University of Colorado
University of Mississippi
National Institutes of Health (NIH) and New York University
New York Botanical Gardens (Special Endorsement: "The 'Will' Clinton Procrastination Trophy")
Sally Fox (Special Endorsement: "The In Your Face Certificate.")
Pfizer Pharmaceuticals (Special Endorsement: "The Walker Certificate.")
Shaman Pharmaceuticals (Special Endorsement: "The Forked Tongue Platter.")
University of Toledo (Special Endorsement: "Marie Antoinette Napkin Ring.")
University of Wisconsin (Special Endorsement: "The Ostrich Cup.")

University of Colorado
For appropriating indigenous knowledge and genetic resources by patenting a traditional variety of quinoa (Chenopodium quinoa). Quinoa is a high protein "pseudocereal" crop from the Andes important for the food security of millions of Andean indigenous people. The University of Colorado´s patent (U.S. # 5,304,718) is on the male sterile plants of the traditional Bolivian "Apelawa" quinoa variety and the variety's use in creating hybrid seed.
The University is trying to sell rights to its patent for use in the expanding U.S. and European markets for quinoa. According to Frieda's, a U.S. food wholesaler that began to sell quinoa in its "Lost Crops" product line last year, "The Incas thought QUINOA was sacred and called it 'the mother grain'. QUINOA was the main source of high quality protein and believed to be the reason why Inca warriors were so powerful... archeobotanists have sifted through the debris of ancient villages, and 8 or 9 millennia ago in the Lake Titicaca region, Indians started transforming QUINOA from a wild plant to a cultivated grain crop."
But quinoa was never "lost" at all. Andean indigenous peoples continue to develop, utilize, and conserve quinoa while the North uses intellectual property systems to steal varieties like Apelawa.
Quinoa has a bitter seed coat that is believed to contribute to the plant´s insect resistance. But researcher in the U.S. are also trying to develop varieties without the bitter seed coat, giving rise to fears that their new varieties of quinoa will require expensive pesticides.

University of Mississippi
For patenting the use of the Indian medicinal (and food) plant tumeric. In US patent 5,401,504, two University of Mississippi scientists patented what Indians have known for ages ­ that if tumeric based formulations are applied to wounds, they will heal faster. "Another blatent example of biopiracy," says Vandana Shiva. Tumeric is known as "haldi" in India where it is one of many preparations used in the Ayurveda medical system.
Tumeric (Curcuma longa) is the dried root of a plant similar in size and related to ginger. India is the world's leading producer of tumeric, although it is also grown commercially in Peru, Haiti and Jamaica.
India's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research has announced that it will challenge the patent.

National Institutes of Health and New York University
For patenting four botanical traditional medicine remedies and their use in HIV and tumor therapy. NIH is now trying to sell the rights to its patents so they can be commercialized. NIH and New York University's patents include:
US patent no. 5,484,889 which claims a protein purified from bitter melon (Momordica charantia) fruit or seed, and its synthesis in a lab. Bitter melon fruit has been used in China and southeast Asia for centuries as an anti-infection and anti-tumor agent, and also as an immunomodulator, according to New York University (NYU). Sylvia Lee-Huang, a NUY biologist and the first "inventor" listed on the patent, remarks candidly that bitter melon is "very widely eaten in the Chinese community for health reasons." Even the fruit's anti-HIV properties were widely known before NIH and NYU patented it: HIV positive patients in the United States eat bitter melon extract as an anti-HIV therapy. In Los Angeles there's even a "Bitter Melon Therapy Group."
Another botanical remedy patented by NIH and NYU is Trichosanthes kirilowii. According to Lee-Huang it "has been used in China for many, many years... and is well known for its therapeutic effect in ovarian cancer and trophoblastic tumor, as well as against viral infection..." In Chinese, its common name means "the powder from the flower from the Gods." It may be from the Gods, but the patent grants NIH and NYU exclusive monopoly on a protein purified from the plant's root tuber, or its production in a lab.
US patent no. 5,317,009 covers extract from both Dianthus caryophyllus and Gelonium multiflorum, natural and synthesized. Dianthus caryophyllusis is commonly known as the carnation. According to Lee-Huang, Indigenous Peoples in North America have long used the leaves of Dianthus as a treatment for cuts or infections. Gelonium multiflorum originates in the Himalayan mountains, where it's known as the "heavenly fruit."
"So now we don't have to try so hard to go to the Himalayas to get the seeds, or to China to get the bitter melons," Lee-Huang told a biotech industry magazine. "We can use recombinant technology to produce them in our labs in large amounts. And our recombinant proteins are as active as the natural protein."

