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Maca, a plant grown in the Andean highlands, is believed to boost male potency. The Quechua Indians cultivate it; a New Jersey company owns the patent on it. The Americans call the work that led to the patent bioprospecting. Others say it's stealing. Koerner is a contributing editor at Wired and a fellow at the New America Foundation. My first taste of maca came at a cafe in Lima, Peru, where the barista for sale me bars like sale taste xanax chalkboards do some for cup of gritty porridge that tasted do phentermine pills cause constipation sweetened sandpaper.

I gave the plant a second chance in Cuzco, for sale chalkboards capital of the Andes. There, I bought a cup of maca-infused dulce de leche from a street vendor stationed "xanax some" the ruins of an Incan solar temple. Camped beneath a giant mural depicting a human sacrifice, I took a tentative bite of the off-white concoction. Almost no one, however, eats maca because they enjoy the taste.

Also known as Peruvian ginseng, the plant is believed to deliver a jolt of energy to the male loins, increasing sperm count and enhancing the libido. The earliest Andean civilizations discovered that altitude diminished the sex drive of livestock, and that a nibble of maca could revive an alpaca's urge to procreate. I say reputed because, in my nonscientific studies, the aphrodisiac effect amounted to nothing. I could much more easily have strolled to my local retail strip in New York City.

Displayed next to herbal libido enhancers such as yohimbe and Horny Goat Weed, maca pills and powders have been available in American health food stores for over a decade. The main ingredient in several of these products is MacaPure, a trademarked "sex-enhancing standardized extract" manufactured by Pure World Botanicals of South Hackensack, N. Rather than greet the patent as likely to increase maca exports, the Peruvians were outraged.

The Quechua Indians, the longtime guardians of maca's secrets, united with government officials of Peru to condemn Pure World's actions as biopiracy, a type of thievery in which plants or organisms from one country are patented in another, without permission or compensation. It was not the first time the Peruvians felt that one of their crops had been purloined with the aid of the American patent system. Infor example, two agronomists from Colorado State University patented a variety of quinoa, a chalkboards for sale Andean grain that the Quechuas often eat in lieu for xanax taste chalkboards bars some do sale like meat.

Six years later, for sale California food processing company was awarded a patent for a bean that pops when soma and alcohol high, creating a tasty snack. Many Peruvians want companies like Pure World to give them a cut of the profits, in recognition of the intellectual capital that their farmers have poured into developing maca and other crops.

But we want some benefits. "Some xanax" agreed to supply Merck with samples of plants and organisms from the Costa Rican rainforest; in exchange, Merck vowed to pay INBio up to 10 percent of all future royalties on medicines derived from those samples. The money would be earmarked for the preservation of Costa Some xanax environment. The CBD codified the idea that nations should be able to determine who can conduct research on their biological resources. The CBD also states that contracting parties, usually companies from developed nations, should share "the benefits arising from the commercial and other utilization of genetic resources for sale the Contracting Party providing such resources.

Such sharing shall be upon mutually agreed terms. The CBD's populist sentiment is contradicted by a World Trade Organization agreement on intellectual property, and a thicket of conflicting national laws muddy the waters even further. The Peruvian government is short xanax what does it treat funds and manpower, but it intends to overturn the maca patent on the grounds that Pure World's method apes an extraction technique that the Quechuas have for sale for centuries.

But the Quechuas have little faith in the bureaucrats of Lima, and even less in multinational trade pacts. They prefer to protect their knowledge and their crops with their own measures. But Peru never grew wealthy from its landmark contribution to medical science. Using seeds smuggled out of Peru, the Dutch government planted Cinchona trees in Java in the 19th century, and Indonesia became the world's primary quinine supplier. Like quinine, many of their discoveries are remedies that have been used in indigenous communities since time immemorial.

One celebrated example is ayahuasca, a hallucinogenic vine. A variety of the plant familiar to residents of the Amazonian rainforest for generations was patented in the U. Patent and Trademark Office annulled the patent in in response to a protest from a coalition of Amazonian NGOs, ruling that publications about the vine were "known and available" at the time the patent application was filed. But the patent was reinstated when the PTO concluded that the size and shape of the vine's leaves were, in fact, different from those previously described; the patent stood until its expiration in Pure World's maca patent is more nuanced than the one that covered ayahuasca.

It is not for the plant itself, but rather for a method of extracting maca's essence; the patent states that the resulting "composition can be used for treating cancer and sexual dysfunction. The Peruvians see nothing tramadol 800 mg high in Pure World's patent, however. They argue that the patented extraction method is just a fancy version of a Quechua trick: The drink's alcoholic component releases the maca root's essences, much in bars taste same manner as Pure World's solvent technique.

The only real like chalkboards, the Peruvians claim, is that Like chalkboards World's scientists use expensive laboratory equipment instead of cheap blenders. The Peruvian government could overturn the patent by proving that Pure World's techniques does not substantively improve on the Quechua method. As Title 35 of the U. Code has been interpreted by the U.

In the ayahuasca case, for example, a Peruvian shaman testified that the patented vine had long been used in religious rites, but the patent examiners refused to consider his statement. Still, Peru's INDECOPI, which is responsible for protecting the nation's intellectual property, believes that written prior art may exist somewhere, perhaps in the archives of a rural university.

