A bit of give and take - biopiracy

By David Bradley

Say you had spent twenty-odd years grubbing around in the soils on a tropical island hunting for microbial fungi that produce a whole bunch of antibiotic compounds, or maybe you have a penchant for extracting natural products from trees. You may even have spotted a herbalist in an exotic location working with some rare plant with medicinal powers. Or, you could have sequenced a rare gene from some tribal forest dweller whose relatives happen to suffer a particularly rare disease that mimics a common Western one, writes David Bradley.

The commercial side of your brain immediately spots an opportunity ...What do you do? The fundamental scientist in you recognises the bountiful wealth of information that you have brought to light...but the commercial side of your brain immediately spots an opportunity to step off the grant-application treadmill with a multimillion dollar biotech deal and a lucrative share offer. What do you do?

Well you may already be thinking of the secrecy clauses for the CEO's contract but there are several considerations that may influence the decision. That tropical island was not a desert island and those trees are in someone else's rainforest, while those arboreal inhabitants must surely have some personal claim on their own genes.

Patenting Nature's bounties

Attempts to patent and commercialise the fruits, figuratively speaking, of the developing world, those natural pesticides, revitalising potions and grubby microbes, have been causing a major headache for those who take their ethical dilemmas seriously. Meanwhile, the potential for boosting the indigenous governments' coffers has not gone unnoticed and now upfront return on their countries' resources are being demanded. Cash would be nice but a return in kind might suffice, especially if the added value provided by Western science is enough to turn what might be a 'primitive' remedy into a fully functioning, safe and more effective antimalarial, for instance.

The need for Neem

The case of a modest but variously useful tree, native to India, the neem (Azadirachta indica, aka the Indian lilac) became a symbol for those hoping to end the plundering of biological resources and the folk wisdom of developing countries. The neem had been used for centuries because of its pesticidal properties but when seed company W.R. Grace took out a patent to exploit its properties in commercial agriculture there was fury from hundreds of organisations in 35 countries who set about challenging the patent's validity in the US. The Foundation for Economic Trends, (Washington DC) believed the patent was irrational because the pesticide was not an invention of W.R. Grace and had existed in prior art for centuries; with the neem serving not only as a source of natural pesticide but feed for livestock and as a fuel. If the patent, which was for a processing technique were strictly applied, traditional uses would diminish as the extracts were shipped overseas together with the profits. The bid to have the patent overturned failed but the campaigners are still active in trying to persuade farmers and others not to use products derived from the neem, while, several Indian companies have sprung up to sell neem products to the rest of the world.

The Wormwood that turned

Artemisinin, or qinghaosu, too has become something of a cause célèbre in the debate over exploitation of diversity in the developing world. The material is a crude extract from wormwood, Artemisia annua and was used many years BC by Chinese apothecaries for treating all kinds of disease, not least the fever now associated with malaria. Derivatives of the active ingredient have proved very effective in treating the disease but again the commercialisation of the material as an antimalarial drug throws up problems for the patent officers. Qinghaosu, after all, has a couple of millennia in prior art for multiple uses. Compromise is always hoped for but the development of efficacious derivatives of the active ingredient will not necessarily allow resources to be ploughed back into the Orient.

The Human genome

One of the most contentious cases of patenting natural resources is that of the Hagahai tribe of Papua New Guinea. The people have a blood cell line that is infected with a leukaemia-causing virus. The cell line could lead to a potential cure for the cancer and so has obvious medical potential, which was spotted by scientists at the National Institutes of Health in the US. The NIH patented the genetic material from the people to massive public outcry and the arguments still rage over who owns what when it comes to the human genome.

There is another side to the story though...there are thankfully a few who share the middle ground. These are the advocates of an international social system that does not consider the West and the RoW to be distinct entities but two parts of a greater whole. They believe that the West by utilising rather than plundering RoW resources might feel happy with providing the developing world with some of its home-grown technology rather more freely than current practice allows.

Compulsory licensing of medical technology

One method through which this might be possible, which, with present attitudes, is not such a soft compromise, is to work towards the compulsory licensing of medical essentials, such as AIDS drugs, other pharmaceuticals crucial to a country's health and certain medical devices so that they can be more widely available in Africa, for instance.

Pharmaceutical companies sit on drugs for which they hold patents. James Love, Director of the Consumer Project on Technology in Washington, DC has set up a web site to bring the issues surrounding compulsory licensing of medical technology to light. The basic problem boils down to the fact that it is simply unfair, for want of a better word, for pharmaceutical companies to sit on — 'failing to exploit', in the ironic parlance of the patent lawyer — important drugs on which they hold patents for purely commercial reasons. Many of these dormant patents could benefit many people, having successfully completed trials and gone through all the regulatory procedures. There are countless perfectly useful drugs in pharmaceutical company files that are not now in production but that no one else will be able to use until their patents expire, which could be up to twenty years away. The stronger arguments for compulsory licensing continue along the lines that not only is it basically unjust but that it is probably illegal under several international agreements that go as far back as The Paris Convention for the Protection of Industrial Property of 20th March 1883!

Compulsory licensing would not bring the companies billion-dollar drugs but that is not the point. We are considering the impact more freely available drugs might have on the developing world at a time when campaigners are calling for the cancellation of international debt in those countries as a gesture for the new millennium. A coordinated effort on the part of campaigners, governments and the pharmaceutical companies putting pressure on each other will eventually yield a positive outcome that could benefit them even more than simply wiping their financial slate clean.

Natural payback

There has to be a balance. Without the countless natural products and the powerful folklore of the developing world many of the pharmaceuticals we take for granted today would never have been developed. With compulsory licensing, which need not be as militantly enforced as the phrase would suggest there could be an opportunity for payback for decades of what, to put it less than gently, amounts to biopiracy, according to some. Science can do a lot better than plundering the rainforests and must give something back. That way shareholders, scientists and even those whose ancestors have yielded the potential solutions to many of the world's medicinal, agricultural and other problems will all benefit.

This article originally appeared in the original Alchemist on ChemWeb.com back in the day.