BIOPIRACY: A threat to Mother

Nature and Mankind

Bautista, Sheela Marie H.

Olivar, Alexia Allyssa G.
WHAT is BIOPIRACY?
the appropriation,
generally by means of
patents, of legal rights
over indigenous
knowledge --- particularly
indigenous biomedical
knowledge --- without
compensation to the
indigenous groups who
 WHAT IS
BIOPROSPECTING?
the legal and accepted exploration
and search of biological products
with characteristics and traits
interesting, appealing and necessary
for mankind. In the past,
bioprospectors are mainly concerned
with the biodiversity existing in
different regions of this planet for
previously unknown compounds in
organisms that have never been
 WHAT ARE PATENTS?
gives an individual or a firm the right
and the privilege to a limited legal
monopoly and control to make, use and
sell its invention and/or discovery. Also,
this gives an individual and a firm the
right to exclude others from making,
using or selling the invention to the
market.

To be patentable, an invention must

be novel, useful and non-obvious.
Patentable articles fall under FOUR
categories:
(http://businessdictionary.com/definition/patent/html

• Machine: any apparatus or device with

interrelated parts that function together
to perform the designed or planned
purposes.
• Manufacture: manufactured or
fabricated items
• Process: mechanical, electrical,
chemical or other methods that
produce a chemical or physical
variation in the condition or state of an
item
POPULAR CASES OF
BIOPIRACY IN THE
WORLD
The Rosy Periwinkle or
Madagascar Periwinkle
 The Neem Tree
(Azadirachta indica)
The Enola Bean (Phaseolus
vulgaris)
 The Hoodia cactus
Caribbean gorgonian
(Pseudopterogorgia
elisabethae)
Eleutherobin
BIOPIRACY IN THE
PHILIPPINES
The Ilang-Ilang (Cananga
odorata)
bitter gourd The talong or
(Momordica eggplant (Solanum
charantia) melongena)
The Banaba (Lagerstroemia
speciosa)
The Saluyot (Citrus
fortunella)
Philippine sea snail (Conus
magnus)
Philippine Yew Tree (Taxus
sumatrana )
Soil in the
province of
Iloilo
HUMAN TISSUE PIRACY
AND TISSUE CULTURE
DID YOU KNOW THAT…
In 1996, Hagahai tribes, natives of Papua
New Guinea, gave blood, tissue and hair
samples to Carol Jenkins, an American
anthropologist, and took soap, candies and
chocolates in return. Hagahai people’s tissues
were utilized to produce a drug used to battle
leukemia, for these people’s blood has HTLV-1,
which is resistant to the said disease. These
people had no knowledge of this production;
however, through the help of NGOs, the tribe
sued this incident to the World Court.
Recently, they have been remunerated for
the theft of their tissues, but unfortunately the
patent still remains with Jenkins and her
 “FILIPINO” VERSION
In 2000, two Philippine non-governmental
organizations (NGOs) --- the Cordillera Peoples
Alliance (CPA) and the Igorot Tribal Assistance (ITAG)
revealed that there were Ifugao tribe’s people who
were enticed into sharing their blood to foreign
scientists who posed as medical researchers. After
collecting blood and hair samples from the tribe’s
people, nothing was heard from these scientists.

A similar luring incident was reported by a Baguio

City-based United Nations accredited Indigenous
Peoples International Center for Policy Research and
Education or Tebtebba Foundation. The foundation
reported on how the Aeta tribe’s people, a group of
Aeta displaced by the Mount Pinatubo eruption in the
province of Zambales, were fooled into providing a
foreign medical group who pretended to be aid
workers their blood samples.
 WHAT DOES IT ALL BOIL
DOWN TO?
• DEPLETION OF RESOURCES
• DAMAGE TO THE ECONOMY OF THE
SOURCE COUNTRY
• BAD EFFECT ON THE TRADITIONS OF
THE INDIGENOUS PEOPLE BECAUSE
OF THE PATENTS
end