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Pastimes : Laughter is the Best Medicine - Tell us a joke -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tomato who wrote (9151)	3/31/1999 4:11:00 PM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Respond to of 62549

What kind of Tomato are you? I hope you're at least ripe whatever kind you are. I'm guessing a roma because you're kind of saucy.

To: Tomato who wrote (9151)	3/31/1999 4:27:00 PM
From: SIer formerly known as Joe B.	Respond to of 62549

Sorry if my question was too personal. ========================================= Wednesday March 31 1:27 PM ET Amazon Tribes Fight Patent On Sacred Vine WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Amazon tribes asked the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Tuesday to revoke a patent granted to an American businessman on their most sacred plant, a vine that grows wild in the jungle. Shamans of the Amazon rain forest believe the vine called ayahuasca has medicinal properties and they use it to make a potent hallucinogenic brew for their religious rituals. ''Ayahuasca gives shamans the power to heal our sick, meet with spirits and divine the future,'' wrote native leader Antonio Jacanamijoy in a petition to cancel the patent granted in 1986 to Loren Miller. Jacanamijoy is an Inga from southern Colombia. ''Commercializing an ingredient of our religious and healing ceremonies is a profound affront to more than 400 cultures that populate the Amazon basin,'' said the request presented by two shamans from Ecuador and Colombia who wore headdresses of parrot feathers and necklaces of wild boar teeth. COICA, the umbrella organization of Amazon tribes that Jacanamijoy heads, has been protesting against the patent ever since a Canadian environmental organization discovered its existence in 1995. Miller, whose California-based International Plant Medicine Corp. looks at the pharmaceutical and cosmetic potential of plants, has not actually marketed any ayahuasca product based on the patent. Native rights and environmental lawyers said it was the first time any native group has sought to revoke the patent on a product based on its medicinal and ceremonial qualities. The case raises ethical and moral questions, they said, about intellectual property rights involving the traditional knowledge and materials of native cultures. ''This patent is utterly flawed and should be revoked,'' said David Downes, senior attorney at the Center for International Environmental Law. Canceling it would set a precedent that future patent applicants cannot simply take knowledge and materials of indigenous people and claim them as their own, Downes said. Plant Patent 7,751 issued to Miller in June 1986 claimed rights over a novel variety of the vine he named ''Da Vine.'' But a leading expert on this plant family, William Anderson, director of the University of Michigan Herbarium, said the features described in the patent were typical of the species. Ayahuasca is a word in Quechua, the language of the Incas, meaning ''vine of the dead'' or ''vine of the souls.''