India scores bio-piracy victory
By Sreeram Chaulia
India scored a stunning victory over China on June 10. It did not come in the
two Asian rivals’ unresolved boundary dispute, nascent cyber-war, or race for
influence in international relations. Rather, it occurred in the
scientific-technical environs of the European Patent Office (EPO) on a turf
that is likely to become a major battleground - bio-piracy or the theft of
traditional flora, fauna and knowledge forms.
The EPO, which grants trademark protection to individual inventors and
companies in up to 40 European countries, in February delivered exclusive
patents on two medicinal herbaceous plants - andrographis and mint - to the
Chinese pharmaceutical giant Livzon.
With a board of directors closely connected to the Chinese
Communist Party, Livzon is one of Asia's leading research-oriented
bio-technology firms and enjoys a lion's share of China's drug market. It is
also successfully foraying into overseas markets like Western Europe and the
Middle East.
The EPO's award was a shot in the arm for Shenzhen-listed Livzon, which had
claimed in an application in January 2007 that the two herbs could be newfound
ingredients to manufacture medicines treating avian flu (H5N1 influenza). With
a robust laboratory of scientists that perform gene recombination and
biological extraction, Livzon planned to cash in on the EPO's patent to produce
a wonder drug for the flu that has claimed the lives of millions of birds and
hundreds of humans since 1987.
But once the patent was awarded by the EPO, India sprung into action, disputing
Livzon's argument that treatment for fever, detoxification and bird flu by
employing andrographis and mint was novel. In fact, it was a time-tested Indian
practice, where the herbs (locally known as "kalamegha" and "pudina")
had been regular inputs for curing influenza and epidemic fevers.
India's traditional medicine system, ayurveda, which can be traced to at
least 1,500 BC, had accorded pride of place to natural remedies based on a
diverse range of plant species. Pudina and kalamegha entered the
lexicon of India's home-healing lore long ago and continue to feature in diet
and culinary preparations for their immunity-boosting, cooling and aromatic
qualities.
According to the Times of India, a complaint from India's Council of Scientific
and Industrial Research (CSIR) to the EPO included extensive citations from
texts of ayurveda and yunani (Greco-Arabic traditional medicine
popular in South Asia), "dating back to the 9th century" to demonstrate that
medicinal knowledge of pudina and kalamegha was present for
"ages".
The comprehensive evidence presented by India convinced the EPO's three-member
investigative panel, leading to the cancelation of Livzon's patent.
The credit for saving these two household names from a biotech giant goes to a
digitalization project started by the Indian government in the year 2000. After
eight years of laborious information-extraction by over 200 scientists and
language experts, India came up with a detailed database of its traditional
medicinal formulations translated from Hindi, Sanskrit, Arabic, Persian, Urdu
and Tamil into five international languages - English, Japanese, French, German
and Spanish.
The resultant Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) documents more than
200,000 natural medicinal prescriptions spread over 30 million pages of
details. TKDL made accessible to the world knowledge about Indian systems of
medicine (ISM) that had been confined to the sub-continent due to their
original renderings in arcane ancient languages.
Armed with TKDL, India's scientists have launched a vigorous challenge to
bio-piracy of the country's medicinal heritage by firms from Spain (melon
extract to cure vitiligo) and the United States ("ashwagandha" to cure
depression, insomnia and diabetes). Even yoga postures have been rescued from
quack Western instructors in the lucrative market for alternative health
exercise. CSIR estimated that before TKDL was compiled, India was bleeding
about 2,000 new patents every year at the EPO and the United States Patent and
Trademark Office (USPTO).
The case against Livzon has brought home a realization in India that
bio-piracy, which had initially been feared to be a predatory habit of Western
multinationals, can arise right across the border from Asian companies that are
on a global expansionary trot. By conclusively establishing the existence of
"prior art" on a specific plant, TKDL is defending India's way of life itself,
which revolves around attaching spiritual significance to natural phenomena.
Fighting bio-piracy is a terrain that combines nationalistic honor with
practical concerns about denial of freely available local knowledge and
substances to common people who have inherited them from their forebears. India
stands to gain in soft power internationally by helping other threatened
countries build their own local versions of TKDL in what futurologist Jeremy
Rifkin terms as the "biotech century".
India has been approached with requests for technical assistance from Malaysia,
Thailand, Mongolia, Nigeria, South Africa and the African Regional Property
Organization to set up digital libraries of medicinally beneficial local plant
species. India already engages in training young technicians from other
countries in information technology, agricultural science, engineering and
other fields, but the future growth area for sharing its strengths in the
knowledge economy with needy nations lies in preservation of the biological
commons.
The fact that Indian intellectuals like Vandana Shiva are pioneers in alerting
governments and making citizens aware to the dangers of biological theft (her
book, Biopiracy: The Plunder of Nature and Knowledge appeared in 1996)
enhances the country's stature as a thought leader that can position itself as
a defending arm on which other countries can lean.
The sensitivity and touchiness that characterize formerly colonized societies
when they confront brazen stealing of local resources by foreign states and
corporations ensure that external aid to conserve local heirlooms is an
invaluable service that wins goodwill for India. There can be no more rewarding
form of foreign scientific collaboration than one deemed as providing a bulwark
against forces that bankrupt national identity and culture.
Of all the varieties of plunder and looting that dot the history of humanity,
the one that pertains to flora and fauna is coming to the fore as dominant due
to the fait accompli of decolonization. Biotech corporations need not send
armies of occupying soldiers to extract resources and can still win patents
over them through the logic of copyright granting institutions that act as
gatekeepers to profitable Western pharmaceutical markets.
Unless states and scientific bodies in vulnerable countries wake up and follow
the example set by India, they may unwittingly hand over the keys to their
national souls in a cutthroat global economy in which stealth and informational
alacrity count as weapons.
Sreeram Chaulia is associate professor of world politics at the OP Jindal
Global University in Sonipat, India.
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