Sharing the Amazon's secrets

The Amazon is believed to hold from a third to half of the earth’s biological diversity, and the region’s indigenous medical practitioners are the keepers of centuries of accumulated knowledge about natural medicinal resources. Scientists believe they may hold the key to the discovery of important new drugs that could benefit millions of people around the world.

The current debate in Venezuela centers on how best to exploit this traditional knowledge for the benefit of the communities that supply it. PAHO adviser Jorge Luis Prosperi agrees that indigenous groups must receive benefits from their knowledge, but he insists that this knowledge should be shared with legitimate researchers.

"I don’t doubt that scientists could visit the Amazon to extract the active properties of some plants to make millions out of patented medicines," he says. "But it is correct and fair that legitimate research takes place. Just as I believe indigenous groups have a right to access the breakthroughs and knowledge of the modern world, I believe that Western society has a right to learn about these medicinal plants. They can’t be solely the property of the indigenous community or the shaman."

Venezuela’s national science foundation, FUDECI, recently launched a major project to collect data about medicinal plants from Amazonian indigenous groups. The information is gathered by field researchers and stored in a searchable database known as BioZulua, administered from Caracas by FUDECI.

The contents of the database remain the intellectual property of the individual indigenous communities, and the Venezuelan government and FUDECI hope to raise money for the groups by charging international pharmaceutical companies for access to their knowledge.

FUDECI’s director general, Ramiro Royero, says the project has already produced some extremely interesting prospects and is generating considerable international interest. "No pharmaceutical company has seen this material yet, but when two or three different groups from different areas are using the same plants to treat the same ailments, then it’s obvious there’s something in the plant that would be worth investigating," he says.

Users of the BioZulua database can search by species, geographic location, ethnic group or even by ailment. For example, companies interested in developing new herbal headache remedies could look at all the plants used for this purpose by indigenous groups throughout the Venezuelan Amazon. The database also includes video footage of shamans collecting and preparing medicinal plants, as well as images of how patients respond to treatment. It provides genetic profiles of every plant entry and the global positioning system coordinates of where exactly it grows. "We have tried to be as comprehensive as possible. We even include a photo of the first person to tell us about the plant," Royero says.

Ramiro Royero, director general of FUDECI, hopes to raise funds for indigenous health care by charging international pharmaceutical companies for access to information in the BioZulua database.

Venezuelan authorities have received a number of complaints from Amazonian communities about biopiracy by commercial companies in recent years, and ORPIA has been very active in denouncing such abuses. "We’ve seen it all," says ORPIA human rights coordinator Daniel Guevara. "Scientists disguised as tourists, tourists disguised as scientists. They’ll try anything."

FUDECI hopes the BioZulua database will encourage interested pharmaceutical companies to contact the project’s administrators rather than approaching indigenous groups directly. "Our database provides added value and it will be much cheaper for companies to buy information from us than to send teams of researchers undercover into the Amazon," Royero says.

The BioZulua project could well serve as a model for similar schemes around the world. Several other countries in Latin America and Africa have expressed an interest in the project’s methodology, and the governing committee of the World Intellectual Property Organization recently invited Royero to deliver a paper on BioZulua at its Geneva headquarters.

Its supporters say BioZulua eventually could generate several millions of dollars that could be used to meet the heavy financial costs of providing improved health and other services for indigenous Amazonian communities.