Ethnobotany

[freeztar]

We sell the stuffed cane toads, in tasteful poses (playing golf etc), to Taiwanese tourists.

 

Now THAT is brilliant!

[Michaelangelica]

Food Patents—Stealing Indigenous Knowledge? - Global Issues

A good article on the problem of native intellectual rights over their plants

Well written article.

 

"Patents and intellectual property rights are supposed to prevent piracy.

Instead they are becoming the instruments of pirating the common traditional knowledge from the poor of the Third World and making it the exclusive "property" of western scientists and corporations."

[Turtle]

"Patents and intellectual property rights are supposed to prevent piracy.

Instead they are becoming the instruments of pirating the common traditional knowledge from the poor of the Third World and making it the exclusive "property" of western scientists and corporations."

 

I watched a TV spot on something similar. One example given was Yoga positions being published and taught in the West as if they didn't exist in published texts in India for hundreds of years. The medicines and plants received mention as well. I think it was a Bill Moyers interview on PBS, but look as I might, I can't find a link to this particular story.

 

All in all an unhappy if not unsurprising turn of events.

[Michaelangelica]

A toss up whether to put this in "Darwin re-visted thread" rather than here.

In the end I thought this thread need a bump.

 

I don't think I agree with the proposition as most modern research seems to be confirming the traditional medicinal uses of herbs.

Hold on to your memories: how recent findings will impact plant-based drug discovery.

 

 

Hold on to your memories: how recent findings will impact plant-based drug discovery.

 

J Ethnopharmacol. 2007 Dec 3;114(3):279-80

 

Authors: Buenz EJ, Schnepple DJ

 

It is accepted that genetic traits favoring the survival and reproduction of individual organisms are more successful and more likely to be passed on, and that this process of natural selection underlies the broader adaptations of species. However, the demonstration that an individual plant is able to impart 'untested' transgenerational changes to its offspring challenges this paradigm, and indicates an injection point for novelty into the overall adaptation process of plants. Understanding the basis of these newly discovered variations in metabolite expression will have broad implications for the field of ethnobotany. This discipline is predicated on knowledge garnered from generations of trial and error experimentation to identify medicinal properties in plants. Thus, the discovery of novel pathways to alter metabolite profiles in plant progeny also alter a fundamental assumption of the discipline: that plants with medicinal properties a thousand years ago will still have medicinal properties today.

 

PMID: 17928179 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]

 

When I use herbs for medicine I try to get the oldest form of the plant possible. Not one that has been mucked-about-with by breeders and horticulturalists.Sounds like my intuition might be agood policy to follow.