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15 July 2006 -
News Updates
Traditional cures get new protection - SF Chronicle
Thousands embrace visit by hugging saint - Chicago Tribune
In rural India - Washington Post
Traditional
cures get new protection
8 July 2006,
San Francisco Chronicle, By Suzanne Marmion
Ayurvedic doctor Nishta Tiwari writes out a
prescription for migraines. It's an herbal powder to which Tiwari adds a few
other powdered ingredients. "This is coral and conch, and this is pearl, and
this all for the brain," she said.
Ayurveda is a school of medicine in
India
thought to be at least 4,000 years old. Today, its ancient medicines
have been caught up in a modern phenomenon called bio-piracy.
India
claims that U.S. drug companies have started wrongfully patenting existing
ayurvedic treatments. So
India
is working on an equally modern solution: a digital database for patent
officers to peruse, containing thousands of traditional medicines that
include everything from cardamom paste for bronchitis, to nightingale
droppings to treat constipation.
Such remedies may sound unorthodox to
Americans, but the majority of Indians still use these traditional
medicines. In the
United States,
the World Health Organization reports, 42 percent of Americans have tried
some form of traditional medicine at least once. Increasingly,
India
says, its wealth of ancient medical knowledge has attracted western
pharmaceutical companies, too.
India
claims to have found 5,000
U.S.
patents on medicinal plants, 80 percent of them from
India.
Half of these patents should never have been given to the American drug
developers, according to
India's
government. Europe has also granted a patent to use neem extract for its
antiseptic properties. Millions of Indians have a neem tree growing in their
gardens. They pick off a twig each morning to use as a toothbrush. It cost
millions of dollars to fight the neem patent, which was repealed in 2005.
"The big firms want to not pay anything, and
want to have a shorter path (to new drugs)," says V.K. Gupta, director of
the Indian government's National Institute of Science, Communication and
Information Resources. New drugs typically take seven to 10 years to develop
and the research can cost $800 million or more. So Gupta says Western
pharmaceutical companies have been plundering
India's
ancient medical textbooks instead. Even yoga isn't safe -- a yoga teacher in
the United States tried to patent 32 poses.
Officials from the birthplace of Mahatma
Gandhi's nonviolent resistance to colonialism have already fought their
first battle over patents with that turmeric in the blister ointment. In
1995, two Indians at the University of Mississippi Medical Center obtained a
patent on the yellow spice for its wound-healing properties. Gupta says when
the news reached
India,
"our parliament couldn't work for a few days. Everybody was discussing this.
Everybody was enormously disturbed."
Indians have long used turmeric to treat wounds
and rashes. Moreover, the cure is documented with thousands of others in
medical texts written in Sanskrit, Hindi, Arabic and Persian. After
India
translated the Sanskrit text about turmeric for patent officers, the United
States repealed the Mississippi Medical Center's sole right to use turmeric
for healing wounds.
However, the furor prompted
India's
national institute to start building the database of medicines and yoga
poses, complete with pictures, and having the information translated into
five languages for patent officers to search. The database is called the
Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, and it's the first effort of its
kind.
In a
Delhi
building full of computers cooled by powerful air conditioning and whirring
overhead fans, dozens of doctors in the traditional ayurvedic, siddha and
unani practices thumb through books, some more than 2,000 years old.
Practitioners such as ayurvedic doctor Jaya Saklani Kala painstakingly type
alphanumeric codes for words and phrases. Kala's assigned book is written in
Sanskrit. "Saliva, forehead, honey, antiseptic wound cleansing ...
aphrodisiac. We need a code for everything," she says.
The codes then translate a Sanskrit sentence
fragment and a plant name into their equivalents in English, French, German,
Spanish and Japanese. The software that the national institute developed to
do this has reduced the workload from 32 years and 5,000 workers to just
three years and 100 employees. The government is expected to bring the
database online this year. Once it is up and running, patent officers can
quickly search terms such as "turmeric" and "wound healing" to find that a
patent on the ancient cure might not be appropriate.
"We were born with this knowledge," says Kala.
"Our ancient rishis or ancient scientists, they were explorers. They
observed each and every bird, plant, and then they found out a way of living
which is most healthy in which disease does not occur, and if a disease
occurs how to cure that disease. "It is as much yours as it is mine," Kala
says. "You can't have a person taking the sole right over something that has
existed already."
