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32 Chapter 1
suggest that Madagascar’s role in the discovery of the pharmacological
action of a few of the alkaloids from this plant represents ‘easy picking’ or
any logical requirement for compensation. It was certainly not easy and
required millions of dollars of investment.”
3
Advocates for benefi t- sharing
agreements between drug companies and local communities retorted
that regardless of whether Lilly’s drugs represented a direct extension of
Malagasy practice, Madagascar was in danger of losing forests that might
hold other valuable cures, and compensation for periwinkle might prove
an incentive for their preservation. As U.S. legal scholar James Boyle put
it, Madagascar needed a way to compensate indigenous peoples who
“can fi nd no place in a legal regime constructed around a vision of indi-
vidual, transformative, original genius.”
4
In fact, around the same time that Lilly researchers found new meth-
ods to extract alkaloids from periwinkle, the Malagasy physician and
frequently heralded “genius” Albert Rakoto- Ratsimamanga was involved
in ongoing research to develop curative acids from another plant, Indian
pennywort (Centella asiatica). Ratsimamanga and his French collabora-
tor Pierre Boiteau received patents in Eu rope and North America for a
pro cess to extract hemisuccinates from pennywort acids in 1968. They
licensed the pro cess to the French drug company La Roche, which fi rst
marketed the wound treatment as Madécassol. By 2010 the company, now
La Roche- Posay, included extracts of the plant in its wonder treatment
for wrinkles, Redermic. Like the Lilly scientists, Malagasy citizens sought
patents for plant- based drugs to amass private wealth. Ratsimamanga’s
involvement with pennywort complicates the mythical story of peri-
winkle that centers on the exploitation of Malagasy indigenes because
it shows that African scientists were involved in drug prospecting at the
same time as researchers at Lilly.
The better- known periwinkle case has come to symbolize many
things to different people, depending on their concerns over the envi-
ronment, traditional medicine, or intellectual property rights. By the
late 1980s, the world was witnessing a massive “green rush” as new
laboratory techniques allowed for more rapid screening of plants to dis-
cover improved medicines, crops, and industrial chemicals.
5
This quest
for new chemicals from plants became known as “biodiversity prospect-
ing” or “bioprospecting” when a group of biologists and policy makers—
including Walter Reid, Sarah A. Laird, and Calestous Juma— promoted
the use of the terms in 1991 in an argument for sustainable develop-
ment.
6
For environmentalists, the story of periwinkle suggested both the
danger and promise of harvesting rare plants for corporate gain. Laird,
an early proponent of biodiversity prospecting, worked for the Peri-
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Take Periwinkle for Leukemia and Pennywort for Leprosy 33
winkle Project, a division of the Rainforest Alliance established in New
York City. Concerned that the “next periwinkle” might be destroyed
by development, Laird hoped to build awareness around the drug in-
dustry’s reliance on plant- based chemicals. Using WHO estimates, she
claimed that 80 percent of the world’s population used traditional plant-
based medicines, and that the rainforests held over 70 percent of all the
globe’s plant biodiversity.
7
Over and over went the refrain: “Lifesaving
medicinal properties are found in the plants of the Madagascar rainforest.
Extractions from the leaves of a rosy periwinkle have been used to fi nd
a cure for childhood leukemia, and now, due to a drug developed from
these extracts, we have about a 50 percent recovery rate from childhood
leukemia.”
8
Ironically, periwinkle in Madagascar grew along the roads and in
fi elds— not in threatened forests. In fact, many of the medicinal plants
people have come to use in herbal remedies grew near farms; the toxic-
ity of the valuable phytochemicals that give them medicinal power al-
lowed them to subsist as weeds, not rare species.
9
In our conversations,
the Malagasy conservationist Jean Joseph Andriamanalintsoa promptly
reminded me of periwinkle’s status as a fi eld plant, as did other scientists
involved environmental efforts in Tolagnaro and Ranopiso, where Lilly
once sourced periwinkle harvests.
10
I timed my visit to Southern Mada-
gascar to coincide with periwinkle’s blooming cycle; I was overwhelmed
to see the pink blossoms swaying in the breeze along every grassy high-
way and fi eld. It was ubiquitous.
