Traditional Medical Knowledge

During the 1990s and early years of the 2000s, the tree commonly known as neem became a powerful symbol of traditional knowledge, which was contrasted with “biopiracy,” a term coined by activists to describe the appropriation of natural resources and associated knowledge from the Global South. This resulted from high profile campaigns to rescind two patents held by an American chemical company, W. R. Grace, on neem derivatives for use in biopesticides. Activists and the media highlighted neem’s uses in India, representing Grace’s patents as the corporate plunder
of traditional knowledge. This article historicizes the controversy and considers how plant histories relate to intellectual property (IP) debates. The neem case popularized the concept of “biopiracy,” but claims about neem were used in different and even conflicting ways. While activists critiqued the expansion of IP rights to include patents on living things, the case was used by some in India to justify neem-related patents and to extend state jurisdiction over traditional knowledge. The activism of the 1990s also influenced historical work, inspiring studies of colonial appropriations
of natural knowledge. Many such works focus on cinchona, the source of quinine. Neem and cinchona have intertwined histories with different endpoints. As cinchona became “modern” and “global,” neem was increasingly viewed as “local” and “traditional,” even while spreading across warmer parts of the world and becoming the object of scientific study.While cinchona is often used to epitomize colonial appropriations of indigenous knowledge, neem represents a different story in which appropriation was partial and the tree was reclaimed as “traditional” in new contexts.

The rise of nationalism in colonial India played a pivotal role in the revitalization of Ayurveda, an ancient indigenous medicinal system. This article explores the historical evolution of Ayurveda from the Vedic period, its interactions with Western medicine during colonial rule, and the role of Orientalist scholars in bringing indigenous medical knowledge into the limelight. The nationalist movement, particularly the Swadeshi movement, emphasized self-reliance and cultural heritage, leading to a renewed interest in Ayurveda as a symbol of Indian identity. Print media and nationalist leaders actively championed its revival, advocating for its modernization and integration into mainstream healthcare. Institutions such as the All India Ayurvedic Congress and Arya Samaj played key roles in standardizing and promoting Ayurveda. The study concludes that Ayurveda's resurgence was not just a medical phenomenon but also a cultural and political response to colonial hegemony, reflecting the broader struggle for national self-determination.

The Preamble of the 2003 Convention for the Safeguarding of the Intangible Cultural Heritage (CSICH) recognizes the connection between indigenous peoples and intangible cultural heritage. The convention indicates that part of its mission is to protect the intangible cultural heritage of indigenous peoples against the processes of globalization and social transformation. The convention, however, has been critiqued for the manner in which it attempts to manage intangible cultural heritage, with critics charging that the convention fosters a power structure that favors states and thereby threatens to marginalize indigenous peoples from control over their own cultures. Such criticism raises a question as to what changes should be made to rectify the power inequalities of the CSICH to aid indigenous peoples. This Article responds to this question, and follows the convention's critiques by using the theories of Michel Foucault to evaluate the power structure created by the CSICH and identify what types of changes to the convention would benefit indigenous peoples.

Focusing on First Nations traditional medicine, we investigated whether traditional knowledge of medicinal plants can be validated by modern scientific methods of molecular and cellular pharmacology and whether this information is of value for improving current therapy options. Based on two projects on medicinal plants of the Gwich'in-a First Nations group on the Canadian North West Coast-we found that extracts from several plants traditionally used medically were able to kill tumor cells, including otherwise multidrug-resistant cells. Investigating medicinal plants from Indigenous communities raises questions about ownership, appropriation, and commercial use. At the same time, because of the intricacies of patent law, publishing scientific investigations on medicinal herbs represents an effective way to prevent biopiracy. Therefore, research cooperation between industrialized and developing countries, and between Western and non-Western knowledge systems will facilitate ethically sound ethnopharmacological research and merge a diversity of competencies and knowledges.

The law of patent in India prescribes three essential conditions i.e. novelty, non obviousness and usefulness for patentability of an invention. The Patent law of India has been criticized as it is considered to have helped in the misappropriation of traditional knowledge of India. The essential requirements for getting an invention patented under Indian Law are being used for piracy of traditional knowledge. The present paper is an attempt to analyse the essentials of patent law and why traditional knowledge could not be patented and also what efforts are being made to protect and preserve the traditional knowledge of India.

