Pilocarpus jaborandi is an integral part of Brazilian folk medicine. Caboclos (non-Indian jungle residents) and Indians prepare a tea with its leaves and drink it as a diuretic or to induce sweat. Diabetics and asthma sufferers use it as expectorant and stimulant via an infusion made with the powdered leaves. Arthritis and pleurisy—a lung inflammation—have also been treated with jaborandi. And when applied to the scalp, a potion made with the leaves is believed to prevent baldness. Merck Laboratory has marketed a product made from jaborandi called Policarpina, which is used in the treatment of glaucoma.

All in all, the little Amazon tree is nature's miracle drug like hundreds of others whose secrets many times are only known by shamans who have been passing this oral knowledge from generation to generation. When the first Europeans landed in the Americas, the indigenous peoples from the region, utilizing plants and other natural substances had already developed a sophisticated medical system that included diagnosis and treatment of all kinds of diseases.

With the skyrocketing prices of developing new drugs and a seeming exhaustion of the traditional allopathic medicine, more and more laboratories around the world are showing interest in this wealth of folk medicine knowledge. The costs of researching the medicinal powers of plants are far less than trying to produce synthetic drugs. Besides, the sheer number of different chemicals that exist in the Amazon, for example, dwarfs the capacity that scientist have of creating new products

Brazilians have been noticing foreigners' covetous eyes on their natural and floral wealth and many people think the country is being robbed by unscrupulous biopirates, be it under the disguise of missionary or scientific expeditions, be it through multinationals claiming a stake in this wealth often times considered mankind's public domain patrimony. Many companies have also used the argument that Brazil has no right to demand compensation and royalties for its resources when the country is an infamous pirate itself producing medicines patented overseas without paying any royalties to its creators. This problem, however, has been addressed recently by the Fernando Henrique Cardoso administration, which has passed a law recognizing foreign patents for several products including pharmaceutical ones.

Among Brazilian herbal products widely used in the country, santo daime (Vine Banisteriopsis) and quebra-pedra (Parietaria officinalis) have been patented in the U.S.. The first substance, extracted from a vine, and also known as jagupe and ayahuasca, has hallucinogenic properties and is used in connection with some Indian religious rituals and some sects. The International Plant Medicine Corporation got its patent. The quebra-pedra (stone breaker, literally), also known as fura-paredes (walls piercer, literally) is prepared as an infusion for kidney ailments. In the U.S., it became a medicine for hepatitis. In Japan, an Amazon plant called muirapuama is being sold as a cure for impotency and as an aphrodisiac.

In Canada, Biolink, a small and new company has patented rupununine, a substance extracted from the seeds of bibiri (Octotea radioei), an Amazon plant. Roraima's Wapixana Indians use the substance as a contraceptive. The Canadian lab hopes to develop a product that will fight tumors and AIDS. Biolink also wants to patent cumaniol, a substance extracted from a poison made from wild manioc, that is used to catch fishes in the Amazon. The new product, according to the Canadian company, might be used to stop the heart during some delicate surgeries.

Another herb abundant in Brazil has become a worldwide phenomenon being touted as the natural Prozac. It is the Hypericum perforatum, better known in Brazil as jasim, erva-de-são-joão, or hipericão. In Germany, the product, which is taken as a tea or in the form of tablets, is being prescribed by doctors 25 times more than Prozac. German doctors just last year wrote 3 million prescriptions for the product. The craze is also starting to catch up in the U.S.. In Brazil, the herb is being commercialized under the name Extrato de Jasim or Hipérico. A study published in the United States shows that only 2.4% of depressive patients treated with Hypericum presented side effects, while side effects are common for more than 30% of those taking Prozac.

While Brazil and many other Third World countries are still discussing how to implement the decisions of Rio's 1992 Earth Summit, with the U.S. dragging its feet on ratifying those documents, the United States has become a hotbed for biopiracy. More than 200 companies have been established here to collect foreign material, an activity that is elegantly called bioprospection, but others prefer to call biopiracy. These prospectors or pirates, who explore everything from plants to human genes, have become a $60-million-a-year industry in the U.S..

