Though Hoodia Gordonii looks very much like a ‘cactus’, it is actually a leafless succulent with cactus like spikes. Whenever the early African tribesmen traveled on long hunting expeditions, they used to consume the Hoodia Gordonii ‘cactus’ to help stave-off hunger on their prolong trips. As its natural ability to safely curb the appetite has become well known in the recent past. Hoodia Gordonii's popularity has exploded. A certified pure Hoodia Gordonii diet pills are available now in the market.
The Fact Has Been Proven!
Although there are 20 types of Hoodia, only the Hoodia Gordonii variety is believed to contain the natural appetite suppressant. In recent times, it has been revealed that Hoodia Gordonii contains a very powerful molecule known as ‘P57’ that works as an appetite suppressant. The microscopic test shows the sample has no physical property to Hoodia Gordonii. This means that after eating Hoodia Gordonii as ‘appetite suppressant’ you can still eat your favorite foods. Now, this ‘cactus plant’ is being commercialized to the western society as Hoodia Gordonii appetite suppressant. Its ability in controlling appetite by eating the flesh from its stem is what makes Hoodia Gordonii so popular today. By diminishing appetite, curbing hankerings, and increasing energy, Hoodia Gordonii can be a useful supplement to any ‘fat-loss program’.
Hoodia Gordonii can hold back your appetite while boosting energy, helping you feel satisfied and full. It is the most effective way to control appetite, and is used when wishing to lose weight. If appetite suppression is a quality you desire in a weight loss supplement, Hoodia Gordonii is an excellent ingredient to look for.
The extract of the plant Hoodia Gordonii is emerging as the greatest weight-reducing diet pill with no known side effects. Hoodia Gordonii diet pill also has a natural feel-good quality. All studies performed to date show no ill effects among subjects supplementing their diet with Hoodia Product.
For more information visit: http://www.hoodiagordoniiplus.com/?aid=943365
Monday, December 10, 2007
Tips To Buy Real Hoodia Gordonii
People have different views when there is a debate on Hoodia products.
Hence it is very important to take a look at some of the common guidelines to nullify the chances of buying fake products and maximize the chances of getting a real Hoodia product.
To select a good Hoodia product you must know the following facts about Hoodia:
• There are many types of Hoodia plants, but only Hoodia Gordonii species have appetite-suppressing effects. The main point is to note that you should not buy the product with label “100% natural Hoodia.” Of course you are buying natural Hoodia but not the desired Hoodia Gordonii.
• If you are buying Hoodia Gordonii online then you must see CITES certificate issued by International trade laws. Only then you can be confirmed that you are buying natural Hoodia Gordonii.
• Lots of Hoodia products are prepared from the whole plants. The Hoodia Gordonii plant has fibrous material, skin, leaves, flowers, etc., which has no active ingredient that assists in weight loss. So do not look for quantity. The active ingredient is found in the core. Prefer product if it is prepared by concentration.
• On some products you will read 10:1 that means 10 grams of plant was used to prepare 1 gram of Hoodia Gordonii powder to fill pills and capsules. If you consider this, you will note why it is better to buy 500 mg product than buying 1000 mg Hoodia Gordonii of other brand name if first one contain only concentration and the second is prepared by whole plant.
• The last and final thing to remember is that many of the Hoodia products contain metabolic boosters that increase metabolic rate of your organism. This is always not a bad sign because Hoodia itself cannot speed up metabolism. It only reduces amount of food you take.
• However, some manufacturers believe that natural stimulants can help you in increasing your metabolic rate, which is a plus. These types of natural stimulants help in burning fat.
• If you do not react to stimulants such as caffeine, then it is better to avoid any other Hoodia product and concentrate only on buying real Hoodia Gordonii.
• Hoodia Gordonii is 100 % natural and herbal. It has no side effects. Any one can use these products. This can be purchased from the market in the form of powder, pills or capsules.
If you study these tips carefully before buying Hoodia Gordonii then you will never buy a fake product.
For more information visit: http://www.hoodiagordoniiplus.com/?aid=943365
Hence it is very important to take a look at some of the common guidelines to nullify the chances of buying fake products and maximize the chances of getting a real Hoodia product.
To select a good Hoodia product you must know the following facts about Hoodia:
• There are many types of Hoodia plants, but only Hoodia Gordonii species have appetite-suppressing effects. The main point is to note that you should not buy the product with label “100% natural Hoodia.” Of course you are buying natural Hoodia but not the desired Hoodia Gordonii.