This study explores the transformative impact of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL) in safeguarding India's Traditional Tribal Knowledge (TTK). Focusing on bridging traditional wisdom and modern innovation, TKDL serves as a vital repository, meticulously documenting indigenous practices and protecting them from cultural erosion and biopiracy. By integrating digital technologies, TKDL prevents unauthorized patenting, ensuring the preservation of traditional medicinal knowledge. Despite challenges in navigating intellectual property rights and ethical considerations, TKDL emerges as a pioneering solution, fostering sustainable development and global recognition of India's cultural heritage. The research highlights TKDL's collaborative efforts with communities, researchers, and policymakers, underscoring its unique position in traditional knowledge preservation. In conclusion, TKDL stands as a testament to India's commitment, preserving its heritage and ensuring the legacy of traditional wisdom for future generations.

The confluence of multiple branches of history in recent times, mainly owing to a revival of interest in histories of science and environmental history, has revealed the presence of a network of knowledge, which has been in existence from the Renaissance and in some fields even prior to it. Interwoven into the global web of knowledge transfers are the histories of botanical science and medical systems, which this article intends to analyse in the context of the Indo-Portuguese-Dutch engagements on the south-western coast of India. The Malabar Coast, in particular, plays a unique role in the history of Indian Ocean trade and it offers a fertile arena to investigate the multi-layered interplay between diverse knowledge systems both at a global and local level. The encounters between the European and the local knowledge systems occured more in terms of social-cultural exchange and the production of hybrid systems of knowledge rather that of cultural conflict. An in-depth analysis of Ga...

The term ‘Traditional Knowledge’ (TK), also used reciprocally with indigenous knowledge, is used to describe any indigenous knowledge, innovation, or custom, tradition of local communities that is important in protection, conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and various traditions. TK is vital to the food security and health of millions of people and is developed and passed on from generation to generation in the form of accounts, songs, cultural values, local languages, customs and customary practices, healing arts, and agricultural practices, for the collective good of the communities. It closely interlinks cultural and biological diversity, forming an essential basis for the conservation and sustainable use of global biodiversity. Also within the framework of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), the contracting States have undertaken to respect and promote TK and to make it locally accessible. This paper entails information related to various initiatives, pro...

In recent years an increasing number of state-based heritage protection schemes have asserted ownership over traditional medical knowledge (TMK) through various forms of cultural documentation such as archives, databases, texts, and inventories. Drawing on a close reading of cultural disputes over a single system of TMK-the classical South Asian medical tradition of Ayurveda-the paper traces some of the problems, ambiguities, and paradoxes of making heritage legible. The focus is on three recent state practices by the Indian government to protect Ayurvedic knowledge, each revolving around the production of a different cultural object: the translation of a seventeenth-century Dutch botanical text; the creation of an electronic database known as the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL); and the discovery of an Ayurvedic drug as part of a bioprospecting benefit-sharing scheme. Examined together, they demonstrate that neither TMK, nor Ayurveda, nor even the process of cultural documentation can be treated as monoliths in heritage practice. They also reveal some complexities of heritage protection on the ground and the unintended consequences that policy imperatives and legibility set into motion. As the paper shows, state-based heritage protection schemes inspire surprising counterresponses by indigenous groups that challenge important assumptions about the ownership of TMK, such as locality, community, commensurability, and representation. If recent years have seen the rise in heritage advocacy and assertions of ownership over all forms of knowledge, nowhere is this more evident, or cacophonous, than in the realm of TMK. From bioprospecting for natural drugs to patents on tradi

The emergence of cultural and political nationalism in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century India along with the racial discrimination and imperialist motifs inherent in Western medicine triggered medical revivalist/reformist movement around the same time. At the forefront of this medical revivalist movement was the organized efforts to make Ayurveda as a ‘true’ representative of ‘time-tested’ ‘authentic’ ‘indigenous’ healing culture of India thereby posing it as the ‘rightful’ claimant of the ‘national healing system’. Nevertheless, this late colonial Ayurvedic movement was fraught with caste, class, community and gender oriented biases and predilections. The purpose of the present paper is to bring out the caste and class dimensions of late colonial Ayurvedic movement that unfolded in the Hindi heartland particularly the United Provinces (present day Uttar Pradesh).