According to Luiz Frederico Arruda, a professor at Universidade de Manaus, Amazonas state capital, at least 20,000 plant samples are taken from the Amazon every year. "Biopiracy has two degrees," said professor Laymert Garcia from Unicamp (Universidade de Campinas), in the state of São Paulo, in an interview with the weekly news magazine Veja. "In the first one, taking advantage of a lack of legislation, they patent substances from the forests, without due retribution as envisioned by international treaties. In the second, they get the patent for something that is being used freely. While the patent has legal value only in the country in which it was registered, it is normal that the rest of the world ends up accepting it."

Brazilian Celso Fiorillo, a doctor in environment and author of Manual do Direito Ambiental (Manual of Environmental Law) has denounced the fact that Brazilian Indians are being used as guinea pigs and that the country's flora and fauna are being exploited by multinationals. In an interview with the daily newspaper O Estado de São Paulo, Fiorillo stated: "Groups that are economically stronger and possess high technology enter the Amazon region in many different ways in search of natural products. Afterwards, they industrialize them and resell them to the Third World Country with infinitely superior prices." He calls the Genoma Project undertaken by the G7, the world's seven richest capitalist countries, a grave and dangerous sin because "it implies patenting life."

Fiorillo calls biopiracy a serious breach of the country's sovereignty. "Globalization is the modern name for colonialism. There is a direct connection between this neoliberal policy and the seizing of our environment's wealth by developed countries." He also criticizes the Brazilian government for paying lip service in defense of the Amazon to appease the press while at same time cutting the staff in charge of guarding the forest. "The number of public servants caring for the Amazon is ridiculous," he says. "The Ministry of the Environment and the Legal Amazon have been treated as mere perfumery, although it is essential to maintain the Amazon's sovereignty and environment." 

Sérgio Ferreira, the president of SBPC (Sociedade Brasileira para o Progresso da Ciência—Brazilian Society for the Progress of Science), has denounced the exploitation of the natural and intellectual resources of Brazil without due compensation. But he also recognizes that part of the problem has to do with the Brazilian lack of initiative and the absence of a reasonable policy of what to do with the country's vast resources.

Brazilian law against this kind of piracy has been vague and enforcement of it is non-existent. In spite of that, times seem to be changing. Ruediger von Heininghaus, 72, an Austrian naturalized Brazilian, for example, is being prosecuted by the state of Acre accused of selling to German labs the Kaxinawá Indians knowledge of medicinal plants. He is the president of Selvaviva, an NGO (Non-Governmental Organization) that maintains a plant greenhouse in Acre. "I am innocent," says von Heininghaus. "All I've done was to help the Indians themselves who asked for my assistance."

Biopiracy is nothing new in Brazil. The most infamous case is that of Englishman Henry Alexander Wickham, who in 1876 stole rubber tree seeds, hiding them between banana leaves leading to a new plantation of the Hevea brasiliensis in the British colonies in Ceylon, Malaysia. In a few decades the region would become the main exporter of latex, ruining in the process the rubber tree-based Amazon economy. Wickham was knighted by King George V and loathed by Brazil's rubber barons who called him "the Executioner of Amazonas."

Long before that, right after the discovery of the land by the Portuguese in 1500, the discoverers themselves and then other Europeans just stole from the Indians the secret of how to extract a red pigment from pau-brasil (brazil wood). Emblematic of today's situation, in which flora and fauna continue to disappear, the wood that gave Brazil its' name has completely disappeared, being preserved only in a few botanical gardens.

These peoples have not only taken from the land. They have contributed to biodiversity by planting and transplanting. To describe how these apparently wild places have been transformed by the Indians' presence, the United Nations Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has coined the term "cultural landscapes".

This assertion has important implications for those defending the rights of indigenous populations over certain knowledge or natural product. According to the law, wild species are public domain and no one can claim them as their property. If the case can me made, however, that they have been altered by human presence, natives of certain areas can claim proprietary rights over some species.

The World Council of Indigenous Peoples, although somewhat tortuously, defines indigenous peoples as "population groups who from ancient times have inhabited the lands where they live, who are aware of having a character of their own, with social traditions and means of expression that are linked to the country inherited from their ancestors, with a language of their own, and having certain essential and unique characteristics which confer upon them the strong conviction of belonging to a people, who have an identity in themselves and should be thus regarded by others."