• If you are buying Hoodia Gordonii online then you must see CITES certificate issued by International trade laws. Only then you can be confirmed that you are buying natural Hoodia Gordonii.
• Lots of Hoodia products are prepared from the whole plants. The Hoodia Gordonii plant has fibrous material, skin, leaves, flowers, etc., which has no active ingredient that assists in weight loss. So do not look for quantity. The active ingredient is found in the core. Prefer product if it is prepared by concentration.
• On some products you will read 10:1 that means 10 grams of plant was used to prepare 1 gram of Hoodia Gordonii powder to fill pills and capsules. If you consider this, you will note why it is better to buy 500 mg product than buying 1000 mg Hoodia Gordonii of other brand name if first one contain only concentration and the second is prepared by whole plant.
• The last and final thing to remember is that many of the Hoodia products contain metabolic boosters that increase metabolic rate of your organism. This is always not a bad sign because Hoodia itself cannot speed up metabolism. It only reduces amount of food you take.
• However, some manufacturers believe that natural stimulants can help you in increasing your metabolic rate, which is a plus. These types of natural stimulants help in burning fat.
• If you do not react to stimulants such as caffeine, then it is better to avoid any other Hoodia product and concentrate only on buying real Hoodia Gordonii.
• Hoodia Gordonii is 100 % natural and herbal. It has no side effects. Any one can use these products. This can be purchased from the market in the form of powder, pills or capsules.
If you study these tips carefully before buying Hoodia Gordonii then you will never buy a fake product.
For more information visit: http://www.hoodiagordoniiplus.com/?aid=943365
BBC News Report on Hoodia Gordonii
By Tom Mangold - BBC Two's Correspondent
Imagine this: an organic pill that kills the appetite and attacks obesity. It has no known side-effects, and contains a molecule that fools your brain into believing you are full.
Deep inside the African Kalahari desert, grows an ugly cactus called the Hoodia. It thrives in extremely high temperatures, and takes years to mature.
The San Bushmen of the Kalahari, one of the world's oldest and most primitive tribes, had been eating the Hoodia for thousands of years, to stave off hunger during long hunting trips.
When South African scientists were routinely testing it, they discovered the plant contained a previously unknown molecule, which has since been christened P 57.
The license was sold to a Cambridgeshire bio-pharmaceutical company, Phytopharm, who in turn sold the development and marketing rights to the giant Pfizer Corporation.
Fortune cactusA molecule in the cactus makes you feel full
When I traveled to the Kalahari, I met families of the San bushmen.
It is a sad, impoverished and displaced tribe, still unaware they are sitting on top of a goldmine.
But if the Hoodia works, the 100,000 San strung along the edge of the Kalahari will become overnight millionaires on royalties negotiated by their South African lawyer Roger Chennells.
And they will need all the help they can to secure the money.
Currently, many bushmen smoke large quantities of marijuana, suffer from alcoholism, and have neither possessions nor any sense of the value of money.
The truth is no-one has fully grasped what the magic molecule means for their counterparts in the developed world.
Blood sugarAccording to the British Heart Foundation 17% of men and 21% of women are obese, while 46% of men and 32% of women are overweight.
So the drug's marketing potential speaks for itself.
Phytopharm's Dr Richard Dixey explained how P.57 actually works:
"There is a part of your brain, the hypothalamus. Within that mid-brain there are nerve cells that sense glucose sugar.
"When you eat, blood sugar goes up because of the food, these cells start firing and now you are full.
What the Hoodia seems to contain is a molecule that is about 10,000 times as active as glucose.
"It goes to the mid-brain and actually makes those nerve cells fire as if you were full. But you have not eaten. Nor do you want to."
Clinical trialsDixey organized the first animal trials for Hoodia. Rats, a species that will eat literally anything, stopped eating completely.
When the first human clinical trial was conducted, a morbidly obese group of people were placed in a "phase 1 unit", a place as close to prison as it gets.
All the volunteers could do all day was read papers, watch television, and eat.
Half were given Hoodia, half placebo. Fifteen days later, the Hoodia group had reduced their calorie intake by 1000 a day.
It was a stunning success.
The cactus testIn order to see for ourselves, we drove into the desert, four hours north of Capetown in search of the cactus.
Once there, we found an unattractive plant which sprouts about 10 tentacles, and is the size of a long cucumber.
Each tentacle is covered in spikes which need to be carefully peeled.