New York Botanical Garden
For pilfering samples of the South's biodiversity from Northern botantical gardens on behalf of the drug industry. Working as a proxy for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and the U.S. National Cancer Institute, NYBG is presumptuously positioning itself to be a major broker of the South's biodiversity. NYBG's employees piously point out the "critical importance" of "intellectual property rights, access rights [and] reciprocity issues"; but then conveniently ignores these issues by trying to ferry thousands of tropical plants from Northern botanical gardens to the pharmaceutical industry. NYBG's botanical gardens deals mock the Convention on Biological Diversity by containing nary a whisper about the rights the garden publicly holds to be so important.

Sally Fox
For pirating coloured cotton varieties developed and nurtured by indigenous peoples in the Americas.In the late 1980s, Sally Fox scooped up two Plant Variety Protection Certificates in the United States for coloured cottons she freely admits were the genius of "the ancient peoples of the Americas." Fox, at that time an entomology student at UC-Riverside in California, came across coloured cotton strains in Central America. Recognizing the market potential for naturally coloured jean fabrics, Fox collected additional strains from South America and set about making them suitable for commercial spinning. Fox now has contracts with major American manufacturers for her environmentally friendly, if stolen cottons.

Pfizer Pharmaceuticals
For Pfizer's insatiable hunger for the genetic resources of the South. Pfizer is "prospecting" on at least three continents. As one example, in China Pfizer is relying exclusively on traditional medical practices to identify potential pharmaceuticals, hoping in the process to appropriate thousands of years of innovation by the Chinese people.

Shaman Pharmaceuticals
For brazenly dredging the public domain for "patentable" information about indigenous peoples' medicinal plants. Not content to merely patent a South American plant with widely known medicinal properties (Sangre de Drago), Shaman has embarked upon an intensive study of ethnobotanical leads in published articles and papers with hopes of "discovering" yet more "patentable" materials.

University of Toledo
For blatent theft of generations of research by Ethiopian scientists.
In 1990 Ethiopian scientist Aklilu Lemma was offered an honorary doctoral degree from the University of Toledo for his development of the Ethiopian endod plant ("soapberry") as a possible cure for schistosomiasis. While in Ohio, Lemma demonstrated that the endod plant would also destroy the zebra mussels which cause US $5 billion damage each year to the Great Lakes. Four months later, the University of Toledo applied for a patent in its own name. Ethiopian research on endod began centuries ago when mothers found that endod protected their children playing in the water. Ethiopian scientists devoted 19 years to testing endod before Toledo's patent was granted.

University of Wisconsin
For the patenting of a natural sweetener from Gaban.
Stumbling around West Africa researching primate behaviour, Wisconsin scientist noticed that people in Gaban enjoyed eating berries from the Pentadiplandra brazzeana, known locally as "J'oublie" or "I forget." Guided by "scientific intuition" that "there was something of value there," Hellenke returned to Wisconsin, identified the source of the sweetness and patented it. The University of Wisconsin has expressed confidence that, by licensing the patent to the private sector, heat stable brazzeana can make inroads in the US$100 billion a year sweetener market. As for the debt to the people of Gabon: their contribution has been conveniently forgotten.

To suggest other potential nominees, please contact:
The Coalition Against Biopiracy
c/o The Indigenous Peoples' Biodiversity Network
304-200 Isabella St, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada K1S 1V7
Tel: (613) 237 5361; Fax: (613) 237 1547
E-mail: ipbn@web.apc.org