Indigenous Knowledge and Intellectual Property: Drug Research and Development in Contemporary Context

Indigenous knowledge refers to the knowledge of naturally available resources and existing practices among community groups that have long-contributed a particular benefit for the sustenance of the group, particularly within the health care context. Indigenous knowledge reaches beyond the use of plants, encompassing empirical observations and their interaction with community groups, and a system of classification and careful management of the resource. Indigenous knowledge often includes a belief system in spiritual entities and their relationship with the group. Thus, rather than a detailed compilation of information about plants, it becomes a worldview-what we understand and study as “culture”. For most indigenous peoples, good health represents a state of equilibrium among spiritual, communal and individual; it is not merely the absence of disease [1-3].