AMAZON TRIBAL LEADERS CHALLENGE U.S. PATENT

They say America has no right to plant used in healing

In this land of tailored suits, the scene Tuesday was extraordinary:
Amazon medicine men adorned in shell necklaces and exotic bird
feathers chanting a religious ceremony and sipping potions.

The tribal leaders achieved the real purpose of their long journey
just before their depiction of a ceremony. They visited the U.S.
Patent and Trademark Office in suburban Washington to challenge the
validity of a patent awarded a California entrepreneur for the main
ingredient of their healing potion - the hallucinogenic plant ayahuasca.

"Our ancestors learned the knowledge of this medicine and we are the
owners of this knowledge," said Antonio Jacanamijoy, who heads a
council representing more than 400 tribes and indigenous groups in
South America.

Ayahuasca (pronounced eye-yuh-WAHS-cuh) looks like any bushy tree
sprouting in the jungle. But to indigenous peoples in South America,
it is a sacred plant whose name translates to "vine of the soul." They
likened the patent in question to patenting the Christian cross.

The 13-year-old patent has become an issue of such magnitude that it
has stirred physical threats, led to the cancellation of U.S. aid to
South American tribes and all but shut down "bioprospecting" for
valuable plants in Peru, Ecuador and the rest of the Amazon basin.

The fallout has been felt in St. Louis. The Missouri Botanical Garden,
Monsanto Co. and Washington University all have found it more
difficult to arrange bioprospecting ventures to South America in
recent years to collect plants for new drugs and for traits that can
be genetically engineered into crops. Many of the world's best-
selling pharmaceuticals and most of its cancer drugs are from the
tropics.

Jim Miller, who directs the Missouri Botanical Garden's global
bioprospecting, said that many people in South America had wrongly
associated the ayahuasca controversy with legitimate plant collecting.
"It's sure got people fired up," he said. Miller, too, questioned
whether the patent is valid.

The events started unfolding in the mid-1980s when Loren Miller, then
a graduate student in pharmacology, brought home a variety of the
plant from Ecuador. Miller founded the International Plant Medicine
Corp. in California and applied for a U.S. patent, which was awarded
in 1986. He had no plans to sell it as a hallucinogenic drug; he says
he believed that the plant might contain properties that would be
effective in psychotherapy and possibly in treating cancer.

Not until 1994 did the tribes learn of the patent. They decided it
meant that Miller would control what had been part of their culture
for centuries. Word even went out that shamans wanting to use
ayahuasca would need his permission, which was untrue.

By 1996, feelings ran so hot that the council of tribes declared
Miller "an enemy of indigenous peoples." A statement by the group
warned that if Miller or his associates returned to the region, tribes
"will not be responsible for the consequences to their physical safety."

The matter would not die down and last year, because of the threat,
the U.S. government's Inter-American Foundation cut off aid to the
tribal council after giving it more than $500,000 in recent years.

Miller asserted Tuesday that he has been a victim of misdirected

anger. He said that he had not stolen the plant; it had been given to
him from the garden of a tribe that he wouldn't identify. He also said
that tests had found no valuable properties in the plant and that he
has no plan to use the patent.

"If they say the patent is no good, I don't care. This is so
ridiculous. ... I've never sold anything," he said.

Nonetheless, the tribal leaders say they have been violated. And they
worry, they said, that the plant could be misused and cause harm. They
likened it to coca, another South American cultural staple and the
plant from which cocaine is derived.

David Downes, a lawyer in Washington representing the group, contended
that Miller's patent is flawed and therefore should be revoked. The
patent was awarded after Miller reported finding a new variety with
flowers differently colored. William Anderson, a University of
Michigan botanist supporting the challenge, said he had concluded that
no new variety had been discovered.

Downes noted that several patents issued in the United States have
infuriated people around the world. For instance, patents were awarded
to companies on turmeric, a spice, and for basmati rice, both staples
in India.

"When people claim as private property something that is sacred
knowledge of thousands of people, we fear that patents have gone too
far into the public domain," Downes said.