File spoon-archives/french-feminism.archive/french-feminism_2002/french-feminism.0202, message 16


Date: Mon, 18 Feb 2002 17:55:40 -0800 (PST)
From: Mike Reynolds <aquaviva11-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: [Ethnobotany] bio piracy - hoodia patent


--- Kat Morgenstern <kmorgenstern-AT-sacredearth.com>
wrote:
> forwarded message from GRAIN Los Banos:
> 
> TITLE: In Africa the Hoodia cactus keeps men alive.
> Now its
> secret is
> 'stolen' to make us thin
> AUTHOR: Antony Barnett
> PUBLICATION: The Observer (London)
> DATE: 17 June 2001
> URL:
>
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,508162,00.html
> 
> NOTE: For further information on the case, contact
> Rachel
> Wynberg, BioWatch,
> South Africa, mailto:rachel-AT-iafrica.com. See also
> 'Of Patents and
> Pirates'
> (GRAIN, July 2000)
> http://www.grain.org/publications/pirates-en.cfm#p42
>
________________________________________________________
> 
> IN AFRICA THE HOODIA CACTUS KEEPS MEN ALIVE.
> NOW ITS SECRET IS 'STOLEN' TO MAKE US THIN
> 
> Pharmaceutical firms stand accused of once again
> plundering
> native lore to
> make fortunes from natural remedies, writes Antony
> Barnett
> 
> Sunday June 17, 2001
> The Observer
> 
> For thousands of years, African tribesmen have eaten
> the Hoodia
> cactus to
> stave off hunger and thirst on long hunting trips.
> 
> The Kung bushmen who live around the Kalahari desert
> in southern
> Africa used
> to cut off a stem of the cactus about the size of a
> cucumber and
> munch on it
> over a couple of days. According to tradition, they
> ate together
> so they
> brought back what they caught and did not eat while
> hunting.
> 
> Now the Hoodia, which grows to 6ft - taller than the
> bushmen
> themselves - is
> at the centre of a bio-piracy row. Campaigners say
> the cactus has
> attracted
> the interest of the Western drug industry, which
> exploits
> developing
> countries through the international patent system.
> 
> In April, when pharmaceutical giants were being
> accused of
> failing to
> provide affordable Aids drugs in Africa, Phytopharm,
> a small firm
> in
> Cambridgeshire, said it had discovered a potential
> cure for
> obesity derived
> from an African cactus.
> 
> It emerged that the company had patented P57, the
> appetite-suppressing
> ingredient in the Hoodia, hoping it would become a
> slimming
> miracle.
> 
> Phytopharm's scientists boasted it would have none
> of the
> side-effects of
> many treatments because it was derived from a
> natural product.
> The discovery
> was immediately hailed by the press as a 'dieter's
> dream' and
> Phytopharm's
> share price rose as City traders expected rich
> returns from a
> drug which
> would revolutionise the £6bn market in slimming
> aids. Phytopharm
> acted
> quickly.
> 
> It sold the rights to license the drug for $21m to
> Pfizer, the US
> 
> pharmaceutical giant, which hopes to have the
> treatment ready in
> pill form
> within three years. Having made millions from
> Viagra, the
> impotence drug,
> Pfizer now believes it has in its laboratories a
> drug that is
> going to beat
> fat. But it appears that while the drug companies
> were busy
> seducing the
> media, their shareholders and financiers about the
> wonders of
> their new
> drug, they had forgotten to tell the bushmen, whose
> knowledge
> they had used
> and patented.
> 
> Phytopharm's excuse appears to be that it believed
> the tribes
> which used the
> Hoodia cactus were extinct. Richard Dixey, the
> firm's
> self-proclaimed
> Buddhist chief executive, told the Financial Times :
> 'We're doing
> what we
> can to pay back, but it's a really fraught
> problem... especially
> as the
> people who discovered the plant have disappeared.'
> 
> Yet this weekend leaders of the people Dixey
> believed had
> disappeared are
> having their annual gathering at a farm 45 miles
> north of Cape
> Town. One of
> the top items on the agenda is to plan their
> strategy against
> Phytopharm and
> Pfizer. They are angry, saying their ancient
> knowledge has been
> stolen, and
> are about to launch a challenge and demand
> compensation.
> 
> Roger Chennells is the lawyer for the tribal
> bushmen, who number
> 100,000
> across South Africa, Botswana, Namibia and Angola.
> He argued
> their case in
> 1999 when the bushmen won 100,000 acres of
> white-owned farmland
> on the edge
> of the Kalahari.
> 
> Speaking to The Observer, Chennells said: 'They are
> very
> concerned. It feels
> like somebody has stolen their family silver and
> cashed it in for
> a huge
> profit. The bushmen do not object to anybody using
> their
> knowledge to
> produce a medicine, but they would have liked the
> drug companies
> to have
> spoken to them first and come to an agreement.
> 
> 'I believe there is grounds for a legal challenge,
> but there is
> certainly a
> strong moral case for the drug companies to pay
> proper
> compensation to those
> whose knowledge they have taken and now claim to
> own.'
> 
> Alex Wijeratna, a campaigner for ActionAid, the
> international
> development
> charity, said: 'This is a major case of bio-piracy.
> Corporations
> are
> scouring the globe looking to rip off traditional
> knowledge from
> some of
> poorest communities in the world. Consent or
> compensation is
> rarely given.
> The patent system needs urgent reform to protect the
> knowledge
> nurtured over
> generations by groups like the African bushmen.'
> 
> When presented with news of this weekend's tribal
> gathering and
> 
=== message truncated ==



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