Other activists often retold the story of periwinkle as an argument
for benefi t sharing between disenfranchised communities and corpora-
tions holding valuable patents. Lawyers sought new models for acknowl-
edging prior art in nonliterate societies. Rather than overturn patents,
they hoped to extend profi ts or other rewards to people living in poverty
who maintained ideas about the value of plants through oral communi-
cation and family apprenticeships. Yet, benefi t sharing assumed a class
of individuals to whom compensation might be afforded, ideally descen-
dants of a First Peoples group in a threatened ecosystem. Moreover, the
idea of indigenes with original and unique— albeit shared— communal
knowledge still relied on the concept of priority so integral to the logic of
patents for inventors. Controversies over the transformation of periwin-
kle and other plants into pharmaceuticals circulated around ideas about
inventors and indigenes because each could claim to hold fi rst rights to
information.
For public health offi cials working in Africa more generally, the
promise of turning green into gold trumped any environmental or legal
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34 Chapter 1
controversies surrounding periwinkle and Lilly. In 2003, WHO offi cials
in Brazzaville, the capital of the Republic of Congo, unveiled a new logo
to rebrand traditional medical practices as a new engine for economic
growth (see Figure 1.2). A gold ring encircled both the green continent
of Africa, overlaid with a periwinkle fl ower, and the blue seas around it.
The graphic designers behind this depiction of botanical and marine
wealth did not include bones, shells, or other accoutrements of diagnosis
in African healing, turning their gaze instead to periwinkle. For them,
Eli Lilly’s success with periwinkle suggested avenues for profi table drug
discovery in African countries, not a rallying cry for retrospective benefi t
sharing or preservation of traditional communities.
And indeed, the little- known case of pennywort’s transformation
into Madécassol is an example of how scientists in African countries
have created patented pharmaceuticals from plants. In this chapter, I
reconsider pop u lar understandings of the periwinkle case as one of biopi-
racy in light of Malagasy involvement in pennywort.
11
In par tic u lar, the
Figure 1.2 Periwinkle featured on the African Traditional Medicine Logo, unveiled
October 9, 2003. (Source: World Health Or ga ni za tion.)
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Take Periwinkle for Leukemia and Pennywort for Leprosy 35
issue of priority was central to dilemmas surrounding both plants.
12
Peri-
winkle and pennywort have long featured in folk recipes to cure various
ailments, and these recipes inspired chemists to take the plants into the
laboratory to test bioactivity. Periwinkle was a pantropical weed, whereas
pennywort grew in Africa and Asia (see Figures 1.3 and 1.4). The wide
distribution of both plants meant that there were arguably many, many
claimants to the plants, their chemicals, and related knowledge.
PERIWINKLE AND PENNYWORT IN HEALING TRADITIONS
Let us now turn to the history of priority within the history of traditional
knowledge. Assuming we were to assign benefi ts to drug patents from
plants along communal lines, what might have been the case for fi rst
rights to periwinkle and pennywort medications in Madagascar? And how
might we prove rights to traditional knowledge claims within legal and
Figure 1.3 Collection points of 476 Catharanthus roseus samples in herbaria. Compiled from location
points observed during the author’s visits to the Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Garden, Kew (RBGKH)
in November 2008 and from data available through the Global Biodiversity Information Facility Data
Portal (GBIF), www .gbif .org, accessed March– August 2011. Plant Specimens of U.S. Department of
Agriculture Plants Database; Real Jardin Botanico Vascular Plant Herbarium, Madrid; University of
Kansas Biodiversity Research Center; Herbarium of Taiwan Forestry Research Institute; Fairchild Tropical
Botanic Garden Virtual Herbarium; University of Alabama Herbarium; Herbario XAL del Instituto de
Ecología, A.C., México; Herbario de la Universidad de Salamanca; Instituto Nacional de Biodiversidad,
Costa Rica; Instituto de Ciencias Naturales; Herbier de la Guyane; National Herbarium of New South
Wales; Museum National d’Histoire Naturelle et Réseau des Herbiers de France; Herbier de l’Université
Louis Pasteur; Instituto de Ciencias Naturales; National Museum of Natural History; Eu ro pe an Ge ne tic
Resources Search Cata logue; Herbaria of the University of Zürich; Leibniz Institute of Plant Ge ne tics
and Crop Plant Research; Herbario de Universidade de Santiago de Compostela; Finnish Museum of
Natural History; Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin- Dahlem.
https://t.me/med1917
36 Chapter 1
intellectual frameworks that prioritize written knowledge? In the nine-
teenth century the German phi los o pher Georg Hegel infamously claimed
that Africa had no historical consciousness because rec ords of past events
were not written down. Since then, several generations of Africanist histo-
rians have carefully documented oral traditions about past events, identi-
fi ed trends in historical linguistics, and examined archaeological remains
to show that indeed Africans witnessed change over time. Similarly, are we
to surmise that Africa had no science or innovation in medicinal plants
research because little of it was recorded in textual form?
