Greater fairness needed in opening up Indigenous medical knowledge

Also in need of consideration is the question of whether traditional rights apply to plants and materials for which there is no record of use by Indigenous cultures but that occur in areas traditionally inhabited by them. Does the geographic range of species infer ownership although no use might have been made of the species?

An affirmative answer has the potential to open a can or worms worldwide and raises the question of just what is a native plant and for how long does a species have to have grown in an area before becoming 'native'. Are tamarind trees introduced hundreds of years ago into northern Australia by fishermen from Macassar, that have since gone wild ("naturalized") now native species? And could not the descendents of those fishermen claim them as traditional property if the geographical distribution argument for traditional rights is accepted? Then there are offshore resources retrieved from traditional fishing grounds but not used by Indigenous fishermen.

Secret knowledge at issue

At issue is how secret traditional "secret" knowledge should remain when people outside the culture stand to benefit from it. It can be argued that the greater good has precedence over the sectional or ethnic interests of a particular culture, that the practice of keeping secret the traditional knowledge of medicines is morally indefensible. The complexity of the issue begs the question of whether there is some arrangement through which all can benefit without particular Indigenous cultures being weakened.

There is also an argument for reciprocity. If Indigenous cultures in Australia and elsewhere share traditional medical and plant knowledge with scientists and pharmaceutical companies, then should not those people have access to modern medicines? This is potentially a hot political topic, as was demonstrated when African organisations and their Western supporters successfully argued for cheap access to expensive anti-HIV/ AIDS drugs despite initial resistance from pharmaceutical companies. If resistance to sharing traditional medical and plant knowledge is morally indefensible then so is the reticence of wealthy pharmaceutical companies in sharing their developments.

Will science avoid the argument?

The argument over access to traditional knowledge emerged in the 1980s when the potential for new medicines from nature become popular knowledge. Before that, it was the preserve of scientists and anthropologists.

But just as the issue is becoming topical, the science of genetic engineering could bypass it. Science's ability to insert particular genes into the DNA strand implies that they may no longer need access to an entire organism to extract bioactive genetic material, just to the part of it containing the desired genetic material. This would make the policing of bioprospecting difficult were state or national legislation be developed to cover the activity.

Needed - a pharmaceutical reconciliation

The gut reaction of Indigenous lobbies to the proposal for sharing their traditional medical knowledge would at best be guarded and at worst hostile. This is understandable given the economic exploitation of Indigenous cultures in the past, but to oppose sharing denies wider humanity the benefit of new medicines. It risks the Balkanisation of knowledge according to ethnic affiliation in much the same way that corporations protect their knowledge through patents. This should be borne in mind by non-Indigenous advocates of Aboriginal rights who may see secrecy as support for the Aboriginal cause but who may miss the bigger picture.

It may be easier for Western lobby groups to pressure pharmaceutical corporations to reach equitable arrangements with Indigenous interests than to wait for something coherent to emerge from the corridors of government. But, in the end, it falls to government to negotiate a fair basis for sharing traditional medical plant knowledge. But government is often out of its depth when deliberating on new areas of science. Maybe Canberra could use the Queensland proposal as the basis for developing national legislation that would end the treatment of Indigenous people's knowledge as a free input into business and that would result in the availability of new medicines for all.