Other nations, including
Nigeria,
Mongolia, Thailand and South Africa want to model databases after
India's
Traditional Knowledge Digital Library.
Gupta from the Indian government's national
institute emphasizes that
India
is willing to do collaborative research with foreign companies toward
developing medicines based on its ancient texts. In the meantime, though,
Gupta says the patent challenges continue. Another version of
India's
turmeric cure remains patented for the time being: a cure for acne made from
a paste of turmeric and cow's urine.
Top of the page
Thousands embrace visit by `hugging saint'
7 July 2006, Chicago Tribune, By Margie Ritchie
Indian spiritual leader says love is message.
Some came just for a hug, some some for more spiritual reasons. They came to
see Amma, known as the "hugging saint," a humanitarian from
India who
travels the world offering hugs to those who flock to see her.
Amma, 52, whose nickname
means mother and whose birth name is Mata Amritanandamayi, was at the Oak
Brook Hills Marriott Resort on Wednesday and Thursday, attracting more than
9,000 people. Some came to sit, others came to experience darshan--a
spiritual vision of sorts--with Amma. Amma handed out tender, motherly
embraces hour after hour. Everyone who participated was given a prasad--a
gift that has been blessed. Sometimes Amma offered a Hershey's Kiss,
sometimes an apple, sometimes both.
Amma grew up poor, the
daughter of a fisherman in the state of Kerala in southern
India. Educated only until the 4th grade, she started her spiritual movement
at 21 and has since touched people in countries all over the world.
Amma travels the globe and
makes an annual trek to the
Chicago
area. Sarah Cura and Scott Keever of Minneapolis, Minn., traveled six hours
to see her for the first time on Wednesday. "I had heard about her for 10
years and saw this event in a yoga journal. I thought, wow, what perfect
timing. I know that she gives hugs," Cura said.
Dawn Silver from
Chicago has been coming to see Amma for 19 years. Silver describes Amma's
following as "a nomadic tribe of love bugs." "This is the best energy in the
universe," Silver said. Silver said one year her 15-year-old daughter
wondered why Amma always seem to recognize her. "I said to her, `Of course
she recognizes you, she sees you every year and hugs you.'" Silver said
Amma's following, which does not ask for donations, is not a cult. "She
simply blesses people. If someone wants to really love you, why not?" Silver
said.
Amma and her organization,
Mata Amritanandamayi Math (M.A. Math), has built a hospital in
India and thousands of houses for the poor. The organization, headquartered
in Amma's home state of Kerala, has given more than $23 million for the
Amrita Tsunami Relief and Rehabilitation Project, covering a broad range of
relief efforts in India and Sri Lanka.
"Many of the people that
lived in the villages near us lost their homes," said Janani, Amma's
personal videographer and archivist. "Most of them were one-story homes and
many people [after the tsunamis] were afraid to sleep on the first floor.
Amma insisted on rebuilding two-story homes so the people could sleep on the
second floor and not have to worry about this happening to them again."
Janani, who has worked for
Amma for 14 years, is a former religious professor from
Denver who gave up her tenure to live with Amma. Janani said. "We may look
like a cult but we are pretty normal people."
Top of the page
In
rural India, It (Finally) Took a Village
2 July 2006, Washington Post, By Lisa Singh
I was in Samode, a 500-year-old village in the
western Indian state of
Rajasthan,
and it was lunchtime. I could have gone up the hill to a tourist hotel where
choices included "country fried chicken," "cheese 'n cheese" and "Mr.
Chips." I'd come to Rajasthan for a two-week journey through rural India --
a world that Gandhi called the heart and soul of the country, and where most
of India still lives. On arrival, I'd sworn not to let my Western
inhibitions -- scare me off.
I wanted to experience an overlooked side to
Indian life. Nearly all Western travelers stick to
India's
cities. Here in Rajasthan, a largely desert land visited by nearly half of
all tourists to the country, those wanting a taste of Indian rural life
often settle on a place like Chokhi Dhani. Billed as an "ethnic village
resort," it's an amusement park on the outskirts of Jaipur where visitors
ride bullock carts, eat in mud huts and watch dancers perform under the open
night sky.
