Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, September 17, 1995 TAG: 9509180085
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-11 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: STANLEY MEISLE LOS ANGELES TIMES
DATELINE: UNITED NATIONS LENGTH: Medium
It sounds romantic when modern scientists develop a miracle drug out of wild plants that poor, unsophisticated people in Africa, Asia or Latin America have been using for centuries to cure their ills. It's such a glamour concept a movie was made of it - ``Medicine Man,'' in which Sean Connery played an eccentric scientist racing against forest-clearing bulldozers in his hunt for a natural cancer cure in the Amazon.
But, according to a U.N.-sponsored report, the true situation is not romantic at all. The report accuses multinational corporations of bilking the world's poor, indigenous people of $5.4 billion a year by making profitable drugs from their traditional curative plants.
The report accuses corporations of failing to compensate traditional groups and derides the alleged offenders as ``bio-pirates.''
It has infuriated the pharmaceutical industry. Harvey Bale, senior vice president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, recently dipped into Hollywood lore as he defended the industry against the accusations.
``It's as if, just because the American Indian is there and gives inspiration to John Wayne movies, then 20th Century Fox owes them royalties,'' Bale retorted. ``It ain't the Indians of the Wild West who are the creators of those films.''
Bale also derided the notion that it's easy to find miracle cures from wild plants. ``They have the ... image of someone running around in these places finding a cure for breast cancer. It's not going to happen.''
Despite such a spirited attack, the U.N. Development Program, which commissioned the report, is planning a conference in Geneva in a few months to consider setting up a fund to help indigenous communities sue for royalties from multinational corporations. Delegates from Scandinavia, Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands, Canada and other countries will be invited.
The report, prepared by the Rural Advancement Foundation International, a Canadian foundation based in Ottawa, was published late last year. Since then, the U.N. development agency has sponsored conferences in Bolivia, Malaysia and Fiji to discuss the problem.
According to the report, 80 percent of the world's population depends on traditional knowledge and wild plants for medicinal needs. Although those administering traditional cures may not know the molecular makeup of a plant, the report says, they do have considerable knowledge about effects of various plants. But the concept of patenting these properties is foreign to them.
``Most indigenous communities look on the protection of intellectual property as blasphemous,'' the report said. ``These resources are meant to be used for the common good of - and protected by - all members of the community.''
by CNB