Pubdate: Tue, 27 Nov 2001
Source: Chronicle of Higher Education, The (US)
Copyright: 2001 by The Chronicle of Higher Education
Contact:  http://chronicle.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/84
Author: Ron Southwick

NIH AND U. OF GEORGIA CANCEL RESEARCH PROJECT IN MEXICO AMID LOCAL
PROTESTS

Bitter opposition from Mayan Indians has led the National Institutes of 
Health and the University of Georgia to terminate a research project 
involving the study of medicinal plants in Mexico. Local healers had 
protested that it was inappropriate for American scientists and a British 
drug company to profit from the plants, which many native groups say are 
collectively owned.

The NIH and researchers at the university stopped the $2.5-million study in 
the southern Mexico state of Chiapas this month. A coalition of Mexican 
healers and midwives and a Canadian environmental organization had fought 
the project for two years, charging that the research amounted to "bio-piracy."

Brent O. Berlin, a professor of anthropology at Georgia, led the project. 
Mr. Berlin had planned to create an inventory of local plants and fungi 
with the hopes of developing new therapies for many diseases, including 
cancer and AIDS. Other partners included a Mexican university, El Colegio 
de la Frontera Sur, and MolecularNature Ltd., a British pharmaceutical company.

Mr. Berlin, who declined to comment for this article, had established a 
company called Promaya, which was designed to represent the interests of 
Mayan people and to funnel 25 percent of the profits from any drug 
discoveries to local villages. However, some groups in Mexico said they 
feared that Mr. Berlin and his partners would keep the profits from the 
research for themselves. Others simply said it is wrong to patent naturally 
occurring plants.

"We think the project illustrates the fundamental right of local 
communities to veto projects," said Hope Shand, research director of the 
Action Group on Erosion, Technology, and Concentration, the Canadian 
organization that lobbied against the project. "No matter how well-meaning 
this project was designed to be, it did involve the privatization of 
indigenous products and resources. It proved to be unacceptable."

The Georgia project in Mexico is one of six research studies financed by 
the International Cooperative Biodiversity Groups program, a consortium of 
universities and federal agencies formed to study the environment and 
develop new drug treatments using natural products. The program is 
administered by the Fogarty International Center, the NIH's international arm.

Mr. Berlin, a member of the National Academy of Sciences, is a leading 
figure in the field of ethnobotany, the study of how people use native 
plants. He had tried to revise the study to satisfy his opponents by 
training local leaders in the drafting of ethical standards for research 
and developing an informational campaign summing up the pros and cons of 
research of local plants.

However, the Council of Traditional Indigenous Doctors and Midwives From 
Chiapas, a group of local healers, still opposed the project. Last month, 
the Mexican university withdrew from the study, effectively derailing the 
entire effort.

In a brief statement published in Georgia's Athens Banner-Herald newspaper, 
Mr. Berlin said that he and his researchers had "noble goals" and that the 
Mayan people themselves would lose the most in the project's cancellation.

"If there is anything that leaves a gnawing feeling in my stomach about the 
whole history of the controversy, it is the fact that our detractors have 
carried out their attacks against the project by spreading rumors, 
distorted claims or partial truths, and deliberate lies, from the very 
beginning," said Mr. Berlin.
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