The first paragraph said enough for me:

"Despite the huge advances in modern medicine, most people in the developing world still rely on traditional - and effective - knowledge to treat illness and disease."

If the traditional medicine was so effective at treatment, western medicine wouldn't be needed. No more needs saying or reading.

DKit

Traditional medicine is, for the most part, rubbish - by virtue of the readily observed fact that it does not work other than by inducing the readily predictable placebo effect. Most of the procedures and medication were derived by a laborious 'trial and error' methodology against a background of generally nonsensical religio/philosophical beliefs as well as utterly mistaken understandings of how the physical universe works. They may well have fluked a few things right - however it is noteworthy that leaders of countries with a strong traditional medicine strand - eg India, China - head for western style hospitals when they fall seriously ill

I think the author fails to understand the rationale behind allowing medicines to be patented. Patents are not rewards for virtue or even compensation or a property right in the usual sense of the term. They are necessary evils developed in order to encourage innovation - if drug companies did not have patents, they would have far less incentive to undertake R&D.

Hence the community is better off even if patents mean we pay more for a drug than the drug costs to produce, because without the patent the drug would probably not be available at all. And drug companies must recover from their sales not only the cost of producing their successful drugs but also the R&D costs of all their failed experiments – less than 0.1% of experiments leads to a commercially viable drug.

But, the incentive to innovate must be balanced against the community’s interest in accessing cheaper drugs. This is why patents are for a fixed period, not indefinite.

There is no such rationale with traditional medicines. The original inventor/innovator is not known, the knowledge of the therapy and its effects is widespread, and no-one loses out in any material sense when that knowledge is shared with others. It makes no more sense to patent traditional medicine than to patent other folk knowledge.

However, for the same reason, what the author describes as “biopiracy” should not be tolerated. Drug companies that do no more than capitalise on existing knowledge should not be able to privatise, monopolise or gain exclusive access to the traditional remedies they use.

Got to be money in it if you can manage to work the 'indigenous' label.

Just need to link it with 'rights' and 'exploitation' and KA-Chingggg, the guvvy cash registers spring open and the golden coins flow forevermore.

Still, if seed producers can claim rights to plants that resulted from hundreds of years of altruistic cooperation by farmers concerned about the nutritional needs of the community they served, I suppose that other entrepreneurs might take that lead and try to stake a claim on the medicinal properties of plants.

A significant portion of the in patients at hospitals in South Africa are victims of traditional medicine.

I would argue that protection from, rather than protection of, traditional medicine is required.

Traditional medicine is, for the most part, rubbish ,
Gym-Fish,
I wouldn't dismiss it it so easily. Did traditional medicine ever cause overpopulation ? Ending the western medical dominance would in fact benefit the whole planet. But hey ! Who am I to make statements, I'm not an educated person. It takes years of education to invent & develop means to increase the population beyond max capacity thus jeopardising the entire world.