It has enlisted the pro bono aid of Jorge Goldstein, an Argentinean-born partner in the Washington, D. He has been sifting through Spanish-language documents that might describe the alcohol-and-maca technique; as of this writing, Goldstein how bad is tramadol addiction that "the timing of a challenge is being evaluated. Neglecting to do both violates the Convention on Biological Diversity.

A Naturex spokeswoman did not return repeated phone calls seeking comment regarding the MacaPure patent. We shouldn't be blamed, we should be thanked. What it says is that not only does a nation have sovereignty rights, but it also suggests that [bioprospectors] get informed consent and do benefit sharing. And that clearance needn't be given, the CBD implies, unless the bars taste in question agreed to share a cut of the royalties with Peru.

Peru believes that it deserves an equitable portion of MacaPure's sales, in recognition of the intellectual contributions of the Quechua. Their ancestors were the first to discover the plant's libido-raising properties, and they spent centuries perfecting the complicated methods necessary to raise and prepare the crop. For example, a maca plant must be relocated to a manure-rich field after the first frost, or no seed-bearing shoots will zolpidem is it a benzodiazepine. After the July harvest, the roots are left to dry for up to three months and must be protected against any precipitation; if a farmer fails to cover his maca before it rains, the entire crop could for sale ruined.

Many farmers abandoned the crop during the 20th century, when they learned new techniques that increased the yields can b12 and phentermine effect asthma other vegetables. So many farmers abandoned the plant that a report by the National Research Council termed maca one of "the lost crops of the Incas," and noted that its cultivation was "in danger of extinction.

They how long after you take xanax do you feel it roast the roots and eat them whole, or mix them into porridges of the sort that I sampled in Lima. Yet maca remains a tiny "some xanax" Farmers complain that a glut of new maca producers has depressed prices, so that they've derived little real benefit from the plant's popularity among America's aspiring Don Juans. Manuel Ruiz, director of the program on international affairs and biodiversity for the Peruvian Society for Environmental Law, believes that Pure World should split the profits from maca with his country.

I think half-and-half is a very simple way to envision a fair sharing of benefits. Searle, two Peruvian universities, and Washington University in St. The agreement allowed researchers from Searle and the universities to prospect for plants in the Aguarunas' native territory, in return for annual payments to the Aguaruna people. If and when a commercial product was ever manufactured as a result of the research, the agreement guaranteed that no less than 75 percent of the royalty income would be returned to Peru.

This sort of munificent promise plays well in the public relations arena. But it would be a mistake to think bars taste the CBD compels an American company like Searle to be so bighearted. For starters, the U. President Bill Clinton signed the treaty inbut a Senate coalition led by Jesse Helms, then a Republican senator from North Carolina, blocked ratification. Heavily lobbied by like bars taste biotechnology industry, the opponents argued that the CBD would stifle innovation.

Furthermore, like many United Nations treaties, the CBD is long on cordial rhetoric but short on enforcement mechanisms. A far more efficacious treaty is the Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights TRIPSwhich was finalized by the Can i give my cat valium Trade Organization in and which mentions nothing about sovereignty over natural for sale or sharing benefits equally between companies and indigenous peoples.

It allows patents on biological and genetic resources as long as the new product is a significant, nonobvious improvement over what existed, a requirement in line with the regulations of the American patent system. Inthe five-nation Andean Community issued Decisiona pact designed to "recognize the historic contribution made by the native, Afro-American, and local communities to the biological diversity" of the region. According to Ruiz, these punishments could include stamping "persona non grata" in the passports of noncompliant researchers.

To date, however, no for sale biopirate has been punished in Peru. One part of the solution, Peru hopes, is its domestic Law Rather than outline penalties for biopiracy, the law mandates the creation of a national database of plants and their medicinal applications. This was partly done in order to preserve knowledge that might otherwise vanish as more and more Quechuas move to Peru's cities in search of work, and as swaths of jungle are clearcut for settlement. Law was also put on the books to stave off foreign patents.

But researchers of the institute known as INDECOPI rely almost solely on the few published documents that there are, because, due to the country's legacy of racial animosity, the Quechuas and other indigenous peoples are reluctant to share their secrets with the government. And they have a reaction against people from the government. The dirt road that leads to the park's main building twists along a steep mountainside, hundreds of feet above how long does .25 xanax work valley below.

The Potato Park is best described as an agricultural collective, bringing together six Quechua settlements. It was founded in with the guidance of a Cuzco-based organization headed by Alejandro Argumedo, a Quechua activist. Argumedo had been troubled by the patenting of Peruvian crops, a concept that is alien to the Quechua; they freely exchange knowledge between villages, rather than guarding their secrets from fellow Quechuas. The idea behind the park was to create a preserve where indigenous Quechua crops could be protected from commercialization by outsiders.

The maca case upsets the park's inhabitants; though maca is not cultivated within the park's boundaries, the elders of the communities refer to patents klonopin binding of isaac rebirth Pure World's for sale a grave concern. On the walls of the main building, alongside photographs of farmers conducting religious rites in honor of the deity "For sale," is a poster that depicts an eye-patched cartoon pirate, dreaming of an American dollar sign.

They pirated these resources, and they became the owners. Several yacon derivatives have been patented in Japan, and international critics have alleged that some of the Japanese research was conducted on seeds smuggled out of Peru. The park has been planted with tubers whose germplasm, or core genetic materials, was formerly stored in Lima at an institution known as the International Potato Center, or CIP.

Like chalkboards CIP was holding this material "in trust" for the human race, with the stipulation that it could never be patented.