For my daily practice this week, I will be focusing in on a section of my original mapping. I will be investigating 6 pharmaceutical companies and their practices regarding bioprospecting.
#1: Eli Lilly and the Rosy Periwinkle
“In the early 1950s, following clues from indigenous medicine men in Madagascar, researchers at Eli Lilly pharmaceuticals extracted two powerful cancer-fighting alkaloids from the rosy periwinkle: vinblastine and vincristine. Global sales of the two substances, patented by Eli Lilly, earned it hundreds of millions of dollars, but not a sen went to Madagascar or the medicine men. ”
-Elizabeth John and K.T. Chelvi, “Bioropiracy and the Law of the Jungle”
#2 Merck in India
“In what may be a first, a research institutute in India and a tribe of indigenous people in the State of Kerala received a $21,000 payment for use a compound whose source they provided to an ayurvedic drug company (Bagla, 1999). So far as I know, this is the first instance in which payments have been made for a successfully developed product.”
-R. David Simpson, “Bioprospecting as a Conservation and Development Policy”
#3 Novartis and Qinghao (Sweet Wormwood)
Artemisinin, qinghaosu, was extracted from the traditional Chinese medical drug qinghao (the blue-green herb) in the early 1970s. Its ‘discovery’ can thus be hailed as an achievement of research groups who were paradoxically successful, working as they were at the height of a political mass movement in communist China, known in the West as the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), a period that was marked by chaos, cruelty and enormous suffering, particularly, but by no means only, among the intelligentsia. On the one hand, China’s cultural heritage was seen as a hindrance to progress and Mao set out to destroy it, but on the other hand he praised it as a ‘treasure house’, full of gems that, if adjusted to the demands of contemporary society, could be used ‘for serving the people’ (wei renmin fuwu). The success of the ‘task of combating malaria’ (kang nüe ren wu), sometimes known as ‘task number five hundred and twenty-three’, depended crucially on modern scientists who took seriously knowledge that was recorded in a traditional Chinese medical text, Emergency Prescriptions Kept up one’s Sleeve by the famous physician Ge Hong (284–363).
-Elisabeth Hsu, “Reflections on the ‘discovery’ of antimalarial qinghao”
#4 Bristol-Meyers Squibb and the Pacific Yew Tree
Developed from the bark of the Pacific yew tree (Taxus brevifolia), it is ironic that such a popular oncology drug could be developed from a tree, which had been a representative symbol for death throughout the human experience. Aside from the known toxic nature of the trees via consumption, yew has also been used in the making of weapons for centuries, and has even been incorporated into myth and art as nearly synonymous with death. The initial fervor over this drug vastly outpaced the rate at which it could be produced, a single dose requiring an entire tree’s bark to produce. It became clear that continued production of the drug from this source would result in the extinction of the tree. Fortunately, a solution came about when it was found that the European yew’s needles had a close precursor to the compound in the North American tree, which can be converted to the final product with a four stage synthesis.
-S.R. Eagle, S.C. Gad, in Encyclopedia of Toxicology (Third Edition), 2014
#5 Pfizer and Hoodia
Consider the famous Hoodia case. For millennia, the San people of southern Africa have used native plants of the Hoodia genus as appetite suppressants. Their practice was documented by colonial botanists, and Hoodia’s properties were then investigated in the late twentieth century by the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, which attempted to isolate the active ingredients. In 1995, following nine years of development, CSIR applied for a patent on the chemical components of the plant that suppressed appetite. Three years later, they signed a licensing agreement with a private company named Phytopharm that developed a program with Pfizer for commercialization of Hoodia products for the lucrative Western weight loss market. All this research and development proceeded without the knowledge of the San people.
-Joseph Millum, “How Should the Benefits of Bioprospecting be Shared?”
#6 Smartox and the Cone Snail
Along with other contentious issues, such as creating marine protected areas and adopting environmental impact assessments for activities like mining, a core element of the debates is how countries will access and share the benefit derived from the ocean’s marine genetic resources in a fair and equitable manner.
-Li Jing, “High Seas Treaty: Race for Rights to Ocean’s Genetic Resources”
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