The San will finally throw off thousands of years of oppression, poverty, social isolation and discrimination
Roger Chennells, lawyer
Inside is a slightly unpleasant-tasting, fleshy plant.
At about 1800hrs I ate about half a banana size - and later so did my cameraman.
Soon after, we began the four hour drive back to Capetown.
The plant is said to have a feel-good almost aphrodisiac quality, and I have to say, we felt good.
But more significantly, we did not even think about food. Our brains really were telling us we were full. It was a magnificent deception.
Dinner time came and went. We reached our hotel at about midnight and went to bed without food. And the next day, neither of us wanted nor ate breakfast.
I ate lunch but without appetite and very little pleasure. Partial then full appetite returned slowly after 24 hours.
The futureMr Chennells is ecstatic:
"The San will finally throw off thousands of years of oppression, poverty, social isolation and discrimination.
"We will create trust funds with their Hoodia royalties and the children will join South Africa's middle classes in our lifetime.
"I envisage Hoodia cafes in London and New York, salads will be served and the Hoodia cut like cucumber on to the salad.
"It will need flavoring to counter its unpleasant taste, but if it has no side effects and no cumulative side-effects."
For more information visit: http://www.hoodiagordoniiplus.com/?aid=943365
Imagine this: an organic pill that kills the appetite and attacks obesity. It has no known side-effects, and contains a molecule that fools your brain into believing you are full.
Deep inside the African Kalahari desert, grows an ugly cactus called the Hoodia. It thrives in extremely high temperatures, and takes years to mature.
The San Bushmen of the Kalahari, one of the world's oldest and most primitive tribes, had been eating the Hoodia for thousands of years, to stave off hunger during long hunting trips.
When South African scientists were routinely testing it, they discovered the plant contained a previously unknown molecule, which has since been christened P 57.
The license was sold to a Cambridgeshire bio-pharmaceutical company, Phytopharm, who in turn sold the development and marketing rights to the giant Pfizer Corporation.
Fortune cactusA molecule in the cactus makes you feel full
When I traveled to the Kalahari, I met families of the San bushmen.
It is a sad, impoverished and displaced tribe, still unaware they are sitting on top of a goldmine.
But if the Hoodia works, the 100,000 San strung along the edge of the Kalahari will become overnight millionaires on royalties negotiated by their South African lawyer Roger Chennells.
And they will need all the help they can to secure the money.
Currently, many bushmen smoke large quantities of marijuana, suffer from alcoholism, and have neither possessions nor any sense of the value of money.
The truth is no-one has fully grasped what the magic molecule means for their counterparts in the developed world.
Blood sugarAccording to the British Heart Foundation 17% of men and 21% of women are obese, while 46% of men and 32% of women are overweight.
So the drug's marketing potential speaks for itself.
Phytopharm's Dr Richard Dixey explained how P.57 actually works:
"There is a part of your brain, the hypothalamus. Within that mid-brain there are nerve cells that sense glucose sugar.
"When you eat, blood sugar goes up because of the food, these cells start firing and now you are full.
What the Hoodia seems to contain is a molecule that is about 10,000 times as active as glucose.
"It goes to the mid-brain and actually makes those nerve cells fire as if you were full. But you have not eaten. Nor do you want to."
Clinical trialsDixey organized the first animal trials for Hoodia. Rats, a species that will eat literally anything, stopped eating completely.
When the first human clinical trial was conducted, a morbidly obese group of people were placed in a "phase 1 unit", a place as close to prison as it gets.
All the volunteers could do all day was read papers, watch television, and eat.
Half were given Hoodia, half placebo. Fifteen days later, the Hoodia group had reduced their calorie intake by 1000 a day.
It was a stunning success.
The cactus testIn order to see for ourselves, we drove into the desert, four hours north of Capetown in search of the cactus.
Once there, we found an unattractive plant which sprouts about 10 tentacles, and is the size of a long cucumber.
Each tentacle is covered in spikes which need to be carefully peeled.
The San will finally throw off thousands of years of oppression, poverty, social isolation and discrimination
Roger Chennells, lawyer
Inside is a slightly unpleasant-tasting, fleshy plant.
At about 1800hrs I ate about half a banana size - and later so did my cameraman.
Soon after, we began the four hour drive back to Capetown.
The plant is said to have a feel-good almost aphrodisiac quality, and I have to say, we felt good.
But more significantly, we did not even think about food. Our brains really were telling us we were full. It was a magnificent deception.
Dinner time came and went. We reached our hotel at about midnight and went to bed without food. And the next day, neither of us wanted nor ate breakfast.