13
Madagascar’s strongest claims to periwinkle were botanical and ge-
ne tic, as the plant most likely originated on the island- nation. Lilly
claimed that the recipes it garnered were from the Philippines and for
diabetes; thus the novelty of their invention related to both the form
of the drug and its claims to effi cacy— specifi cally, Lilly’s use of extracts
to treat cancer.
14
The U.S. Patent Offi ce’s grounds for novelty required
that no one else had published the pro cess to extract the alkaloids or
had made the same claims about their uses. Within this legal framework,
the argument for retrospective benefi t sharing with Madagascar would
be that Lilly’s recipes from the Philippines had actually originated in
Madagascar. However, I soon realized that it was literally impossible to
Figure 1.4 Collection points of 493 Centella asiatica samples in herbaria. Accessed through the Global
Biodiversity Information Facility: Herbarium of Taiwan Forestry Research Institute; Herbario del Instituto
de Ecología, A.C., México; Missouri Botanical Garden; National Herbarium of the Netherlands; National
Museum of Nature and Science, Japan; National Institute of Ge ne tics, Research Or ga ni za tion of Infor-
mation and Systems (ROIS), Japan; Australian National Herbarium; National Herbarium of New South
Wales; Real Jardin Botanico Vascular Plant Herbarium (Madrid); Herbarium of the New York Botanical
Garden; Herbarium of the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh; Herbario de Universidade de Santiago de
Compostela; Harvard University Herbaria; Staatliches Museum fur Naturkunde Stuttgart, Herbarium;
Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden Virtual Herbarium.
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Take Periwinkle for Leukemia and Pennywort for Leprosy 37
trace how herbal recipes might have spread, given the paucity of written
documentation and the pantropical distribution of this common weed.
Instead, my research— taking me to sites as far- fl ung as markets in
the capital city of Antananarivo, farms near the southern port towns of
Tolagnaro and Ranopiso, herbaria at the U.K. Royal Botanic Gardens
at Kew, and the economic botany collection at Harvard— convinced me
of the global history of this plant so deeply associated with Madagascar.
And even when my search for periwinkle led me to pennywort, a plant
that many scientists and healers in Madagascar also claimed as their
own, I found a similar story. Again, traces of evidence hinted at an-
other global history of own ership and innovation, from Ancient Sanskrit
herbals to cups of Centella tea, to forgotten letters between scientist in
Madagascar, India, France, and the United States. The pro cess of turning
plants into pharmaceuticals is never straightforward but instead requires
the efforts of multiple participants.
Periwinkle in Madagascar
Madagascar’s unique ecosystems led to the evolution of species of plants
available only on the island. Of 13,000 plant species found there, four in
fi ve are endemic to Madagascar.
15
Although many plants and animals are
unique to the island, recurring waves of migrants led to an ethnically hy-
bridized society drawing from multiple continents. Madagascar is usually
considered part of Africa, although the people who live there today trace
their ancestry not only to such countries as Kenya and Mozambique in
East and Southern Africa but also to the Middle East. In addition, there
is a strong infl uence from Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines, with
large waves of Austronesian migrants traveling by boat to settle in Mada-
gascar beginning in the fi rst century before the Common Era. From 1890
to 1960, Madagascar was a colony of France. Today the offi cial languages
are French and Malagasy, a language derived from Austronesian, Swahili,
and Arabic words that was reduced to written script from the 1500s. Two
major ethnic divisions include the Merina, who trace their ancestry to
Indonesia and reside primarily in the plateau near Antananarivo, and
coastal communities of the Fianarantsoa, often of primarily continental
African descent. Merina royals famously consolidated authority over the
island by the mid- nineteenth century and resisted French colonization.
There are more species of periwinkle plants in Madagascar than else-
where, indicating that periwinkle originated on the island and developed
over time. Of the eight species of Catharanthus, seven are indigenous to
different regions of Madagascar, with one unique to India. The genus also
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38 Chapter 1
secured several different names over time, including Vinca, the name for
Eu ro pe an periwinkles that are similar in appearance, and Lochnera. Her-
barium specimens stored around the world, dating to the 1770s, were
riddled with the comments of botanists debating the differences among
species. By the 1970s, several of the species had combined or hybridized
in the national botanical gardens at Tsimbazaza Park in Antananarivo,
including C. longifolius and C. roseus. Research there was critical to wider
understandings of the different species of periwinkle and their varying
levels of chemical activity. In par tic u lar, before 1975, confusion had sur-
rounded the species C. trichophyllus, C. ovalis, and C. longifolius.
16
Malagasy citizens nurtured continuous cultural uses of periwinkle,
providing a contemporary window onto exchange of uses over time.
