Defense against the dark arts

On Good Friday later this week, the healers and sorcerers of Siquijor will be gathering herbs and other materials to mix in their potions. Their concoctions can be used to heal or hurt others. Knowing what leaves, barks, flowers, roots, or other ingredients to use forms part of the secret knowledge that the healer and/or sorcerer will pass on to their apprentice. At least, that is what the magazine articles I have read, and documentaries I have watched, say. I have not actually met any healer or sorcerer from Siquijor.

I thought of the healers and sorcerers of Siquijor when I heard the intellectual property law expert from India talk about how India is protecting its traditional medicine from bio-piracy, the commercial exploitation of naturally-occurring biological materials by a technologically advanced country or organization without fair compensation to the peoples or nations in whose territory the materials were originally discovered. Sorcerers and healers can keep their formulas secret and this secrecy could effectively be used to prevent bio-piracy. But how can widely-known traditional remedies be protected?

Under the Philippine Intellectual Property Code, any technical solution of a problem in the field of human activity which is new, involves an inventive step, and is industrially applicable, is patentable. A patent grants its owner exclusive rights to restrain, prohibit, and prevent unauthorized persons from making, using, offering for sale, selling or importing the product or using the patented process, and from manufacturing, dealing in, using, selling, offering for sale or importing the product obtained from the process.

Pharmaceutical companies succeeded in getting a patent for the wound-healing properties of turmeric and another one on the anti-fungal properties of the neem tree. India waged a long legal battle to have these patents cancelled in the United States and the European Union and succeeded. It argued that these medicinal plants form part of India’s traditional knowledge as ayurvedic medicine has been in existence for thousands of years. The requirement of newness was missing. Hence, they could not be patented.

To prevent a similar thing from happening to other traditional medicine, India created a Traditional Knowledge Digital Library. It contains information on traditional medicines, including exhaustive references, photographs of the plants and scans from the original texts. The Indian expert says that whether or not the database can be made available to more people continues to be debated.

I was surprised to learn that as early as 1997, the Philippines already had a law governing traditional and alternative medicine. Republic Act No.8423 mandates the creation of the Philippine Institute of Traditional and Alternative Health Care. This office is tasked with formulating policies for the protection of indigenous and natural health resources and technology from unwarranted exploitation, among other things.

Growing up, my friends and I knew that if any of us sustained a cut, we were supposed to clean the wound and apply crushed mayana (coleus) leaves, pounded kamunggay (moringa) leaves, or young guava leaves that we chewed like betel to the wound. When any of us had a cough, we drank hot water infused with young atis leaves. The plants were always growing in someone’s yard. Somehow, we all had grandparents who taught us about these things. Using plants for healing was part of play.

I am not aware of any pharmaceutical company having a patent over the antiseptic qualities of mayana, kamunggay or guava leaves but I will not be surprised if one of them manages to get one somewhere. Healing with plants and other products of nature is big business.

That there is now a need for a law to protect knowledge about traditional medicine from misappropriation shows just how crazy the world has become because of intellectual property laws and treaties. Lao Tzu said that, “The greater the number of laws and enactments, the more thieves and robbers there will be.” Maybe he was right.It would probably be more efficient to just use the services of the Siquijor sorcerers to prevent bio-piracy.

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