Reflections on the Human Condition - Api-fellowships.org

wound healing from generation to generation. Then the
patent was revoked on the basis of lack of novelty. CSIR
succeed to revoke the patent because they could provide
relevant scientific literature, including an ancient
Sanskrit text and a paper published in a journal in 1953.
(Timmerman, 2005; Mashelkar, 2000) One of ways to
protect the knowledge of traditional medicine from
bio-piracy is systematic documentation of traditional
medicine.
This is other reality; pharmaceutical giants – commonly
in developed country - have been interested and active
in exploring the knowledge of traditional medicine
– commonly from developing country. They spend
million-dollar to develop new drugs on the basis of
traditional ones. It is ironic when they patented plants,
compounds or derived products from traditional
medicine without fair compensation to indigenous
people who have created and preserved the knowledge;
an example was vincristine and vinblastin as anticancer
drugs from Madagascar’s rosy periwinkle plant.
(Timmermans, 2005; Mashelkar, 2000)
Indian expert group examined that there were 374 from
762 US patents (49%) based on traditional knowledge.
The international community gave significant support
for opposing the grant of patent on non-original
inventions. There are barriers for developing countries
to do this i.e. time consuming and particularly extremely
expensive. (Mashelkar, 2000)
The western IPR system is not an appropriate system
to protect knowledge of traditional medicine. The
knowledge that can be patented by western IPR system
has to meet criteria such as novelty, inventiveness, and
the inventors should be identified. Those criteria are
not suitable with properties of knowledge of traditional
medicine. The traditional medicine has been known
from generation to generation so it is not novelty, not
original and not identified the founder.
The issues here are concerned how to protect the
intellectual property rights between indigenous people
who created, possessed and conserved the traditional
knowledge and scientists who develop and transfer the
knowledge to the modern technologies.
Thailand has started creating the protection system
for its traditional medicine by adopting of the Act on
Protection and Promotion of Traditional Thai Medicinal
Intelligence in 1999 (BE 2542) that sponsored by
Ministry of Public Health (Kuanpoth, u.d.). Thailand
also already has Plant Variety law to protect its biodiversity.
(S&I International Bangkok Office, 2005)
CHANGING LIFESTYLES AND HEALTH
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Indonesia also concern about protecting its traditional
knowledge especially in the field of biodiversity. Several
institutions and NGO conducted meetings, seminars
and activities in national scale concerning the protection
of its traditional knowledge; however this issue is still in
the early step in Indonesia. (Kamil, 2000)
RESULT AND DISCUSSION
The profile of medicinal plants research in Thailand
1998-2002
The popularity of Thai traditional medicine increased
slowly but sure. Doing research on any aspects of herbal
medicine is an effort of Thai government to revive and
promote scientific interest in medicinal plants.
Since WHO statement in 1977 the government was
active to establish the institutions and implement
projects as a strategy to carry out medicinal herbs on
primary health care system, to produce traditional
medicine on modern industry and to export. We tried
to identify any institutions and their tasks and projects
to develop the medicinal plant in Thailand for about 30
years and showed the result in Figure 1.
Ref lections on the Human Condition: Change, Conflict and Modernity
The Work of the 2004/2005 API Fellows