Word: neem
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...result, parents have been turning to all sorts of bizarre alternatives, including eucalyptus and neem oils and chrysanthemum-flower extract, solutions that have been recommended on the Internet. Others have taken to smearing their children's heads with mayonnaise, petroleum jelly or Crisco, then having the kids sleep in a shower cap. In July a 13-year-old girl in Lorimor, Iowa, died after her mother doused her head in gasoline and a pilot light on the family's hot-water heater ignited the fumes. Last spring, a six-year-old Oklahoma girl stopped breathing temporarily after her mother...
...hear its critics talk, W.R. Grace & Co., based in Boca Raton, Florida, is nothing less than a den of international pirates. Its crime: patenting a pesticide made from seeds of the Indian neem tree. "Genetic colonialism," thunders the self-proclaimed scientific watchdog Jeremy Rifkin, president of the Foundation on Economic Trends, who is leading a coalition of 200 scientific, academic and farm organizations from 37 countries that filed a petition last week to have the patent revoked. Not only is Grace's pesticide based on an ancient and widely known extraction process, the coalition claims, but it will force Indian...
Well, yes and no. The truth is that Grace's U.S. patent has no effect in India, whose laws prohibit the patenting of agricultural products; Indian farmers are free to use neem seeds as they always have. Beyond that, Grace's patent may be upheld. The company found a way to treat traditional neem-seed extract to increase shelf life from weeks to years--just the sort of innovation patent laws cover. Even an environmentalist like Walt Reid of the World Resources Institute, based in Washington, admits, "I won't be surprised if the challenge doesn...
Even if the treaty eventually goes into effect, the neem-seed case will remain a murky one. The neem tree is indeed part of India's historic pharmacopoeia; it is known in Sanskrit as sarva roga nivarini, "the curer of all ailments." Its branches, leaves and seeds are used to treat, among other things, leprosy, diabetes, ulcers, skin disorders and constipation. The seeds' pesticidal powers, exploited by farmers for centuries, have been studied by scientists for at least 50 years...
...didn't steal away with the seeds and market them; it built a plant in Tumkur, near Bangalore, to process them, providing jobs for 60 Indians and contributing to the local economy. Some critics charge that demand from Grace's plant is the cause of a recent jump in neem-seed prices that has driven some small farmers out of business, but that is difficult to prove. And while India will eventually have to change its patent laws as a member of the World Trade Organization under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade, that still wouldn't keep farmers...