Rio's Earth Summit has helped the indigenous peoples worldwide to get better organized and define their objectives and ways of achieving them. Since then, they have been active in proposing and discussing laws that might help them, through their own NGOs (Non Governmental Organizations) such as COICA, the World Rainforest Movement, the World Council of Indigenous Peoples and the Indigenous Peoples' Biodiversity Network.

In a 1994 statement, the Coordinating Body of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA) has expressed what they think about the need to protect Indigenous peoples' rights: "We indigenous peoples need a system of protection and recognition of our resources and knowledge (...) which is in conformity with our world view and contains formulas that will prevent appropriation of our resources and knowledge." 

Bolivia, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Venezuela, which constitute the Andean Pact, are more advanced than Brazil in finding ways to stop biopiracy and at the same time have started getting paid for their natural resources. Other countries such as Chile, Costa Rica, and the Philippines have already passed legislation dealing with the subject.

In the bill drafted by the Brazilian legislature, articles 18 to 29 deal with the issue of intellectual property. The articles establish among other things that indigenous peoples have the right to maintain their knowledge and formulas a secret. The bill also recognizes their right to collectively apply for protection under the law of international property rights. Indigenous peoples would also be able to share research data, patents and would have a guaranteed monetary reward for products derived from their knowledge.

Congressmen are having a hard time, however, agreeing on what is fair compensation and who should receive royalties in case a product is marketed. Should it be the Indians, the area where the substance or the knowledge was found, the state, the nation? While the lawmen delay their resolution, biopirates feel free to roam the country.

In England, the United Kingdom Royal Botanical Garden, which has thousands of plants from the Amazon region, has stopped its research with Brazilian plants alleging that the murky legal situation would not guarantee that they have the rights over a product once it is developed. Tropical plants from Costa Rica and Chile continue to be researched since there is clear legislation in those countries and they will receive part of future royalties. 

Some experts believe that all that interest about these Indians has to do with the fact that they hardly have malaria, a common disease throughout the Amazon. Their DNA might have the key for a cure. Indian blood sleuths have also been encouraged by the news that German laboratory Boehringer Ingelheim bought for $70 million genetic material from an African tribe collected by U.S. company Sequana Therapeutics, which believes to have found the key to cure asthma. There was no compensation for the tribesmen.

The Coriell case is not an isolated one. It is part of the worldwide effort put together by the Human Genome Organization (HUGO) since 1988. The work is being coordinated by the Human Genome Diversity Project, which intends to collect blood from small and isolated communities threatened with extinction. While part of the research aims is to find ways to improve human health, some groups close to indigenous populations criticize the project for its methods, and have dubbed it the "human vampire project". There have been many instances in which the blood was made available in the market after having been collected without previous consent of the people involved. Oddly enough, the U.S. Department of Commerce has applied for a patent for cell lines developed from the blood of a Papua New Guinea tribe. Listed as inventors of the product are the U.S. government's own scientists and the anthropologist who introduced them to the tribesmen. 

Few companies have been so active in developing medicinal products from the Brazilian flora as San Francisco-based Shaman Pharmaceuticals. Two of these products that use plants from the Amazon—Provir and Virend—are in their last phase of development. Both utilize crotão latex.

Provir, which was already subjected to a battery of tests in the first quarter of 1997, is designed to treat chronic diarrhea. Other tests with AIDS patients suffering from diarrhea are being conducted right now. As for Virend, it might put an end to the search of an up-to-now elusive cure for genital herpes, a disease that afflicts 30 million Americans.

Shaman has already researched close to 7,000 plants from the Amazon. According to the company, when they market a new product derived from tropical plants they reward in some way the community where the plant was found. In a recent interview with the Brazilian daily Folha de São Paulo, Megan Ravel, communications director for the company, talked about Shaman's work in Brazil: "For the most part our experiments go nowhere, but if we are able to develop at least one drug that works we can consider ourselves victorious."

As for paying back the communities involved in the research, Megan said: "It depends on how much we make with a discovery and it also depends on what the community needs. We might build a school, a hospital, a nursery, or something else. But the property rights for the medicine are ours because we were the ones who developed it."

