Author: John Lancaster
Publication: The Washington Post
Date: January 8, 2006
URL: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/07/AR2006010701042.html
Effort Seeks to Keep Westerners From Poaching
Folk Remedies
In a drafty government institute, Nighat Anjum
reads from a dog-eared textbook on traditional Indian medicine and acquaints
herself with the miracle fruit known as aamla, which is said to be useful
in treating heart palpitations, immune disorders, bed-wetting and memory lapses.
Tapping on a computer keyboard, the 27-year-old
physician enters its properties in a database that eventually will contain
more than 100,000 such traditional remedies -- the collective wisdom of the
ancient healing arts known as ayurveda , unani and siddha , the latter based
on the teachings of the Hindu god Shiva.
Other entries include powdered nightingale
droppings (a skin lightener and laxative), nightingale flesh (an aphrodisiac),
ostrich fat (for aches and pains), ostrich blood (for inflammation), charred
sea crab (constipation, ulcers, cataracts and dental stains), honey (for improving
vision), tumeric (for treating wounds and rashes) and coconut milk (urinary
tract infections).
Employing about 150 doctors and technicians,
the four-year, $2 million effort is aimed at protecting India's traditional
remedies from theft by multinational drug companies in a practice known here
as bio-piracy. The database will also include hundreds of yoga poses so that
foreigners cannot copyright them as their own.
Though Indian officials can point to just
a handful of such intellectual-property cases involving traditional medicine,
they say the threat is bound to grow as foreign drug companies seek to cut
soaring research-and-development costs by finding new products among natural
remedies that have been used in India, China and other developing countries
for millennia.
More broadly, the compilation of the Traditional
Knowledge Digital Library reflects a nationalistic pride in India's ancient
scientific heritage as well as its citizens' continuing faith in herbal and
other natural treatments that often are viewed with skepticism in the West.
Indian officials say the data-collection effort
will promote the commercialization of traditional Indian remedies, help validate
their scientific underpinnings and encourage collaboration between Indian
and foreign pharmaceutical companies.
In doing so, they say, the project will spur
the development of a uniquely Indian health-care industry that blends 21st-century
technology with spirituality and the wisdom of ages in the same way that Brahmin
traditions of Sanskrit and mathematics helped set the stage for India's information-technology
boom.
"India's strength is civilization, and
its culture and knowledge," said V.K. Gupta, the director of the National
Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources in New Delhi,
which is overseeing the project. "The moment we revisit that, the power
of India is unimaginable."
In a telephone interview from Washington,
Mark Grayson, a spokesman for Pharmaceutical Researchers and Manufacturers
of America, the drug-industry lobbying group, described the Indian project
as "a solution in search of a problem." He said "there is no
evidence of bio-piracy," noting that most modern drugs are developed
from chemicals with the aid of computers, rather than from natural substances.
At the same time, he said, the Indian effort
could "inhibit drug development" by discouraging companies from
developing new cures from plants whose medicinal uses India now claims as
protected intellectual property. The drug industry is opposing India's efforts
to amend World Trade Organization rules to protect such ancient remedies.
The most popular traditional medical system
in India is ayurveda, which is rooted in Hinduism -- its original Sanskrit
formulations were recorded 2,000 years ago on palm leaves -- and aims to restore
the "balance" between body and spirit. Despite the growing influence
of Western medicine, ayurveda remains the dominant form of treatment in many
parts of rural India, where access to conventional care is often limited.
Even in such major cities as New Delhi, which
boasts several world-class medical facilities, ayurveda is widely embraced.
Pharmacies stock ayurvedic remedies alongside antibiotics and other conventional
treatments. Bollywood stars hawk ayurvedic medicines from billboards. And
a generation of middle-class children has grown up on morning spoonfuls of
Chyvanprasam, a jam-like ayurvedic supplement.
"Ayurvedic medicine has no side effects,"
said Sheema Rajesh, a 31-year-old soldier's wife from southern India who was
seeking treatment for jaundice the other day at an ayurvedic clinic in the
capital. "It's made from natural things, and from the time we were small,
we've been taking these medicines, so we believe in them."
A politician's charge last week that a line
of ayurvedic cures peddled by one of India's most popular television gurus
had been adulterated with human bone made the front pages of Indian newspapers
-- and sparked an attack by the guru's followers on the politician's Communist
Party office in New Delhi.
Besides ayurvedic medicine, the database also
is recording remedies from unani, a system that was introduced to the subcontinent
4,000 years ago by the Greeks. Unani is based on the theory that sickness
is caused by an imbalance in "the four humors" -- black bile, yellow
bile, blood and phlegm -- that define human temperament, according to Anjum,
the unani doctor who was entering the data on the aamla fruit.
The system relies heavily on herbs and is
"very effective," she said.
Siddha, which was first practiced in southern
India by followers of Lord Shiva, employs medicines made from herbs, animal
parts, metals and minerals. "Even though it is coming from supernatural
power, so much is scientifically proved," said Muthu Kumar, a Siddha
expert who is working for the database project.
Gupta, the project director, said the need
for the database became apparent in 1995, when two Indian-born scientists
in Mississippi were granted a U.S. patent on the use of tumeric, a common
spice, to heal wounds. The move sparked protests from the Indian government,
which cited ancient Sanskrit texts describing the use of tumeric for the same
purpose. The patent was revoked.
To create the database, Gupta's team since
2001 has been poring over ancient texts in Sanskrit, Urdu, Persian and Arabic
in search of traditional formulas. Working in drab cubicles and enduring frequent
power cuts, the specialists enter the formulas in alphanumeric code, which
is then translated automatically into English, Japanese, French, German and
Spanish.
Sometime this year, the complete library will
be made available to foreign patent offices on a secure Web site. Indian officials
hope the patent offices will use the database in evaluating whether to grant
patents on natural remedies.
"This traditional knowledge has been
validated in the laboratory of life," Gupta said, with the zeal of a
true believer. "It has been nurtured and grown in India for 4,000 years."
