India’s top science team says ‘Step away from the yoga mat’

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More and more, Americans are tiring of western medicine – the expense, the side-effects – and turning to so-called “alternatives” to cure what ails them. From skin rashes to cancer to high-stress, the Indian tradition’s got a solution. Now, some advocates want to keep those solutions from American and European companies eager to make a dollar.

Yup. India’s top scientific body, the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), has started what they call a “Traditional Knowledge Digital Library” in an attempt to prevent foreign patents that claim to have innovated an age-old remedy or medical method. Apparently, the digital database contains over 30 million pages and 200,000 formulas, including herbal and mineral compounds. The idea is to make the database public to international patent bodies, so that they can make informed decisions on granting “exclusive” patents to corporations who’ve punked traditional Indian knowledge: a tactic dubbed by the CSIR as “biopiracy”.

Among the patents already denied based on the Library’s content: a medicinal melon juice and a cancer treatment based on pistachios. And yoga fans beware: over 1,600 yoga poses are going to be included in the Library by 2012. Already, the founder of Bikram (see: hot) yoga has patented the practice, so that not just any scantily-clad, atrociously sweaty group of people contorting their bodies into impossible shapes can be called Bikram.

Of course, not everyone’s pleased with the yoga-and-pistachio-pill Library:

…Some intellectual property rights experts have questioned the logic behind some challenges to patents, saying patents should still be granted to truly novel creations that could be inspired by traditional medicine.

“You can build an invention on traditional knowledge,” said lawyer Pravin Anand, who brokered the data-sharing agreement between India and the European Patent Office. “Nothing stops you from taking it as a first step and then using it to create your own invention.”

True. But I’m not going to be patenting any downward dogs as long as Bikram Choudhury – the hot-yoga guru – is alive and kicking. The yogi, who often compares himself to Jesus Christ and Buddha (both of them! all sweaty!) says this of his unstoppable might:

“I’m beyond Superman…Because I have balls like atom bombs, two of them, 100 megatons each. Nobody fucks with me.”