HerbalEGram:  Volume 5,  Number  1,  January 2008

The New York Times ran a feature story on the front page of its Business section on New Year's Day describing the efforts of "medicine hunter" Chris Kilham in helping to create a worldwide market for the traditional Andean vegetable and herbal remedy, maca (Lepidium meyenii).¹ The almost-1500 word article by reporter Andrew Downie briefly describes the traditional uses of maca and makes short reference to recent medical research on the increasingly popular plant. The article states that Kilham has traveled to Peru frequently and has even brought an executive from a French natural product sales company to the country. This executive, after seeing how the indigenous people live so sparsely at high altitudes and observing the dental and other clinics that Kilham and his Peruvian associates have established, promised to significantly increase his purchases of maca to help stimulate the local economy.

The article also briefly deals with the issue of allegations of “biopiracy” that have recently been leveled at a U.S. company (PureWorld) which owns patents on extraction of some of the key compounds in maca. (PureWorld was purchased in 2005 by the French extractor Naturex, which made the patents available to parties in developing countries. This subject was the cover story of HerbalGram 75.²)

According to the article, “Products that once seemed exotic, like ginseng, ginkgo biloba or aloe vera, now roll off the tongues of Westerners. All told, natural plant substances generate more than $75 billion in sales each year for the pharmaceutical industry, $20 billion in herbal supplement sales, and around $3 billion in cosmetics sales, according to a study by the European Commission.” [In the online version of this article, the link to the NY Times website does not connect directly with information on this study in order to verify these data. — Ed.]

References

¹ Downie A. On a remote path to cures. Adventurers and merchants have a stake in Peru’s maca vegetable. New York Times. Tues. Jan 1, 2008. C1, C5.
² Brinckmann J. Peruvian maca and allegations of biopiracy. HerbalGram. 2007;75:44-53.

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