Contradictions of IP rights.....

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxx>]

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 the
bushmen's anger about what has happened, Dixey reacted with genuine
astonishment.

He claims that one of the reasons he set up Phytopharm was precisely
to help tribal people profit from their ancient medicinal knowledge of
plants. He said: 'I honestly believed that these bushmen had died out
and am sorry to hear they feel hard done by. I am delighted that they
are still around and have a recognisable community. The ownership of
medicinal plants is extremely complex, but I have always believed that
this type of knowledge is the most valuable asset of indigenous
tribes. Instead of weaving baskets and taking tourists around, royalty
payments from medicines could transform their prospects.'

Dixey, who insisted that he would now be happy to enter into talks
with the bushmen community, said that Phytopharm was approached with
the deal by the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial
Research, which had been investigating the properties of the Hoodia
cactus.

He claims it was the CSIR that told him the bushmen tribes who used
the cactus no longer existed and assured him that agreements were in
place to help local communities.

Dr Marthinus Horak, the man in charge of the CSIR project, defended
the deal. He claimed there were only a few hundred bushmen left in
South Africa itself, living in isolated areas, and were very hard to
contact.

He said: 'We always intended to speak to the community at some stage,
but we did not believe it would be appropriate to do so before the
drug had passed on the clinical tests and been finally approved. We
did not want to raise their expectations with promises that could not
be met.' Horak said the CSIR was committed to sharing financial
benefits and had a track record in dealing with local communities
through a variety of benefit-sharing programmes.

Yet critics - such as the South African campaigning group BioWatch -
believe that these benefit-sharing agreements are nothing but a sham
and mainly result in money being invested back into CSIR itself -
which is half-funded by the South African government.

Rachel Wynberg from Biowatch said: 'All we hear is words, but we see
nothing on paper. They talk of benefit-sharing, but it seems more of a
myth than reality and most of the money seems to end up back in the
CSIR.

'The details of agreements are all confidential and we have no access
to them. The Hoodia drug has the potential to be South Africa's first
blockbuster drug and this should have all been sorted out before the
patent was awarded and not after.'

Sandy Gall, the broadcaster and former ITN newsreader who next month
is publishing a book on the bushmen of southern Africa, described the
situation as 'disgraceful'. He said: 'These ancient people have been
exploited for years and it is disgraceful that it is still happening.

'They have been displaced and dispersed, but for someone to claim they
thought the bushmen no longer existed is either naive or deceitful.'

The harsh environments in which the Kung bushmen have lived for
thousands of years have led them to become expert botanists. They can
readily identify more than 300 different types of plant with different
properties and campaigners believe that the row over the Hoodia patent
is just the first of many such battles to come.

Tomorrow pressure groups will converge on a meeting of the World Trade
Organisation in Geneva to protest against the system of patents which
they claim helps drug corporations to exploit developing countries and
prevents them from getting access to cheap drugs.