I ate lunch but without appetite and very little pleasure. Partial then full appetite returned slowly after 24 hours.
The futureMr Chennells is ecstatic:
"The San will finally throw off thousands of years of oppression, poverty, social isolation and discrimination.
"We will create trust funds with their Hoodia royalties and the children will join South Africa's middle classes in our lifetime.
"I envisage Hoodia cafes in London and New York, salads will be served and the Hoodia cut like cucumber on to the salad.
"It will need flavoring to counter its unpleasant taste, but if it has no side effects and no cumulative side-effects."
For more information visit: http://www.hoodiagordoniiplus.com/?aid=943365
Sunday, December 9, 2007
60 Minutes Report on Hoodia
(CBS) Each year, people spend more than $40 billion on products designed to help them slim down. None of them seem to be working very well.
Now along comes hoodia. Never heard of it? Soon it'll be tripping off your tongue, because hoodia is a natural substance that literally takes your appetite away.
It's very different from diet stimulants like Ephedra and Phenfen that are now banned because of dangerous side effects. Hoodia doesn't stimulate at all. Scientists say it fools the brain by making you think you're full, even if you've eaten just a morsel. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.
"Hoodia, a plant that tricks the brain by making the stomach feel full, has been in the diet of South Africa's Bushmen for thousands of years."
Because the only place in the world where hoodia grows wild is in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa.
Nigel Crawhall, a linguist and interpreter, hired an experienced tracker named Toppies Kruiper, a local aboriginal Bushman, to help find it. The Bushmen were featured in the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy."
Kruiper led 60 Minutes crews out into the desert. Stahl asked him if he ate hoodia. "I really like to eat them when the new rains have come," says Kruiper, speaking through the interpreter. "Then they're really quite delicious."
When we located the plant, Kruiper cut off a stalk that looked like a small spiky pickle, and removed the sharp spines. In the interest of science, Stahl ate it. She described the taste as "a little cucumbery in texture, but not bad."
So how did it work? Stahl says she had no after effects - no funny taste in her mouth, no queasy stomach, and no racing heart. She also wasn't hungry all day, even when she would normally have a pang around mealtime. And, she also had no desire to eat or drink the entire day. "I'd have to say it did work," says Stahl.
Although the West is just discovering hoodia, the Bushmen of the Kalahari have been eating it for a very long time. After all, they have been living off the land in southern Africa for more than 100,000 years.
Some of the Bushmen, like Anna Swartz, still live in old traditional huts, and cook so-called Bush food gathered from the desert the old-fashioned way.
The first scientific investigation of the plant was conducted at South Africa's national laboratory. Because Bushmen were known to eat hoodia, it was included in a study of indigenous foods.
"What they found was when they fed it to animals, the animals ate it and lost weight," says Dr. Richard Dixey, who heads an English pharmaceutical company called Phytopharm that is trying to develop weight-loss products based on hoodia.
Was hoodia's potential application as an appetite suppressant immediately obvious?
"No, it took them a long time. In fact, the original research was done in the mid 1960s," says Dixey.
It took the South African national laboratory 30 years to isolate and identify the specific appetite-suppressing ingredient in hoodia. When they found it, they applied for a patent and licensed it to Phytopharm.
Phytopharm has spent more than $20 million so far on research, including clinical trials with obese volunteers that have yielded promising results. Subjects given hoodia ended up eating about 1,000 calories a day less than those in the control group. To put that in perspective, the average American man consumes about 2,600 calories a day; a woman about 1,900.
"If you take this compound every day, your wish to eat goes down. And we've seen that very, very dramatically," says Dixey.
But why do you need a patent for a plant? "The patent is on the application of the plant as a weight-loss material. And, of course, the active compounds within the plant. It's not on the plant itself," says Dixey.
So no one else can use hoodia for weight loss? "As a weight-management product without infringing the patent, that's correct," says Dixey.
But what does that say about all these weight-loss products that claim to have hoodia in it? Trimspa says its X32 pills contain 75 mg of hoodia. The company is pushing its product with an ad campaign featuring Anna Nicole Smith, even though the FDA has notified Trimspa that it hasn't demonstrated that the product is safe.
Some companies have even used the results of Phytopharm's clinical tests to market their products.
"This is just straightforward theft. That's what it is. People are stealing data, which they haven't done, they've got no proper understanding of, and sticking on the bottle," says Dixey. "When we have assayed these materials, they contain between 0.1 and 0.01 percent of the active ingredient claimed. But they use the term hoodia on the bottle, of course, so they -- does nothing at all."
