http://bmj.com/cgi/content/full/325/7357/183/b
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 Collections under
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An innovative scheme designed to document and protect traditional indigenous knowledge in Venezuela could lead to the discovery of important new drugs, whose development would also financially benefit the communities that supplied the original.
The BioZulua project brings together data about medicinal plants and food crops provided by the 24 ethnic groups living in Venezuela's section of the Amazonian jungle. The information is collected by field researchers and stored in a searchable database administered from Caracas by the Foundation for the Development of Mathematics and Physical and Natural Sciences.
The contents of the database remain the intellectual property of the individual indigenous groups, and the Venezuelan government is exploring the possibility of raising money for the groups by charging international pharmaceutical companies for access to their knowledge. The foundation's director general, Dr Ramiro Royero, said the project 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."
Users of the BioZulua database can search by species, geographic location, ethnic group, or even by ailment. This means that companies interested in developing new herbal headache remedies, for example, could look at all the plants used by indigenous groups throughout the Venezuelan Amazon.
The Venezuelan authorities have received complaints from Amazonian communities about "bio-piracy" by commercial companies in recent years, and they hope the advantages of the BioZulua database will encourage interested companies to contact the project's administrators rather than approaching indigenous groups directly.
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Collections under
which this article appears:Pharmacology
and toxicology International
health |
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