentially far beyond?  Recompense
for my efforts and commitment, yes. But do I deserve a river of gold.

I believe that by even allowing for the legitimacy of  manufacturing
secrets, we are already getting a little crazy. It's one thing to keep
mum about a project, and try to get it to market before the
competition. Newspapers have been trying to scoop each other for as
long as they have existed. But to enshrine in law, and in social norms,
the concept that anything that is connected to profit-taking might be
declared off limits is asking for trouble. It sows dissension and
inequality, whether declared or hidden.

Cuba has a national day for inventors. Anyone who has developed an
invention that has been a success and had a significant beneficial
impact on society is honoured before the entire country. The monetary
rewards are not huge, but the social acclaim is nation-wide.

That's how it used to be, through all time, in all communities, until
the 20th and now 21st centuries. Einstein, Mozart, Confucius, Newton --
none of them, or the legion of great persons we honour for profound
contributions to human growth, did what they did to achieve material
profit. Their gifts, moreover, were personal, not mindlessly corporate.

It's time we revamped the entire intellectual property rights system to
include other values besides strictly material ones. It's time too that
we returned the corporation, and commerce in general, to a role that
serves human needs, instead of one that dares to attempt to shape them.

We, and the planetary ecosystem that we are embedded in -- already 60%
degraded -- will suffer ever more horrendously if we don't.

We are grand beings, far richer and more numinous than any mere
product. I think it's high time we acknowledged that fact and got on
with remaking global society along more scintillating, creative, and
more biologically and cosmically aligned lines. wb