Word: tribals
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Maria Lopez, 59, a tribal matriarch, assesses Royero's work with the eye of a seasoned businesswoman--and for good reason. She knows that if the plant has commercial value, Venezuelan law may soon give the Piaroa rights for compensation from drug companies, which would have to recognize what the community calls its intellectual property. In years past, says Lopez, "we always gave up our medicines without any economic gain for ourselves. We won't make that mistake again...
...America to Southeast Asia as bountiful sources of new treatments for cancer, AIDS and other diseases. According to the U.S. National Cancer Institute, more than 25% of the ingredients in cancer medicines today were either discovered in rain forests or synthesized in labs from discoveries made there. But the tribal shamans, who lead corporate and academic researchers to therapeutic flora and fauna, rarely see a penny of the pharmaceutical industry's profits--which are the highest of any business in the world as a percentage of revenues (18.5% last year on U.S. revenues of $179 billion...
Developing nations from Venezuela to Thailand say they are feeling like chumps and are moving to better protect their indigenous communities and wildlife from what they call "biocolonialism" or "biopiracy." The governments are drafting strict laws to ensure that the world's 300 million mostly poor tribal people share in the wealth that their knowledge helps create. One of the newer strategies is for governments or indigenous communities to obtain commercial patent rights on medicines and other products divined in animals and plants before the labs can muscle in. (None of the new laws are retroactive.) They also hope...
Drug corporations warn that tribal royalties could raise prescription-drug costs in countries like the U.S., where those costs already are a hot political issue. That's one reason (in addition to the campaign cash showered on Washington by drugmakers) the Bush Administration opposes the idea. It points to a World Trade Organization ruling that excludes commercial rights for traditional knowledge that is later engineered into medicines or genetically developed foods. But at the December intellectual-property meeting in Geneva, indigenous groups plan to cite the U.N.'s 1992 Convention on Biodiversity, which concedes to developing nations the right...
...growing dispute may sour the drug industry's appetite for rain-forest research and development. Abbott, for example, irked by tribal claims, denies that a poison-dart frog had anything to do with its new pain-killer (which is in clinical trials) other than inspiring the company to take a closer look at a similar group of synthetic compounds. Says a spokeswoman for another major U.S. firm: "We've started scaling back. We just don't think you can define 'traditional knowledge' in that kind of legalistic way." Others fear that, given the notorious corruption of many Third World governments...