Biopiracy

Ayurveda is the traditional system of medicine and medication, based on experience and observation. India has a rich heritage of indigenous knowlege and practices of healing and care. Two thirds of our population even today is directly dependent on the biological resources and the indigenous knowledge. Almost every Indian family knows instant home remedies for various ailments: milk with a pinch of turmeric for cold, dry ginger for stomach ailments, cloves for toothaches, the list can go on and on.

Unfortunately, these days we often hear how knowledge used for centuries by indigenous communities is being patented by corporations. Overtime, such patents can be used to create monopolies and make everyday products highly priced. The grant of patents on traditional medicines, which is either based on what is already a part of the traditional knowledge of the developing world, or a minor variation thereof, has been causing a great concern. The patents granted for instance on wound healing properties of turmeric or a fungicide from neem are some of such examples of blatant biopiracy of Indian traditional knowledge. Nevertheless, the patents on turmeric, neem has been successfully overturned and this is the first step in stopping biopiracy which has opened up opportunities and given us confidence that this exercise could be extended to other such patents on amla, pepper, bitter gourd, jamun, brinjal, garlic, ashwagandha etc.

However, the problem of biopiracy may not be resolved with patent revocation and domestic biodiversty legislation alone. There is a need to provide legal and institutional means for recognizing the rights of the indigenous communities on their traditional knowledge based on biological resources at the international level. It is important that the ownership of traditional knowledge be rejected. Such resources should remain accessible to all people. They are not commodities to be exploited by the corporate sector. Patenting indigenous knowlege cannot be acceptable since it is a theft from generations past, present and future.

One thing that is evident is that India has woken up to the task of protecting her traditional knowledge from biopiracy. As a result, the past decade has witnessed an increasing growth in demands and applications for the protection of traditional and indigenous knowlege systems from profit hungry commercial interests.In India until now, information from traditional texts had not been translated and put in public domain. Now full scale efforts have started with the electronic encyclopedia and people cannot claim Indian traditional knowledge as their own and get it patented.

To sum up, it is imperative to ammend the current patent system in order to provide a fair and honest global intellectual property rights that would halt biopiracy, which is sweeping the globe.

About the Author:

Kripalini Nesakumar

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Luscious Chocolate Caramels, Pralines, and more:

The simplest icing is a glacé icing, containing icing sugar and water. This can be flavored and colored as desired, for example by using lemon juice in place of the water. More complicated icings can be made by beating fat into icing sugar (as in butter cream), by melting fat and sugar together, by using egg whites (as in royal icing), and by adding other ingredients such as glycerin (as in fondant). Some icings can be made from combinations of sugar and cream cheeses, or by using ground almonds (as in marzipan).

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2 cups of granulated sugar, 1/4 a cup of glucose (pure corn syrup), 1-1/2 cups of cream, 1 tablespoonful of butter, 2 squares of Baker's Chocolate, scraped fine or melted, 2 teaspoonfuls of vanilla.

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