Despite controversy and accusations of abusing the Indian population's good faith, the London-based cosmetic manufacturer Body Shop, which has a chain of stores throughout the world, continues its joint effort with the Kayapo Indians. They buy annually $160,000 in Brazil nuts from them for the manufacturing of shampoos and conditioners.

There are many people who believe that mankind in general and the pharmaceutical industry in particular are indebted to the healers and shamans from the tropics. Mark J. Plotkin, an American ethnobotanist who wrote Tales of a Shaman's Apprentice: An Ethnobotanist Searches for New Medicines in the Amazon Rain Forest , is one who thinks so. "Every time a shaman dies, it is as if a library burned down," he says. Dr. Plotkin is the vice president of Washington-based Conservation International and former director of the plant program at the Worldwide Fund for Nature.

He is in favor of developing alternative strategies to foster tropical forestry studies while helping native populations. According to him, Shaman Pharmaceuticals and Healing Forest Conservancy (a non-profit organization that pledges to return all profits from new medicines derived from the forest to the indigenous people) are the wave of the future and an example to be followed. 

Also in search of a cure for malaria, the Centro de Plantas Medicinais (Medicinal Plants Center) from Amapá's Instituto de Estudos e Pesquisas (Studies and Researches Institute) has been studying a recipe devised by the Waipi Indians, who use an oil made from the plant andiroba (Carapa guianensis). The same group is also in the final phase of tests with 60 diabetics who are being treated with capsules made from pata-de-vaca with promising results, according to the researchers.

At the Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)a group of researchers led by chemist Ângelo da Cunha Pinto has been studying the effects of sucuuba (Imathantus sucuuba) in the treatment of tumors. In lab tests the substance was able to repair the yeast's DNA. Walter Mors, another UFRJ's chemist, who is retired, for 10 years has been studying the anti-ophidic properties of erva-botão (Eclipta prostata). Tests with lab mice were very promising and the solution prepared with the herb, according to Mors, was effective in neutralizing the poison of every kind of snake he tested. Better yet, he has found out that the potion can be taken as a preventive medicine. "If any laboratory decides to invest," he announced, "we might have a commercial product in five years." 

The plan is to create seven ecological corridors, joining big conservation pockets, national parks, Indian reservations, and ecological stations. The first two corridors should be established this month at a cost of $44 million. One of them is the area of the Mata Atlântica between the states of Bahia and Espírito Santo, the other is the Amazon central corridor, which includes Jaú's National Park and areas in the Solimões River basin. Indigenous peoples and other people inside the area, including farmers will be encouraged to engage in activities that preserve the forest and allow a sustainable development.

Landowners will have the extra incentive of lower taxes if they don't destroy the jungle. The so-called Pilot Program for the Protection of the Brazilian Tropical Forests, known for short as PP/G7, is being financed by the World's Bank General Environmental Facility (GEF) and a consortium of European banks.

The plan should face challenges in its implementation in several areas in the states of Acre, Pará, and Roraima where the land is being occupied by posseiros (squatters) and garimpeiros (precious stones prospectors). Some areas of the Mata Atlântica were left out of the plan because the expropriation price would be too high. In this case, the government decided, through fiscal incentives and special rural credit, to encourage farmers to establish private reserves of the natural patrimony in which the area would be kept intact and open to ecotourism. 

The Amazon Indian lives even less than his counterpart in other areas of the country. Those at the Javari river valley, for example, have a life expectancy of a mere 24.5 years. The main causes of death in this region are malaria and hepatitis, both brought by loggers who invade their territory. The Yanomami warriors do not have a much better lot in life. They live on average 34.1 years since garimpeiros started to make contact with them in 1987.

Rômulo César Sabóia Moura, the scientist in charge of the research for the IMTM, attributes this situation to the little medical care given the Indians by Funai (Fundação Nacional do Índio—National Foundation for the Indian), a government entity. While the so-called SUS (Sistema Único de Saúde—Uniform Health System) spends a meager average of $100 per Brazilian a year, Funai invests five times less: $22 per Indian a year. It is estimated that there are 329,000 Indians in Brazil today, down from 2 to 5 million at the time the Europeans arrived.

