Turmeric Biopiracy

HALDI seems to be going the neem way. Despite worldwide protests over the patenting of neem last year, the US Patent and Trademark Office has gone ahead and awarded at least four broad patents for use of haldi (turmeric), the good old sine qua non of Indian food and medicine.

The patents, one of which has been awarded to an NRI scientist duo, Suman K. Das and Hari Har P. Cohly, of the University of Mississippi Medical Centre, Jackson, US, confer on the applicants exclusive rights to specific formulations of Curcuma longa or turmeric the wound-healer, turmeric the anti-inflammatory agent, and turmeric the food additive.

Little wonder Indian activists are seeing red. "This is yet another blatant example of biopiracy. How can anybody patent something that has been the collective wisdom of a people for centuries?" questions Vandana Shiva, director of the Research Foundation for Science, Technology and Natural Resources, which has been spearheading an international campaign against hijacking of the developing world's traditional knowledge by western mercenaries.

Indian scientists, too, for a change, have woken up from their complacency. N.R. Subbaram, head of Council for Scientific and Industrial Research's Intellectual Property Management Division, says the Council will immediately challenge the patents as haldi's medical uses have been well-documented in India's medical literature. Meanwhile, the Lucknow-based Central Drug Research Institute, which has been working on haldi for over a decade, has promptly applied for a patent on haldi's wound-healing property.

The US patent office, however, defends the patents arguing that while turmeric as a wound-healing ointment has been in public use, its application in the powder form is not known. This is absolutely false as many grandmas would vouch. Retorts Shiva: "The patents do not satisfy the two most important requisites of a patent claim. Namely, novelty and non-obviousness."

And as Subbaram points out: "Under the US law, a new medicinal property of a known compound could be patented, but not the known property. To secure patent protection even for the new property, the applicant has to submit substantial medical evidence which is not very easy." Neem (Indica azadirachta) and haldi are just two of the thousands of products based on plants indigenous to developing countries which are sought to be patented abroad. "This is just the tip of the biopiracy iceberg," warns Shiva. Drug companies today spend millions in prospecting for medicinal plants in the developing countries to make commercially viable drugs. Once they obtain exclusive rights over these drugs, it will not be difficult for them to exercise monopoly throughout the world as patent laws will soon become uniform in all countries.

For instance, early this year, Fox Chase Cancer Centre of Philadelphia, US, was awarded a patent by the European Patent Office for an Indian plant Phyllanthus niruri, called Jar amla in Hindi, for its usefulness in the treatment of hepatitis B. It is one of the many plants effectively used by the formal systems of Ayurveda, Siddha and Unani for treating jaundice.

The patenting of neem, haldi or amla underscores the urgent need to evolve legal systems to protect our indigenous biodiversity in order to prevent such piracy through patents. The trouble is India still does not allow patents on plants. Under the rules of World Trade Organisation, every nation is free to evolve its own method (sui generis) of plant protection. The US is the only country which grants patents on plants.

Practitioners of traditional medicine, farmers and activists are worried on two counts—pressure on all countries to follow the US model and patenting process and the subsequent legal battle over patent infringement which makes the issue very complex.

So far, however, none of the patents on neem have prevented Indians from using neem as India is not bound by US patent laws. So there is little cause for worry. What is worrisome, however, is US companies' sweeping claims of ownership of all varieties of transgenic plants (customised plants doped with desirable genes from other plants) such as cotton, rape-seed, mustard, cauliflower, to name a few. Neem and haldi could be next. "

Such claims are important for India because transgenic plants are set to become the mainstay of agriculture in future. Anyone who uses these plants, even for research, will have to pay royalty," says Dr Keyla, member of the National Working Group on Patent Laws.

The message is loud and clear. If India wants to protect its biodiversity from biopirates and capitalise on it in the international market, it must do two things: amend the patent laws so that others cannot steal our rich flora and codify all its traditional knowledge so that it can challenge attempts to patent indigenous knowledge such as the wound-healing ability of haldi.