Traditional knowledge (TK) is integral to the identity of most local indigenous communities all over the world. It is an essential constituent of a community's social and physical environment and, therefore, its preservation is of vital importance. Attempts to exploit TK for industrial or commercial benefit can lead to its misappropriation and can prejudice the interests of its rightful owners and custodians. As the relevance and economic import of intellectual property has increased manifold, the threat to the traditional medicinal knowledge, especially those belonging to the indigenous communities of the developing and underdeveloped nations of the world has amplified tremendously. India has a very rich and diverse knowledge in ancient Traditional medicines, however, this valuable asset is under threat from many parts of the world. It is alarming to watch widespread misappropriation of traditional knowledge through patent filings by third parties without the prior informed consent of TK holders and few, if any, of the derived benefits are shared with the communities in which this knowledge originated, developed and preserved. These issues have placed TK to the forefront of the international agenda, triggering debates about the ways to preserve, protect, further develop and use TK in medicines. India has been a pioneer in this field by documenting and digitizing TK-related information in the form of TKDL. This paper analyses the relevance and effectiveness of the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TDKL) as a defensive protection mechanism in safeguarding India's rich and varied heritage in traditional medicines.

My paper intitled "Health care as intangible heritage" in Traditional Medicine. Sharing experiences from the Field, directed by Eivind Falk and gathering the contributions of 22 authors. It was published in 2017 and launched at the 12th session of the Intergovernmental Committee for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage, Jeju Island, Republic of Korea, 4-9 December 2017.

This article studies the traditional midwives living and working in Santana, the second largest city of Amapá state, Brazil. We present and discuss the midwives' worldviews, highlighting how the obligations associated with non-compulsory debts in the cycles of giving, receiving and returning are not limited to the relationship between the patient's family and the midwife. According to local conceptions, the most important relations of obligation associated with the dom for the craft are those established between humans and God. The counter-gift is accomplished through patient care, but as a form of obligation towards God. Assisting the women who seek out the help of the midwives is thus understood as the adequate means of settling the debt with the divine entity.

Medicinal plant formulations have been used in traditional medicines for thousands of years. Plant-based medicine is still a major source of new drug leads and herbal treatments are highly lucrative in the international marketplace. The intellectual property issues for medicinal plant formulas are complicated for numerous reasons. Many of the patents are attempting to emulate the pharmaceutical model of composition patents that as we will discuss, is usually not an appropriate approach for medicinal plants. This paper does not seek to be an exhaustive review but rather provide an overview of the many aspects of medicinal plant patents, a topic of considerable future growth. Our experience has been that the merging of modern and traditional knowledge leads to unexpected correlations, elucidations and insights with tremendous potential for patentable discovery. A continuation of the dialogue on indigenous intellectual property rights will benefit from the inclusion of an increased diversity of voices that have the ability to recognize the mutual and often complementary abilities of traditional and modern sciences. The question is not how to simplify the complexity but rather how to embrace the complexity from the traditional medicine worldview with the tools of science.

This article examines the debate over the exclusion of indigenous or local knowledge forms from the global intellectual property system, and some of the current attempts to solve this problem. Using the lens of cultural cosmopolitanism, the article highlights important trends in the dialectics of developing countries' engagement with intellectual property and other collateral knowledge protection systems. The three sites at which this significant development is unfolding are: (1) the digitization of traditional medical knowledge through India's traditional knowledge digital library (TKDL) project; (2) a recent attempt at incorporating innovations in Chinese Herbal Medicine (CHM) in Taiwanese patent law; and (3) efforts to enshrine disclosure of origin requirements (DRs) in patent applications, and developments around geo-graphical indications (GIs).

