The Hightower Lowdown

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Brazil Battles Biopiracy

No doubt you'll be glad to know that Congress is standing up to protect our country's poor pharmaceutical companies against the indigenous tribes of Brazil.

It seems that Brazil is fabulously rich in a natural resource of increasing economic importance: Medicinal plants. About a fourth of the world's plant species grow in this region, and Brazil's indigenous people have developed voluminous tribal knowledge over thousands of years of using the medicinal plants to cure all sorts of ailments. Such companies as Bristol-Myers Squibb, Monsanto, and Novartis now covet both their plants and tribal knowledge as the basis for new drugs and biotechnology breakthroughs.

But, get this -- the elders and shamans of the tribes are not showing proper deference to the drug corporations, which mean the people no harm and merely want them to turn over their plants and knowledge. What's with these ingrates? Don't they know that the global corporations will take their humble plants, make powerful pills from them, and reap great fortunes? Surely these tribal people don't think that they should hold onto -- and profit from -- their own intellectual property as though they were some ... well, some corporation?

Yes, they do. The New York Times reports that Brazilian shamans recently issued a call for their country's government to "create punishment mechanisms to deter the robbery of our biodiversity," saying that the drug giants are engaged in "biopiracy." They are not against the global marketing of drugs made from their property, but, they say, "We want to be part of the whole process, from research to the economic results."

Indeed, Brazil has taken the lead in producing an international agreement that would provide some basic patent protections for such "traditional knowledge," owned by the tribes. But the drug companies don't want to pay royalties, so, thanks to the industry's lobbying and campaign contributions, our Congress has dutifully refused to ratify this agreement.

After all, what kind of world would it be if we started letting poor people protect their rights?

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Brouhaha at the Century Club

Why bother being a member of an exclusive club for the privileged if your club suddenly starts opening its doors to common rabble? This is the pointed question being raised by some of the hoitier of the hoity-toity members of the venerable Century Association, housed in a five-story Beaux-Arts building in midtown Manhattan. The Century is a refuge for William F. Buckley Jr., Henry Kissinger, David Rockefeller, and other "Centurians," as they call themselves. They pay princely dues so they can cloister themselves from the hoi poloi, but -- By Jeeves? -- outsiders could be coming inside.

The New York Times reveals in a tell-all story that operating costs have risen so high that the club's officers have proposed tacking a sixth-floor "hotelish operation" onto the top of the building, allowing them to rent out 15 guest rooms to overnight visitors from other private clubs. Oh, what an opera has ensued, as many of the more senior Centurians are bellowing their opposition, including one member who cried out that if the original architect of the 1891 building had "wanted to have bedrooms, he'd have put them there."

Still, the officers say the club needs the revenue and that they already allow "strangers" to rent the ballroom floor for banquets and other events. In the interest of full disclosure, I must confess that even I have been inside the Century for an event celebrating The Nation magazine, though I was denied entry at first because I arrived tieless. I managed to scrounge one up, but my friend Michael Moore, the rascally populist filmmaker, showed up in a T-shirt, so we had to sneak him in through the kitchen.

Any club that would allow rank riff-raff like Michael and me to enter under any circumstances has already lost any illusion of dignity, so they might as well tack on some rental units ... and why not park a double-wide out back while they're at it?

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Bush Uglies

I've seen some picture calendars that are downright ugly. I'm not referring to ones with the nature shots or the artsy calendars, but to the spoofs -- like the one featuring beer belly shots of the boys down at Big Bubba's Bikers Bar. Ug-lee.

But even that's prettier than the picture calendar sent to me by our friends at EarthJustice, a nonprofit watchdog and legal defense fund for the environment. Their calendar features 12 of George W.'s appointees to key environmental positions in his administration. Each month, you flip the page and there's a big mug shot of yet another anti-environmental functionary, complete with a personal rap sheet that tells of their long service to the very polluters they're now supposed to be defending us against.

For example, check out Mr. March. He's James Connaughton, the new head of the Council on Environmental Quality, making him Bush's top advisor on all enviro policies. Connaughton's qualifications are that he has represented super-polluter General Electric in its Superfund fights against the EPA, and he's been a lobbyist on pollution issues for Alcoa, ASARCO, the Chemical Manufacturers Association, and GE.

This calendar is a monthly reminder of the polluter interests that Bush has put in charge of our environment. To get your own copy, call 202/667-4500.

Jim Hightower is a speaker and author. To book Jim, visit www.jimhightower.com. To subscribe to his monthly newsletter, The Hightower Lowdown, send $15, your name, and address to: Lowdown, PO Box 20596, New York, NY 10011