I was looking for something that feels a little
more real, like what I had found more than 20 years back. I was an American
kid of 6 when I first set foot in a
Rajasthani
village where my father was born and raised. After the initial culture shock
-- no electricity or running water, for starters -- I glimpsed a world of
color, anchored in old ways. Admittedly, I've looked back since then with
misty eyes -- something my next trip to the village, in 2004, didn't cure me
of. After all I'd heard about the flight of Indians (including some of my
cousins) to cities, I expected a scene straight out of a Feed the Children
ad. Instead, green fields of wheat and mustard swayed in the breeze.
Schoolchildren treated me to dance and song. Women in red saris with gold
and silver trim grabbed my hand and led me into their homes for a cup of
chai.
For this latest trip, I set my sights on Samode
and two other villages in
Rajasthan.
I'd recently heard about them when India's tourism office came out with an
"Explore Rural India" campaign.
Tourism growth in
India started
with the development of five-star hotels," said Amitabh Kant, an official
with the tourism office in
Delhi.
"To my mind, that was like aping the West." So his office drew up a list of
31 villages around
India
where travelers could find the best in rural arts and heritage. As for
village food, it's "the most hygienic" you'd find in India, said Kant. Each
village is also supported by a local nongovernmental organization (one, for
example, teaches rural women carpet-weaving), and is close enough to a hotel
or city so travelers can balance rural days with nights of modern comfort.
An hour's drive from Jaipur, Samode is
surrounded by the Aravali hills, one of the oldest mountain ranges in the
world. The HBO production of "The Far Pavilions" was shot here. The village
itself -- rows of stone houses, some with thatched roofs -- is home to
gemstone cutters and other craftsmen.
Samode
Palace, a 400-year-old yellow fortress built on three levels, each with its
own courtyard. Adorned with marble floors and walls covered with paintings
of hunting and courtship, the palace sits on grounds that were once home to
a nobleman from Jaipur. In 1987, the palace was made into a hotel and has
rooms with whirlpool baths and satellite TVs. A Greek and Italian restaurant
is being built on the grounds. "Ninety-nine percent of our business is
European," said K.K. Sharma, the hotel's manager. "That is the logic."
Sharma, a village native, had a suggestion: A
descendant of the grounds' owner was entertaining tourists at his nearby
farmhouse. We'd find food prepared there in the "traditional way," he said.
Music filled the air. Men in turbans played harmoniums, sitars and drums.
One crooned a song, "Atithi devo bhava" -- "Our guests are like
gods." A few yards away, artisans showed off crafts: hand-cut gemstones,
hand-woven fans, pots.
All well and good, but was this the closest a
traveler could come to appreciating rural
India -- by
holing up in a pricey retreat?
Whatever color and life the village Neemrana
Fort-Palace lacked, the
village of
Haldighati
made up for. February is wedding season in India, and we soon got a chance
to crash a party or two. From Jaipur, we traveled southwest, past the city
of
Udaipur, farther into the Mewar region -- one
of the greenest areas of
Rajasthan.
The region is best known for one of the most famous events in the history of
India: the 1576 battle between Maharana Pratap and the Mogul emperor Akbar.
Weaving through serpentine roads that
overlooked green hills and homes framed by neem trees and bougainvillea
bushes, we came across members of the Garasia tribe, a clan exclusive to
Mewar and the neighboring state of
Gujarat.
With a red-turbaned groom in tow, a group of them, mostly children, walked
by with steel pots of water on their heads. They'd just drawn the water from
a well for planting wheat in honor of the upcoming wedding.
A woman with a huge hoop nose ring grabbed my
hand and led me into the courtyard of a stone house. "Dum-dum, dum-dum . . .
" Inside, a barefoot old man with a white mustache and turban stood by the
wall, beating on a large leather drum adorned with swastikas -- a peace sign
in
India.
As children and other villagers gathered around, a dance began: A woman with
a pot on her head twirled about, her face concealed by a sheer sari. Other
women, in pink and peach saris, joined in, swaying to the beat.
Farther up the road, girls offered a taste of
halwa -- a dessert made of semolina, sugar and butter -- that they'd
prepared for another wedding. By day's end, we saw Haldighati's other
attractions -- a terra-cotta artist and a man who concocts ayurvedic
potions. Such hospitality," he said finally. "You could not imagine it in
the city . . . ". Here, in
India's
heartland, they really do treat guests like gods.
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