Sunday, September 14, 2008
this past week, i attended a meeting on intellectual copyrights for purposes of trade agreements. i remember talking about how communities feel they are cheated during the process since they feel they have equally contributed in world development.poignant was a traditional doctor representing Batswana Tradional Doctors association who decried how people come to them looking for medicinal plants and yet at the end they do not share in the profits.The very same person whom you told this plant is used as this will turn around and tell you he discovered that same plant.
for the sake of clarity Mma Dimpho is a herbalist but not a traditional doctor. next time i will tell you how these guys differ.
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intellectual property righs the greatest theft of all our times especially when it comes to natural occuring and given resorces, should someone really profit from that which they have not created. there has been this theft of knowldge from developing countries and indegenous groups across the world by westerners who claim to be interested in our ways of life when infact they have a hidden-agenda to glorify themselves in front of their peers and western audiences. my advice to the traditonal herbalists in Botswana do not be fooled into revealing the secrets of our medicines without prior precaution. something needs to be done to protect this knowldge and if it leaves our shores it should be under some binding contract of some kind we need to wake up to the realities of advanced nations mentality as Africans.
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