Biopiracy and ethical issues — NEET & JEE Questions

Question 1 · difficulty L1 · recall

What is biopiracy?

• A. Commercial use without consent or benefit sharing
• B. Legal conservation of endangered biological resources through public programmes
• C. Routine cultivation of food crops
• D. Any laboratory use of DNA

Question 2 · difficulty L2 · understanding

Why is benefit sharing important when commercial products arise from traditional biological knowledge?

• A. It prevents all scientific research involving traditional biological resources
• B. It recognises and compensates contributing communities
• C. It guarantees every product succeeds
• D. It removes the need for patents

Question 3 · difficulty L2 · understanding

Which situation best illustrates a biopiracy concern?

• A. A school studies plant cells
• B. A farmer saves seed from a legal crop
• C. Patenting community knowledge without permission or benefit sharing
• D. A hospital performs a consented PCR test using an approved commercial diagnostic kit

Question 4 · difficulty L2 · understanding

Biopiracy refers most directly to

• A. unauthorised commercial use of biological resources or traditional knowledge without fair benefit sharing
• B. legal conservation of endangered species
• C. routine laboratory sterilisation
• D. natural movement of genes between populations

Question 5 · difficulty L3 · application

Why can patents involving biological materials create ethical disputes?

• A. Patents automatically make a product unsafe
• B. Patents always prohibit all medical research
• C. Biological inventions can never be patented anywhere
• D. They affect ownership and recognition of prior knowledge

Question 6 · difficulty L3 · application

A company patents a product developed from a medicinal plant long used by an indigenous community but provides no recognition or benefit to that community. This raises concern about

• A. biopiracy
• B. gene flow
• C. adaptive radiation
• D. ecological succession

Question 7 · difficulty L3 · application

Why is prior informed consent important when accessing biological resources from a community or country?

• A. It helps ensure authorised use and transparent agreement before access
• B. It guarantees that no research can ever occur
• C. It replaces all scientific ethics
• D. It allows users to ignore benefit sharing

Question 8 · difficulty L3 · application

Which action best reflects fair and equitable benefit sharing?

• A. Returning agreed financial or non-financial benefits to resource providers when commercial value is created
• B. Keeping all profits with the external user
• C. Hiding the origin of the biological material
• D. Preventing local communities from knowing the research outcome

Question 9 · difficulty L4 · analysis

A commercial crop variety is developed using a genetic resource obtained from another country without agreed access terms. What is the central ethical issue?

• A. Resource use without prior agreement or benefit sharing
• B. The crop contains chlorophyll
• C. The crop undergoes meiosis
• D. The company used selective breeding methods that do not involve any foreign DNA

Question 10 · difficulty L4 · application

A researcher legally collects a plant but later uses associated community knowledge for a commercial application outside the original agreement. What ethical issue is most directly raised?

• A. Use beyond agreed consent and benefit-sharing terms
• B. Natural selection
• C. Mendelian segregation
• D. No issue because the plant itself was collected legally