BIOPIRACY: A threat to Mother Nature and

Mankind

Bautista, Sheela Marie H.Olivar, Alexia Allyssa G.

WHAT is BIOPIRACY?

the appropriation, generally by means of patents, of legal rights over indigenous knowledge --- particularly indigenous biomedical knowledge --- without compensation to the indigenous groups who originally developed such knowledge.

WHAT IS BIOPROSPECTING?

the legal and accepted exploration and search of biological products with characteristics and traits interesting, appealing and necessary for mankind. In the past, bioprospectors are mainly concerned with the biodiversity existing in different regions of this planet for previously unknown compounds in organisms that have never been used in traditional medicine.

WHAT ARE PATENTS?

gives an individual or a firm the right and the privilege to a limited legal monopoly and control to make, use and sell its invention and/or discovery. Also, this gives an individual and a firm the right to exclude others from making, using or selling the invention to the market.

To be patentable, an invention must be novel, useful and non-obvious.

Patentable articles fall under FOUR categories: (http://businessdictionary.com/definition/patent/html

• Machine: any apparatus or device with interrelated parts that function together to perform the designed or planned purposes.

• Manufacture: manufactured or fabricated items• Process: mechanical, electrical, chemical or other

methods that produce a chemical or physical variation in the condition or state of an item

• Composition of matter: chemical compounds or mixtures possessing properties different from their constituent ingredients.

POPULAR CASES OF BIOPIRACY IN THE WORLD

The Rosy Periwinkle or Madagascar Periwinkle (Catharanthus roseus)

The Neem Tree (Azadirachta indica)

The Enola Bean (Phaseolus vulgaris)

The Hoodia cactus

Caribbean gorgonian (Pseudopterogorgia elisabethae)

Eleutherobin

BIOPIRACY IN THE PHILIPPINES

The Ilang-Ilang (Cananga odorata)

The ampalaya or bitter gourd (Momordica charantia)

The talong or eggplant (Solanum melongena)

The Banaba (Lagerstroemia speciosa)

The Saluyot (Citrus fortunella)

Philippine sea snail (Conus magnus)

Philippine Yew Tree (Taxus sumatrana )

Soil in the province of Iloilo

HUMAN TISSUE PIRACY AND TISSUE CULTURE

DID YOU KNOW THAT…In 1996, Hagahai tribes, natives of Papua New

Guinea, gave blood, tissue and hair samples to Carol Jenkins, an American anthropologist, and took soap, candies and chocolates in return. Hagahai people’s tissues were utilized to produce a drug used to battle leukemia, for these people’s blood has HTLV-1, which is resistant to the said disease. These people had no knowledge of this production; however, through the help of NGOs, the tribe sued this incident to the World Court.

Recently, they have been remunerated for the theft of their tissues, but unfortunately the patent still remains with Jenkins and her company.

“FILIPINO” VERSIONIn 2000, two Philippine non-governmental organizations

(NGOs) --- the Cordillera Peoples Alliance (CPA) and the Igorot Tribal Assistance (ITAG) revealed that there were Ifugao tribe’s people who were enticed into sharing their blood to foreign scientists who posed as medical researchers. After collecting blood and hair samples from the tribe’s people, nothing was heard from these scientists.

A similar luring incident was reported by a Baguio City-based United Nations accredited Indigenous Peoples International Center for Policy Research and Education or Tebtebba Foundation. The foundation reported on how the Aeta tribe’s people, a group of Aeta displaced by the Mount Pinatubo eruption in the province of Zambales, were fooled into providing a foreign medical group who pretended to be aid workers their blood samples.

WHAT DOES IT ALL BOIL DOWN TO?

• DEPLETION OF RESOURCES• DAMAGE TO THE ECONOMY OF THE SOURCE

COUNTRY• BAD EFFECT ON THE TRADITIONS OF THE

INDIGENOUS PEOPLE BECAUSE OF THE PATENTS

end