And now:Ish <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
Amazon tribes fight U.S.
patent on sacred vine
http://cnn.com:80/WORLD/americas/9903/30/BC-USA-AMAZON-PATENT.reut/index.html
March 30, 1999
Web posted at: 9:11 PM EST (0211 GMT)
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Amazon tribes asked the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office on Tuesday to revoke a patent
granted to an American businessman on their most sacred plant,
a vine that grows wild in the jungle.
Shamans of the Amazon rain forest believe the vine called
ayahuasca has medicinal properties and they use it to make a
potent hallucinogenic brew for their religious rituals.
"Ayahuasca gives shamans the power to heal our sick, meet
with spirits and divine the future," wrote native leader Antonio
Jacanamijoy in a petition to cancel the patent granted in 1986 to
Loren Miller. Jacanamijoy is an Inca from southern Colombia.
"Commercializing an ingredient of our religious and healing
ceremonies is a profound affront to more than 400 cultures that
populate the Amazon basin," said the request presented by two
shamans from Ecuador and Colombia who wore headdresses of
parrot feathers and necklaces of wild boar teeth.
COICA, the umbrella organisation of Amazon tribes that
Jacanamijoy heads, has been protesting against the patent ever
since a Canadian environmental organisation discovered its
existence in 1995.
Miller, whose California-based International Plant Medicine
Corp. looks at the pharmaceutical and cosmetic potential of
plants, has not actually marketed any ayahuasca product based
on the patent.
Native rights and environmental lawyers said it was the first
time any native group has sought to revoke the patent on a
product based on its medicinal and ceremonial qualities.
The case raises ethical and moral questions, they said, about
intellectual property rights involving the traditional knowledge
and materials of native cultures.
"This patent is utterly flawed and should be revoked," said
David Downes, senior attorney at the Centre for International
Environmental Law.
Cancelling it would set a precedent that future patent applicants
cannot simply take knowledge and materials of indigenous
people and claim them as their own, Downes said.
Plant Patent 7,751 issued to Miller in June 1986 claimed rights
over a novel variety of the vine he named "Da Vine."
But a leading expert on this plant family, William Anderson,
director of the University of Michigan Herbarium, said the
features described in the patent were typical of the species.
Ayahuasca is a word in Quechua, the language of the Incas,
meaning "vine of the dead" or "vine of the souls."
Copyright 1999 Reuters. All rights reserved.
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Tsonkwadiyonrat (We are ONE Spirit)
Unenh onhwa' Awayaton
http://www.tdi.net/ishgooda/
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