Ethnographic inquiry into Ayurvedic commodification in Kerala revealed the prevalence of a distinct regional pharmaceutical market dominated by physician-manufacturers, oriented towards supplying classical medicines to Ayurvedic doctors. This stands in sharp contrast to mainstream Ayurveda that is observed to have undergone biomedicalization and pharmaceuticalization. This paper argues that Kerala's classical-medicine-centric pharmaceutical market constitutes an alternative modernity because it provided Kerala Ayurveda with a different route to modernization impervious to the biomedical regime, as well as endowing it with the institutional power to safeguard its regional identity. Although physician-entrepreneurs are its key architects, it is sustained by value regimes shaped by a unique regional medico-cultural milieu. Even when industrially produced, classical medicines remain embedded within Ayurveda's socio-technical network; unlike proprietary drugs sold as individual product-identities through non-Ayurvedic channels, they travel together as a pharmacopeia, distributed through exclusive doctor-mediated agencies. This clinic-centric distribution format is best conceptualized as an opensource business model as it made low-margin generics viable by packaging them with therapies and services. Besides ensuring better access and affordability, it provided resistance to pharmaceuticalization and intellectual property concentration. By keeping the doctor in the loop, it prevented medicines from degenerating into de-contextualized commodities; the service component of Ayurveda therein preserved went on become the unique selling point in the health-tourism market. The tourism-inspired proliferation of Brand Kerala eventually triggered a paradigm shift in mainstream Ayurveda shifting focus from 'pharmaceuticals' to 'services' and from 'illness' to 'wellness'. Furthermore, interacting with hybrid Ayurvedas in transnational markets, Kerala Ayurveda co-produces new alterities countervailing the structurally dominant biomedical paradigm.

Biopiracy is a politicized term for the appropriation of biological resources and knowledge of those resources for purposes that do not meet the approval or have the consent of groups or individuals who have some prior claim to the resources or knowledge. In some cases, this appropriation refers to extraction and use only, but the term is also applied to patenting without equitable sharing of benefits. This entry discusses the origins of the term biopiracy, the roles of researchers, examples of biopiracy cases, and the relationship of biopiracy to international policy.

Traditional healing methods of the indigenous groups have always been looked upon with skepticism by the society in general, due to the obvious scientific logic of medicinal cure that is defied through these methods, purely based on holistic, intuitive & natural ways of recovery. The indigenous ways of treatment focus on integrated healing of all three physical, emotional & spiritual well being of their member and since it is an community driven practice the whole group becomes a part of the healing ritual. The attempts by western pharmaceutical companies to introduce their ways of modern medicine amongst the tribe does not only cause forced extinction of health related sociocultural customs passed on through generations but also in a subtle way creates a divide & rule policy through traditional medicine vs. modern medicine.

With changes in our genetic structures, environmental factors & social settings, many new diseases are coming up, especially in the urban atmosphere, encouraging people to look for alternatives with permanent or prolonged healing. As a result even the institutionalized western medical practitioners & pharmaceutical industries are making attempts to acquire the indigenous healing knowledge. Their aim is not always to create a cross-cultural interface but to capitalize on it through application of unfair patents to the genetic resources & traditional knowledge, also known as Bio-Piracy. Intellectual Property Rights protecting this aspect of Indigenous Knowledge System is not very effective due to India still being a dominion state. The elements that are used to make various medicines in the laboratory are easily available in the natural habitat of the indigenous, making their knowledge more vulnerable to misappropriation.  This results in gradual Acculturation through exploitation of indigenous healing methods by the way of Modern Colonialism that accumulates raw material from these groups at a low price, sometimes by force, for their own globalized benefits and gives neither fair compensation nor recognition to the indigenous groups.

This paper elaborates on the points mentioned above using theoretical references from the in depth study conducted by various researchers in all related fields and by the means of fieldwork done via Participant Observation amongst the Gonds of Bastar and interviews of its traditional healers & other members.

The purpose of paper is to describe the importance of traditional knowledge in the field of medicine. It examines the gaps between traditional medicine areas and existing modern patent law. It discusses the problem of bio-piracy of Indian traditional medicines and therapies and evaluates the role of Traditional Knowledge Digital Library in protection and preservation. Paper outlines the theoretical aspect of knowledge preservation, especially with reference to the protection from bio-piracy. It reviews the role of Traditional Knowledge Digital Library in the protection of Indian traditional medicine system. The TKDL codified traditional Indian knowledge in the field of medicine, and make them available in international languages. It has a rich database for the help of researchers and medical professionals. The traditional knowledge recorded in TKDL becomes public domain knowledge and it cannot consider as patentable. Paper discusses the theoretical and conceptual understanding of traditional knowledge.