During my visit to Analakely market stalls in 2008, a mpivarotra- hazo
(plant seller) named Hantalalao Razaiarimanga explained, “Rich people
buy from us because they eat good and fatty food, so they want to clean
their insides with plants. Poor people come here, too, as well as foreign-
ers like you.” She explained that vonenina (periwinkle) could be thought
of as wet (fresh) or dry and was extremely bitter unless boiled. Razaiari-
manana’s hair was smoothed into a neat ponytail, and she rested her
hands in the pockets of a beige smock tied over her jeans. She explained
that she had learned to sell plants from her own mother, and now her
two young children sometimes joined her at the stall she had rented for
a de cade. Nearby, another mpivarotra- hazo explained that periwinkle was
further divided into its parts— roots and leaves— each having different
curing properties. She explained that the long, brown, carrotlike roots,
for instance, were especially good to digest for a stomachache.
17
The export of periwinkle and other plants from Madagascar each
year is a major source of foreign exchange. At the Ministry for the En-
vironment and Forestry, Ndriana Razafi ndratovo explained to me that
in the last de cade, at least 300,000 to 400,000 kilograms of periwinkle
made their way overseas each year to places like France, Germany, and
Mexico (see Figure 1.5). Razafi ndratovo showed me charts that indicated
pennywort exports were fairly constant, if not increasing. However, his
tables also confi rmed that periwinkle exports had seen a big decrease
since their heyday in the late 1970s and early 1980s, when they peaked
at over 1 billion kilograms per year.
18
Ironically, it was just as Madagascar
began to lose ground in the periwinkle export market, and Lilly’s patents
expired, that journalists began to promote the story of biopiracy of the
country’s herbal knowledge.
Data on the exchange of plants in herbal medicine markets was more
diffi cult to delineate. Early on Friday mornings, wholesale medicinal
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Take Periwinkle for Leukemia and Pennywort for Leprosy 39
plant sellers congregated in Antananarivo to sell newly harvested and
dried fl ora. Their target audience was the assortment of small business-
men and businesswomen who maintained plant stalls in the Analakely
open air market downtown. These urban plant specialists resold their se-
lections to those who passed through the narrow alleys that lay between
tables mounded with dried plants. Theirs were small transactions, never
written down, that passed directly from seller to client, or often via chil-
dren sent to the market to run errands. Most dealers were vague in their
answers if and when the tax collectors swooped in. They might report
revenues of 12,000 ariary each month, when it was closer to three or
four times this amount. Thus, the total profi t from all sellers in the main
Antananarivo plant market might be approximately 36 million ariary, or
close to US$20,000 annually.
In interviews, the sellers at Analakely and, later, collectors and grow-
ers near the southern port at Tolagnaro (or Fort Dauphin) revealed pop-
u lar understandings of periwinkle and pennywort, the two primary me-
dicinal plants in the domestic and export trade. This meant that even as
scientists transformed both plants into patented pharmaceuticals, plant
sellers and their customers continued to experiment with pop u lar rem-
edies made from their raw botanical versions. The men and women I spoke
with in Madagascar also reminded me that— as I had found in other
parts of Africa— plant specialists were urban and, at the least, networked.
These multiethnic merchants were not isolated members of “indigenous”
0
1972
1975
1978
1981
1984
1987
1990
1993
1996
1999
2002
2005
200
400
600
800
1000
1200
1400
To ns
Ye ar
Figure 1.5 Exports of Catharanthus roseus from Madagascar (1972– 2006). Compiled
from data provided to the author at the Ministry of the Environment and Forestry
in Antananarivo, and from Rasoanaivo, “Rain Forests of Madagascar,” and Andria-
manalintsoa, “Contribution à l’Étude de la Production.” There is some discrepancy
between fi gures, and only Andriamanalintsoa provides a breakdown between
leaves and roots, using data he obtained from Promotex annual reports. Figures
are unavailable for the period between 1993 and 2000.
https://t.me/med1917
40 Chapter 1
groups lost to the world. These plant specialists indicated that periwinkle
was not an endangered plant at the heart of rainforests but rather a valu-
able weed central to their medicinal herb trade. Relief fi lled the faces of
interviewees when I explained I only wished to know about a common
plant and did not hope to steal any valuable information from them
about an esoteric herb. A law student assisting me in my research gri-
maced when I showed her some gnarled periwinkle roots, recalling the
many times she had sipped bitter broths made from the pungent plant.
She reminded me that anyone in Madagascar could describe uses for
periwinkle.
Periwinkle Moved; Did Knowledge Travel Too?
