Are we losing the war with:

Bio-Pirates?

Lionel Wijesiri

The past few years have witnessed a growing public outrage in Sri Lanka about the global pharmaceutical drug companies, who are virtually stealing our ancient wisdom by extracting chemicals from local plants and patenting them under their own names.

It is comforting to note that our resistance to biopiracy is rapidly building up and more and more people are becoming aware of the global businessmen reaping massive profits from smuggling our biological resources.

Although the export of medicinal plants or their extracts is banned in Sri Lanka the bio-piracy is flourishing, quite often with the assistance of a few unscrupulous Sri Lankans.

Guidelines

The statistics reveal that during the last 8 years a number of people were detained by the Customs on the charges of for bio-piracy. Quite recently there were reports that an academic attached to a research institute had allegedly attempted to smuggle samples of endemic plant genes out of the country.

That is just the tip of the iceberg. How many would have gone out without detection? For instance, Salacil Reticulata, the scientific name for Kothalahimbutu plant, has been recognized for its ability to control diabetes.

Newspapers reported some years ago that a Japanese drug company patented a product based on this herb in USA. Weniwalgeta which is used as a herbal remedy for coughs and colds, have been registered by Japanese, European and U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers. Products made out of Karawila, kekuna and many others have been patented and sold worldwide.

The UN convention on biological diversity recently agreed to initiate guidelines to help developing countries ensure that they reap some of the benefits of the discoveries made in their forests.

Companies would only be given access if they agreed to give a share of the profits or royalties from the products back to the countries in which they are operating. But environmentalists say that the guidelines are too weak and will not prevent the knowledge and natural wealth of local people being exploited by international industry.

The late Indian environmental journalist, Anil Agarwal, used to say that the Gross Nature Product is more important than the Gross Domestic Product for the poor majority in most developing countries. One can extend this rhetorical statement to argue that the greater a country’s bio diversity, the richer it is potentially.

Partnership in SAARC

The tragedy is that while the biggest sources of biodiversity are in third world countries, they are the least informed about what they possess. This is indeed a pity. Unfortunately, the Third World governments are not the best guardians of plant rights. They are usually unwieldy and disorganised.

The modus operandi of the global drug companies has been to collect the plant varieties and their germ plasmas from poor countries, cross-breed them with other varieties, and claim that they had invented something novel and of practical use ( which are the requirements for acquiring patent rights), and then to patent them internationally.

Diplomatic

There are enough examples to quotye. In September 1997, a Texas company called RiceTec won a patent on “basmati rice lines and grains.” The patent secures lines of basmati and basmati-like rice and ways of analyzing that rice.

RiceTec faced international outrage over allegations of biopiracy. It had also caused a brief diplomatic crisis between India and United States with India threatening to take the matter to WTO as a violation of TRIPS which could have resulted in a major embarrassment for the United States.

Due to review decisions by the United States Patent Office, RiceTec has lost most of the claims of the patent, including, most importantly, the right to call their rice lines “basmati.”

There was also another case, where in 1995, the US Patent Office granted a patent on the wound-healing properties of turmeric. Indian scientists protested and fought a two-year-long legal battle to get the patent revoked.

These were victories for India because she was powerful enough to fight the cases. If it happened to an other powerless third world country, like Sri Lanka, the end result is obvious.

Future

Scientists and environmentalists say that we do not have the state-of-the-art hi-tech scientific equipment to analyze chemical components of indigenous plants or the capacity to pay the international patent fee of $60,000. Naturally, the global companies are in a more advantageous position.

So what should we do? Some years ago, India urged other Saarc countries to take up the work of documentation and registration of traditional knowledge (TKDL) on priority basis. Such a process will help setting up a common TKDL for the region.

It was a good suggestion. When we put out this encyclopedia in the public domain, no one will be able to claim these medicines or therapies as their inventions because a patent application should always be rejected if there is prior existing knowledge about the product.

We should also take a deep look at our existing laws protecting bio-diversity and take immediate action to update them. The general belief is that some of our environment-related laws need consolidation and rationalizing.

There are too many laws on too many different subjects, each prescribing its own enforcement procedure, and sometimes setting its own standards that are inconsistent with some other laws. Some laws are also too idealistic, expecting individuals and companies to abide by too many rules..