JOHANNESBURG - Hoodia Gordonii Cactus
Southern Africa's indigenous San people signed a landmark deal with a South African lab yesterday, securing financial rights to a diet drug developed from a plant they have used for generations to suppress hunger while on long desert treks.
Under the deal, the San people would receive 8 percent of payments the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research receives while the drug, now licensed for testing and eventual sale by the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer Inc., undergoes trials.
Once the drug is commercially available, the San would be paid 6 percent of all royalties awarded to the South African lab, which holds the patent for the medication derived from the San's traditional knowledge of the hoodia plant.
Roger Chennells, a lawyer representing the San, who number about 100,000 and live in the region of the Kalahari Desert of southwest Africa, said yesterday's agreement marked a turning point for indigenous people fighting to protect their role in the development of such a potentially lucrative drug.
The South African lab, partly funded by the government, patented P57, the appetite suppressant derived from the hoodia, without initially acknowledging the San.
Now the drug has the potential to be a blockbuster.
The case began after the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research patented P57 and then licensed it to the small British pharmaceutical company Phytopharm Plc.
Phytopharm then said the San clan that discovered the hoodia had died out, and subleased the patent to Pfizer.
Eventually that San clan, which had been relocated by the apartheid government but was alive, found out about the patent and embarked on a legal battle that resulted in yesterday's agreement.
For as long as the San can remember, the bitter-tasting, green thorn-covered hoodia plant has kept them from feeling hungry on long journeys when they have little other food or water.
Normally the patent system protects individual achievements before they become public knowledge. But indigenous people around the world, such as the San, have begun to argue the system should protect the knowledge they contribute to the public domain.
The San are among the poorest people in the region and the deal could bring in millions of dollars.