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For some activists, this is "gene imperialism," akin to the bygone exploitation of mineral deposits with scant benefit to the land's original inhabitants. The biodiversity treaty recognizes that, as custodians of the biosphere, indigenous people should receive some reward if, say, a drug company or an agribusiness firm develops a product based on traditional resources or wisdom. But according to Christoph Then of the Munich-based organization No Patent to Life, pharmaceutical companies rarely pass on a fair share of their profits to the countries that provide the raw genetic material. While many tribesmen are reluctant to share their knowledge with outsiders, some are willing to pass on their secrets for a pittance. Kunjira Moolya, 66, is a landless laborer wandering the misty hills of southern India. He is also a medicine man who, for free, will use the herbs and plants of the rain forest to try to cure snake bites, asthma and epilepsy. Even in his remote hamlet, Moolya was tracked down by researchers from a German pharmaceutical concern, who, according to Indian ecologists, gave him the equivalent of $5 for his medicinal recipes of herbal cures. "In some cases, the government gets paid by the company, but the money may never reach the local community," says Mark Hill, spokesman for Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis International. For the companies, too, it's a risky business. Even with help from indigenous experts, the odds of developing a profitable medicine from a new chemical compound are daunting. Novartis estimates that only one in 10,000 potentially viable compounds actually makes it onto drugstore shelves. Researching and launching a new drug can take eight-to-12 years and cost $350 million, Hill says. The payoff, however, can easily cover development costs. Novartis' top-selling drug Sandeimmun/Neoral (Cyclosporin), used to prevent the body's rejection of a new organ after a transplant, racked up $97 million in sales last year.
Only big, global businesses can afford to gamble that much time and money on launching a new drug. Costa Rica, a tiny country that's home to about 5% of the world's biodiversity, decided to bring in outsiders to protect its riches. To help finance a mammoth inventory of its estimated 500,000 animal species and plants, the country's National Biodiversity Institute cut a deal with more than a dozen private companies hoping to share in the findings. But some conservationists contend that at least a part of future royalties should be given to the locals who helped guide taxonomists to the right genes in the tangled labyrinth of the rain forest. Says Indian environmentalist Ashish Kothari: "Once you have the traditional knowledge, the chance of finding useful genetic sources increases dramatically." In China and India, countries with systems of natural medicine dating back thousands of years, officials are protective of their genetic property. Ecologists warn darkly of a coming "gene war" between industrialized and emerging nations.
It's an emotive subject, with ecologists accusing Western companies of tampering with nature out of greed. In India, thousands of protesters rallied last summer against foreign companies' attempts to patent the active ingredients in natural remedies such as turmeric and the neem tree. In China last year, scientists urged the government to prevent international companies from exploiting the country's biological resources. Zhu Lihuang, deputy director of the Institute of Genetics in Beijing, is opposed. "Western scientists worry about a gene war here, that China will close its doors," he says. "But we get more from an open door."
If cash-poor countries start fencing off their gene pools, everyone will suffer. Of course multinationals want to make money, but who else is going to pour in the hundreds of millions of dollars it takes to develop a cancer drug, or a high-yielding wheat hybrid? "We are equally responsible for the things we fail to do," says Dietmar Mieth, a professor of theological ethics at Germany's University of Tubingen, "No one can deny that we need new healing methods, that there are scourges of God." At the same time, though, man's initial forays into the frontiers of genetics should surely have larger goals than just profit. Biological claim-jumping on the structures of DNA and the theft of biosphere treasures can only hinder scientific progress by emphasizing greed over good. Until adequate safeguards are designed and enforced, the Onge and other tribes might as well keep their secrets to themselves.
With reporting by Helena Bachmann/Geneva, Sol Biderman/Sao Paulo, Tessa Bold/Bonn, Meenakshi Ganguly/New Delhi, Clive Mutiso/Nairobi, Christine Pratt/San Jose, Mia Turner/Beijing and bureau reports
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