By the beginning of the twentieth century, when we begin to see an
increase in written herbal recipes for periwinkle, fi shermen, merchants,
and explorers traveling to and from Madagascar had transferred the
plant to tropical regions around the world, transforming it into a global
weed. Malagasy fi shermen and mariners had historically recognized the
value of periwinkle as a medicine and “chewed the leaves of the plant
between their teeth to soothe the sensations of hunger and to overcome
fatigue.”
19
Interested in the plant’s nutritive value, Malagasy fi shermen
transported cuttings in their boats, establishing new colonies of the
plant along the sandy shores of the Indian Ocean. Some botanists argued
that this was how periwinkle came to be found around the world, given
the golden age of Swahili trade (c. 800– 1450) during which networks of
Afro- Asian merchant communities populated coasts from northeastern
Madagascar to Mozambique, Kenya, Somalia, the Arabian Peninsula, and
South Asia.
As part of the changes in Eu ro pe an maritime trade, French explor-
ers reached Madagascar in the 1600s. Their appropriation of periwinkle
represented the fi rst written documentation of both the plant’s medici-
nal uses and its export, forever linking periwinkle to Madagascar. Later,
ge ne tic studies of different species of periwinkle would confi rm this as-
sociation with Madagascar as the original home of the genus. In a small
museum overlooking the ocean in Tolagnaro, curator Mr. Rabenantoan-
dro showed me photocopied pages from Étienne de Flacourt’s compen-
dium of observations on seventeenth- century Malagasy life made during
the Frenchman’s tenure as governor of a short- lived colony of the French
East India Company. Flacourt recorded numerous plants that he ob-
served at the southernmost tip of the island where the Antanosy people
soon threw off early French occupation, including a plant they termed
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Take Periwinkle for Leukemia and Pennywort for Leprosy 41
tongue or tonga (now C. roseus). Ironically, Flacourt suggested that the
white periwinkle he found in Southern Madagascar had “more virtue,”
perhaps aesthetically but also medicinally, than the rosy version. Among
the local uses he recorded for periwinkle roots were treatments for heart
pangs and headaches.
20
Before his death in 1660, Flacourt sent seeds and cuttings of the Mada-
gascar periwinkle to France, where they were redistributed to other Eu ro-
pe an botanical gardens. Flacourt’s careful documentation and collection of
Malagasy medicinal plants for the French Royal Gardens represented what
Claude Allibert termed “one of the earliest studies in tropical ethnophar-
macology,” and his treatise became a valuable source for later bioprospec-
tors.
21
Eu ro pe an gardeners shared the seeds with friends and colleagues,
assisting in the global dispersal of the C. roseus species from Madagascar.
22
At Kew, I peered at the shiny portrait of a periwinkle plant with white fl ow-
ers in the classic work of En glish botanist and gardener Philip Miller that
became the gold standard for scientifi c understandings of tropical periwin-
kle. Most likely, it was painted from a cutting propagated from specimens
Flacourt sent to France. Miller explained, “The Seeds of this Plant were
brought from Madagascar to Paris, and sown in the King’s Garden at Tri-
anon, where they succeeded; and from thence I was furnished with the
Seeds, which succeeded in the Chelsea Garden. It rises with an upright
branching Stalk to the Height of Three or Four Feet.” Miller included the
plant in his description of novel plants in Eu rope but did not note any
medicinal uses for Madagascar periwinkle, although the Chelsea Garden
specialized in herbal remedies.
23
By 1753, the Swedish botanist Carl Lin-
naeus associated Malagasy periwinkle with the genus Vinca under the
species V. m ajo r. Not until the 1950s and 1960s was this tropical periwin-
kle originally from Madagascar reclassifi ed within a separate genus as C.
roseus.
24
Cognizant of the importance of early Eu ro pe an collections, bio-
prospectors at the close of the twentieth century “beat a path” to Miller’s
Chelsea Garden to review periwinkle and other healing plants.
25
Explorers circulated periwinkle specimens to and from Africa at later
points as well. Some collectors referred to these specimens by common
names in Eu ro pe an languages, suggesting colonial introduction for pri-
marily ornamental purposes. During British physician John Kirk’s ex-
pedition along the Zambezi River in Southern Africa, collectors sent
parts of the plants to London in 1867 with the note that periwinkle was
“grown near the consulate.” Collectors sent specimens to London from
Martinique in November of that year. In 1912 a botanist supplied a dried
pink periwinkle fl ower from Half Assini in the Gold Coast (now Ghana)
with the note “introduced (?) coast villages,” raising questions about
https://t.me/med1917
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