Fair Trade and Intellectual Property Rights
We are adamant in support of indigenous land rights, intellectual properties, and jungle preservation. In this website, you will find traditional formulas which we have registered as proprietary intellectual property on behalf of native communities within the Amazon Basin. Together, we maintain US trademarks as a trust of goodwill for indigenous groups whom we support and work with. In South America, we are working with indigenous societies and universities to develop an ethical protocol for companies who wish to promote fair trade and establish a reasonable concourse for royalties. To begin this process, we have recently established an institution in concert with indigenous groups which returns a portion of each sale to support indigenous land rights, medicinal herb development, and jungle preservation.
Materia Primal Extra Fine Raw Material
Our raw materials are derived from organically certified farms or wildcrafted under our ‘Sustainable Harvest’ rn label. In many regions of the Amazon and Andes, we continue to work with indigenous groups who cultivate endemic medicines in their original, native habitat. In South America, many of our staff botanists are leading taxonomic botanists. They maintain collections of plant vouchers, chemical analysis, botanical specimens and a database which are unparalleled in North America. Today, our network of growers and wildcrafters supply the freshest and finest medicinal plants in the industry.
Cultivation techiniques for a sustainable yileld
Proper Preservation Techniques
We work with small lots that are vitality fresh and harvested by master herbalists to impart the strongest therapeutic benefits. Our team members have knowledge of climates, soils, and appropriate harvesting and preservation techniques.
Ethics and Efficacy
When a new chemical is identified in nature, some laboratories seek ways to synthesize the drug in their laboratories. Once the botanical has been rendered into a synthetic substance, ownership can be claimed by issuing a technical or application patent. Sole rights over the distribution of this ‘new drug’ and even the proprietary rights over the treatment for particular ailments, have thusly been transferred from a botanical medicine of world heritage origins to a ‘wholly-owned new drug’ placed in the hands of a single company. Some pharmaceutical companies continue to lobby against traditional medicines while at the same time they search the jungles and bio-prospect raw materials-attempting to copy and patent chemicals which are found within the traditional herbs. Countries such as Brazil, Peru and India are now lead ing the charge to help protect their indigenous intellectual property rights.
Amazon Therapeutic Laboratories participates in South American congressional meetings to help find equitable solutions to this growing dilemma.
Here, Amazon Smilax and other herbs are introduced from the wild into garden beds for a more regulated control of harvest.
Bio-Prospecting or Bio-Piracy?
The search for treasures derived from jungle pharmacopeia is a practice funded by almost every major pharmaceutical company in the world. Call it bio-piracy or bio prospecting, each company has its own branch of researchers combing the tropical forests of the world, often in secret. Indigenous people have gradually become aware of this and are rightfully seeking injunctions to keep multinational drug companies from patenting their traditional formulations.
Most of these formulas are actually empirically verified treatments which native people have refined after a millennia of active research and development. At Amazon Therepueutic Laboratories, we believe naturally occurring phytochemicals found in plants should never be ‘owned’ by any one company.
We strive to develop an equitable approach to cooperate with indigenous leaders in the cultivation and marketing of the plants and remedies which they, and their ancestors, have developed.