Unequal Access to Scientific Knowledge

In the past, unequal control over such resources as coercive means, labour, animals, and land has caused the bulk of the world's inequality among social categories; in recent decades, unequal control over scientific knowledge has become an increasingly powerful cause of social inequality. Producers and distributors of scientific knowledge have strong incentives to withhold it from people who need it and to profit from its use. From that fact flow acute dilemmas for those who wish to spread the benefits of knowledge to the neediest.