This article documents the practices of pharmaceutical creativity in Ayurveda, focusing in particular on how practitioners appropriate multiple sources to innovate medical knowledge. Drawing on research in linguistic anthropology on the social circulation of discourse-a process called entextualization-I describe how the ways in which Ayurveda practitioners innovate medical knowledge confounds the dichotomous logic of intellectual property (IP) rights discourse, which opposes traditional collective knowledge and modern individual innovation. While it is clear that these categories do not comprehend the complex nature of creativity in Ayurveda, I also use the concept of entextualization to describe how recent historical shifts in the circulation of discourse have caused a partial entailment of this opposition between the individual and the collectivity. Ultimately, I argue that the method exemplified in this article of tracking the social circulation of medical discourse highlights both the empirical complexity of so-called traditional creativity, and the politics of imposing the categories of IP rights discourse upon that creativity, situated as it often is, at the margins of the global economy.

Hortus Malabaricus, is the first printed book on the plants of Malabar (Kerala). It is a 12-volume treatise written in Latin, the 1st volume of which was published in 1678 and the 12 th in 1693. About 742 important plants naturally occurring in Malabar, of which over 650 are of medicinal value, are described in it, along with details of the diseases to treat which they are used and the methods of preparation and application ofthe medicines. The current relevance ofthe book is also explained.

Perhaps the greatest among many strengths of Jean Langford's Fluent Bodies is that it is so good to think with. Through a deft combination of historical and ethnographic research and brilliant reporting, Fluent Bodies dives deeply into a devolving complex of health practices that collectively use the name Ayurveda as a label.

Ayurveda, the classical South Asian medical tradition, was first introduced to American audiences in the mid-1980s as a holistic alternative to biomedical orthodoxy. This article argues that transplanted Ayurveda is shaped not only by aspects of American medical culture, but by millennial, heterodox elements of American religious culture, such as the loose cluster of beliefs and practices known as the New Age. Because New Age Ayurvedic practices occupy the ideological and statutory middle ground between medicine and metaphysics, they face a unique professionalizing dilemma: whether to present themselves as
healing religions or as practicing branches of medicine.

Drawing on an ethnographic study of this professionalizing dilemma in legal, clinical and popular arenas, this article shows that New Age Ayurveda--far from being a monolith--reveals a wide-ranging plurality of sub-traditions in practice. Taken together, they suggest multiple modes of reinvention and a variety of professionalizing routes that Ayurveda follows other than licensing and institutional credentialization.

"In recent years an increasing number of state-based heritage protection schemes have asserted ownership over traditional medical knowledge (TMK) through various forms of cultural documentation such as archives, databases, texts, and inventories. Drawing on a close reading of cultural disputes over a single system of TMK—the classical South Asian medical tradition of Ayurveda—the paper traces some of the problems, ambiguities, and paradoxes of making heritage legible. The focus is on three recent state practices by the Indian government to protect Ayurvedic knowledge, each revolving around the production of a different cultural object: the translation of a seventeenth-century Dutch botanical text; the creation of an electronic database known as the Traditional Knowledge Digital Library (TKDL); and the discovery of an Ayurvedic drug as part of a bioprospecting benefit-sharing scheme.

Examined together, they demonstrate that neither TMK, nor Ayurveda, nor even the process of cultural documentation can be treated as monoliths in heritage practice. They also reveal some complexities of heritage protection on the ground and the unintended consequences that policy imperatives and legibility set into motion. As the paper shows, state-based heritage protection schemes inspire surprising counterresponses by indigenous groups that challenge important assumptions about the ownership of TMK, such as locality, community, commensurability, and representation."

The project involves a critical analytical investigation of the domestic and international legal regimes available for recognizing, valuing, preserving, and compensating for the genetic resources held by indigenous peoples in the form of biological and human genetic diversity and indigenous knowledge, an exploration of available forms of domestic law reform given conflicting international norms, and the availability of alternative normative resources for governing emerging transnational relationships. It seeks to map the networks of activity and communication that constitute a new social movement of indigenous peoples and NGOs who are developing new norms and protocols for access and consent, as well as novel forms of compensation with respect to genetic resources. It is part of a larger project that will develop an interdisciplinary collaborative network of researchers in law, anthropology, and the life and environmental sciences to establish a database for comparative studies that will inform future deliberations and relationships in the fields of biotechnology, biological diversity, and genetic research.