While in the US there are no more than 3,000 homeopathic doctors, in Brazil there are 13,000 of them. In 1982 there were a mere 300. No other country with the exception of India has more homeopaths. And, in the last 20 years, the number of homeopathic pharmacies has skyrocketed from 10 to 1600. Two thousand pharmacists produce 3,000 medicinal formulas using minerals, animals, and most of all plants. There are also 250 dentists and 100 veterinarians specialized in homeopathy.

Modern pharmacology does not ignore the therapeutic effects of plants. Forty percent of the time industrialized medicines use plants as their active ingredient, although generally in a synthesized more concentrated formula. The active ingredient in aspirin, for example, was originally found in the bark of willow trees.

According to the American publication The Nutrition Business Journal, 60% of Yankee physicians have on occasion referred a patient to alternative treatments, including naturopathy, herbalism, and homeopathy. In the U.S., the market for herbal supplements grossed over $700 million in 1995 and it is expected that this amount will grow to $1.6 by the year 2000.

Botanists believe that from 35,000 to 70,000 plant species are used throughout the world as medicine, most of them growing in tropical forests. And in the U.S. there are at least 120 widely used prescription drugs made from 95 species of plants, 39 of which are originally from the rainforest.

Roughly 1/4 of all pharmaceutical products in the market today use substances from the rainforest. Among widely used products based on plants we have aspirin, morphine, and codeine. There is also digitalis, used as a heart medicine; curare, as a muscle relaxant; and colchicin, prescribed as an anti-inflammatory.

Despite all the destruction, it is believed that the rainforests still preserve 30 million different species, roughly half of all life forms on earth and 2/3 of all plants. This without mentioning the importance of these forests to the earth's weather and atmosphere. A third of the world's tropical forests are in Brazilian territory and, as for the Amazon forest, two thirds of it are in Brazil. The country still boasts the Pantanal (the world's largest wetland), the Cerrado (the world's most biologically diverse Savannah), and the Mata Atlântica, an even richer life laboratory than the Amazon, despite its much smaller size.

At the time of Brazil's discovery, the Mata Atlântica, the strip of luscious forest covering the entire Brazilian coast, occupied an area equivalent to 12% of today's national territory. In its widest area the strip was as large as 300 miles. Today this treasure has been reduced to 10% of its original size. From 1985 to 1990 alone 1.2 billion trees were cut. Its destruction is a textbook case of how to dilapidate an inestimable patrimony.

The devastation accompanied the several cycles of the Brazilian economy, all of them much more interested in immediate profit instead of a long-term planned investment. First was the brazil wood cycle that would cut this valuable tree destroying in the process 6,000 sq. km of the forest. In the XVIII century, the discovery of gold and precious stones gave the jungle a respite while 2,000 tons of gold were dug up. During the sugar cane and coffee cycles as well as the cocoa tree plantation cycle in the state of Bahia, huge areas of jungle would be burned down to make room for these crops. From 1.5 million sq. km 500 years ago, the Mata Atlântica today is just a sad shadow of its previous self, with just 95,000 sq. km left.

Despite all the recent rhetoric in Brazil about preserving the green, Brazilians were and still are too eager to cut trees. Not before the 80s did the first green groups start to voice their outrage and the theme became a national issue. In Brazil, the jungle and backwardness have always been equated. Caipira and caipora, two words to designate a rustic man without culture have their roots in Tupi terms that referred to inhabitants of the forest.

"The Amazon's chemiodiversity is much bigger than the forest's visible part," says Massuo Kato from Universidade de São Paulo's (USP) Chemistry Institute. Kato has worked in the development of a new classification for the Amazon's vegetables based on the chemistry of its fruits. This should help to find what is the best time for picking the fruit as well as indicate which part of it has more active elements.

There are tens of millions of species in the world, according to scientists speculations, even though they were able to describe less than 1.5 million up to now, half of them living in rainforests. Some scientists believe that that proportion would grow to 90% in favor of the tropical forest if a complete tally of all species was ever accomplished. Brazil is home to the greatest number of insects species, as well as of terrestrial vertebrates, amphibians, primates, freshwater fish, and flowering plants. With a handful of other countries, it is classified by scientists as a megadiversity land.
 

