MEDICINE : U.N.: Drug Firms Exploit 3rd World

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 that 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 derided the notion that it is 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,” he said. “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.

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 regional conferences in Bolivia, Malaysia and Fiji to discuss the problem.

According to the report, 80% 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 goes on, they do have considerable knowledge about effects of various plants. But the concept of patenting these properties is foreign to them.

“These resources are meant to be used for the common good of--and protected by--all members of the community,” the report said.

Corporations of developed countries, of course, do patent discoveries; their patents, the report contends, are often based on discoveries of traditional medicine.

As an example, the report said the University of Toledo had patented the use of an African plant, soapberry, as a material to kill zebra mussels that are clogging pipes that carry water to the city of Toledo. The report noted that soapberry use had actually been developed in 19 years of research by Ethiopian scientists who based their work on hundreds of years of traditional medicine.

Wayne Hoss, a university vice president, countered that the school had listed one of the Ethiopian scientists on the patent and had agreed to turn over part of any of the university’s royalties to a group fighting disease in Africa.

The U.N.-sponsored report also criticized Merck, a pharmaceutical company that pays $1.3 million a year in compensation to a Costa Rican research center to gather plants and other natural materials. The report described the contract as no more than “cheap labor.”

But Art Kaufman, Merck’s public relations director, said the company is proud of its Costa Rican arrangement. He said Costa Ricans would receive a royalty if any drug developed from the plants makes money.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Hot Spots

Deals drug companies have made for indigenous plants:

Costa Rica: The pharmaceutical company Merck signed a $1.3-million-a-year deal with a research center for plants and other materials.

Caribbean: A U.S. firm offers $2,000 a “hit” for unique algae gathered on Caribbean beaches.

Madagascar: Two drugs derived from the nation’s rosy periwinkle earn pharmaceutical companies more than $100 million a year.

Source: Rural Advancement Foundation International.