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Indians' Genetic Material Sold on Internet |
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By Stephen Leahy and Mario Osava*
Genetic
material from members of the Karitiana and Suruí indigenous communities
in Brazil can be purchased for 85 dollars through the Internet.
The Brazilian government is demanding an end to what it says are
''illegal sales'' conducted by the U.S.-based Coriell Institute,
which holds the world's largest collection of human cell cultures.
RIO DE JANEIRO - The Brazilian government has
asked Interpol to intervene in what it says is the illegal sale
of genetic material from its indigenous peoples by a U.S. research
center.
Living cells from individual members of Karitiana and Suruí Indians,
as well as other South and Central American tribes, are available
for 85 dollars, purchased through the Internet from the Coriell
Cell Repositories, a division of Coriell Institute for Medical Research.
The cells are intended to be used for research purposes only, says
the independent, not-for-profit, biomedical research institute,
based in the northeastern U.S. city of Camden, New Jersey.
Mercio Pereira, president of Brazil's National Indigenous Peoples
Foundation (FUNAI), asked the federal police to investigate the
matter in October.
The Brazilian embassy in Washington is attempting to have the information
about the sale of the Indians' genetic material removed from the
Coriell website, said a spokesperson from the Foreign Relations
Ministry.
This is not the first time Brazil has protested such sales. In the
late 1990s Coriell made this same type of genetic material available
for sale. FUNAI threatened to suspend all biomedical research authorizations
with indigenous peoples, and native groups filed a formal complaint
about the practice.
Pat Mooney, of the non-governmental ETC Group (Action Group on Erosion,
Technology and Concentration), and other civil society organizations
oppose corporations patenting plants and animals, and other forms
of what they consider ''biopiracy''.
In this case, ''while DNA and genes from indigenous peoples are
not being patented, the information obtained from their genetic
material is being turned into patentable drugs,'' Mooney said in
an interview with Tierramérica.
The Coriell Repository has the world's largest collection of human
cell cultures, with nearly a million vials of cells. These cells
are obtained from blood or skin samples and can be kept alive indefinitely
at extremely low temperatures.
DNA obtained from the cells is used by medical researchers to investigate
potential medical treatments for cancer, Alzheimer's disease, diabetes,
Down syndrome, heart disease and others, according to the Coriell
website.
Since 1964, 120,000 cell samples and nearly 100,000 DNA samples
have been shipped to scientists in 55 countries. The sale of genetic
material for research is legal under United States law.
For the most part researchers at Coriell did not collect the original
blood and skin samples themselves. Instead these samples have been
"deposited" in the Coriell cell bank by other research centers and
individual scientists.
The core question is whether the samples from the Karitiana and
Suruí peoples were obtained with the full and informed consent of
the individuals and of the Brazilian government.
Another matter is whether there are guarantees in place to ensure
equitable distribution of the knowledge and profits generated from
the samples.
Coriell did not respond to several attempts by Tierramérica to seek
comment.
For more than a decade FUNAI has been aware that blood samples taken
from the Karitiana and Suruí have ended up in the hands of foreign
companies or institutions, even though the agency did not approve
any sample collection efforts, said FUNAI executive Raimundo José
Lopes, who filed the police investigation request.
Brazilian doctor Hilton Pereira da Silva was accused in federal
court in 2002 of collecting blood samples from Karitiana Indians
in 1996 without the proper authorization. He did so as part of a
film project and with the excuse that he took the samples to diagnose
illnesses, says Maria Cecilia Filipini, a lawyer with the Catholic
Indigenist Missionary Council in the Amazon state of Rondonia.
The lawsuit against the doctor, filed by the government, is moving
slowly because of difficulties in questioning Pereira da Silva,
who apparently now lives in the United States. Prosecutors discovered
that he had ties with the foreign pharmaceutical industry and suspect
that he illegally sold the Indians' genetic material.
''It would be strange'' for a doctor to head a team of filmmakers
and also carry equipment to collect blood samples, Filipini said
in a Tierramérica interview.
It is not known if Coriell is selling that blood, but officials
have recovered just 53 samples of a total believed to reach 160.
FUNAI has tried to impede the illegal collection of genetic material,
through tight control over access to indigenous territories by researchers.
''Brazilian researchers have complained about this,'' said Lopes.
Any research -- Brazilian or foreign -- in indigenous territories
must be approved by the National Council on Scientific and Technological
Development (of the Ministry of Science and Technology) and other
state institutions.
FUNAI is supposed to consult with indigenous groups before any research
begins and only if they agree does the work proceed, and remains
under the agency's supervision, says Claudio Romero, FUNAI coordinator
of studies and research.
Thanks to modern technology, 40-year-old blood samples from Brazil
and Venezuela's Yanomami peoples are still being traded between
researchers, as are samples from the Ticuna, an indigenous group
from Brazil's far west, collected in the mid-1970s, writes Bruce
Albert, research director of the Research Institute for Development,
which has offices in Sao Paulo and Paris.
The Ticuna cells have been incorporated into a major tool for immunology
research, and one the world's largest pharmaceutical corporations
has used them to delve into the genetics of the human immune system,
Albert notes in the journal ''Public Anthropology: Engaging Ideas
2001''.
Indigenous peoples "should be treated as fully-respected social
partners, not as natural 'populations' for gene mining,'' Albert
concludes.
* The authors are Tierramérica and IPS contributors.
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