"We can start a guerrilla war over there as the Vietnamese have done," said reformed colonel Gélio Augusto Fregapani at the end of last year in Rio, during a forum called "Amazon - Threat of Territorial Losses, Occupation, and Development," which was part of the Third National Encounter on Strategic Studies, a meeting organized by the Escola Superior de Guerra ( Higher School of War).

It was a rare instance of the right and left putting aside their differences to join efforts against a common enemy. Former Army minister Leônidas Pires Gonçalves was there as well as Roraima's governor Neudo Campos, and historian Lygia Garner, who teaches at Southeast Texas University.

The assembly's indignation was palpable when lieutenant-colonel, Marcus Vinicius Belfort Teixeira, who at 43 is considered one of the youngest most active military voices today, denounced the U.S. effort to internationalize the Amazon. And the mood was belligerent when the Air Force officer told about a sticker circulating on car windows in London that say: "Fight for the forest. Burn a Brazilian."

According to Belfort, the Brazilian government is demarcating indigenous areas on the frontier with other South American countries—something he considers extremely dangerous to national security—succumbing to international pressure mainly from the United States and Germany. Americans and Germans, according to Teixeira and other military personnel, are interested in the mineral-rich area's subsoil.
 

A sacred plant used as food and folk medicine in the Andes for a variety of purposes including an anesthetic and calcium supplement. Coca (Erythroxylum coca) means simply tree in the Aymara dialect. It was in 1860 that German chemist Carl Köler isolated the cocaine and found its virtues as a local anesthetic. After that, coca and cocaine started to be used for a variety of ailments and were added to several tonics including Coca-Cola.

A poisonous concoction with several plants whose formula was kept a secret for centuries. Alexander von Humboldt was the first European to witness and describe the way the ingredients were put together, in 1800. But curare would start being used as an anesthetic only in 1943, four years after its active ingredient, the d-tubocurarine was isolated.

Used as an infusion by the Amazon natives in the treatment of fever. Derived from the cinchona tree (Cinchona officinalis) it was used in the 20s in the US for the treatment of malaria. Known as Indian fever bark the product was used in Europe since the early 1500s. One century later its name had been changed to Jesuit fever bark. The demand for the cinchona almost made it extinct. By smuggling it from South America to Java, in 1865, Englishman Charles Ledger saved the plant. Sixty years later, more than 95% of the world's quinine was coming from Java.
 

Bibiri or beberu (Ocotea radioei)— Used as contraceptive and as a HIV and small tumors inhibitor.

Cabacinha (Luffa operculata)—Mixed with cachaça (sugar-cane hard liquor) it is used against sinusitis and as a nasal decongestant. As an unguent it is applied on tumors.

Erva botão (Eclipta prostata)—An antidote to snake bites.

Erva de jabuti or aperta-ruão (Leandra lacunosa)—Good against diabetes.

Guaraná (Paulinia cupania)— Source of caffeine, it fights fatigue. Used in soft drinks.

Hortelã roxo—Used as solution for ear pain.

Jaborandi (Pilocarpus jaborandi)—Taken as a tea as a diuretic or to induce sweat. Also used in treatment of diabetes, asthma, arthritis, and baldness.

Japana (Eupatoriu ayapana)—Leaves are rubbed on insects bites.

Muirapuama (Ptychopetalum olacoides)- It is reputed to be an aphrodisiac. Also used for arthritis and as a stimulant.

Oriza—Tea is taken for heart ailments

Pau d'Arco (Tabebuia impetiginosa) A medicine for candida, athletes foot and also used as a natural anti-biotic. It has also been used against cancer.

Picão (Bidens Pilosa)—For the treatment of malaria and hepatitis

Puxuri or puxiri or pixurim (Licaria Puchurymajor)—A preventive medicine against baby colic.

Quebra-pedra (Parietaria officinalis)—For kidney stones and urinary tract relief. Patented by Fox Medical Center for the treatment of hepatitis B.

Saracura-mirá—A cure-all elixir. Used to treat all kinds of pain and also malaria

Sucuuba (Himathantus Sucuba)—Mosquito repellent. It can be used in candles.

Suma or piriguara or paraguaia (Achietea salutaris)— Called South American Ginseng. Used as tonic and to relieve the symptoms of menopause.
 

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