But Dixey isn't the only one who's felt ripped off. The Bushmen first heard the news about the patent when Phytopharm put out a press release. Roger Chennells, a lawyer in South Africa who represents the Bushmen, who are also called "the San," was appalled.
"The San did not even know about it," says Chennells. "They had given the information that led directly toward the patent."
The taking of traditional knowledge without compensation is called "bio-piracy."
"You have said, and I'm going to quote you, 'that the San felt as if someone had stolen the family silver,'" says Stahl to Chennells. "So what did you do?"
"I wouldn't want to go into some of the details as to what kind of letters were written or what kind of threats were made," says Chennells. "We engaged them. They had done something wrong, and we wanted them to acknowledge it."
Chennells was determined to help the Bushmen who, he says, have been exploited for centuries. First they were pushed aside by black tribes. Then, when white colonists arrived, they were nearly annihilated.
"About the turn of the century, there were still hunting parties in Namibia and in South Africa that allowed farmers to go and kill Bushmen," says Chennells. "It's well documented."
The Bushmen are still stigmatized in South Africa, and plagued with high unemployment, little education, and lots of alcoholism. And now, it seemed they were about to be cut out of a potential windfall from hoodia. So Chennells threatened to sue the national lab on their behalf.
"We knew that if it was successful, many, many millions of dollars would be coming towards the San," says Chennells. "Many, many millions. They've talked about the market being hundreds and hundreds of millions in America."
In the end, a settlement was reached. The Bushmen will get a percentage of the profits -- if there are profits. But that's a big if.
The future of hoodia is not yet a sure thing. The project hit a major snag last year. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which had teamed up with Phytopharm, and funded much of the research, dropped out when making a pill out of the active ingredient seemed beyond reach.
Dixey says it can be made synthetically: "We've made milligrams of it. But it's very expensive. It's not possible to make it synthetically in what's called a scaleable process. So we couldn't make a metric ton of it or something that is the sort of quantity you'd need to actually start doing something about obesity in thousands of people."
Phytopharm decided to market hoodia in its natural form, in diet shakes and bars. That meant it needed the hoodia plant itself.
But given the obesity epidemic in the United States, it became obvious that what was needed was a lot of hoodia - much more than was growing in the wild in the Kalahari. And so they came here.
60 Minutes visited one of Phytopharm's hoodia plantations in South Africa. They'll need a lot of these plantations to meet the expected demand.
Agronomist Simon MacWilliam has a tall order: grow a billion portions a year of hoodia, within just a couple of years. He admitted that starting up the plantation has been quite a challenge.
"The problem is we're dealing with a novel crop. It's a plant we've taken out of the wild and we're starting to grow it,' says MacWilliam. "So we have no experience. So it's different? diseases and pests which we have to deal with."
How confident are they that they will be able to grow enough? "We're very confident of that," he says. "We've got an expansion program which is going to be 100s of acres. And we'll be able - ready to meet the demand.
This could be huge, given the obesity epidemic. Phytopharm says it's about to announce marketing plans that will have meal-replacement hoodia products on supermarket shelves by 2008.
MacWilliam says these products are a slightly different species from the hoodia Stahl tasted in the Kalahari Desert. "It's actually a lot more bitter than the plant that you tasted," says MacWilliam.
The advantage is this species of hoodia will grow a lot faster. But more bitter? How bad could it be? Stahl decided to find out. "Not good," she says.
Phytopharm says that when its product gets to market, it will be certified safe and effective. They also promise that it'll taste good.
For more information visit: http://www.hoodiagordoniiplus.com/?aid=943365
Now along comes hoodia. Never heard of it? Soon it'll be tripping off your tongue, because hoodia is a natural substance that literally takes your appetite away.
It's very different from diet stimulants like Ephedra and Phenfen that are now banned because of dangerous side effects. Hoodia doesn't stimulate at all. Scientists say it fools the brain by making you think you're full, even if you've eaten just a morsel. Correspondent Lesley Stahl reports.
"Hoodia, a plant that tricks the brain by making the stomach feel full, has been in the diet of South Africa's Bushmen for thousands of years."
Because the only place in the world where hoodia grows wild is in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa.
Nigel Crawhall, a linguist and interpreter, hired an experienced tracker named Toppies Kruiper, a local aboriginal Bushman, to help find it. The Bushmen were featured in the movie "The Gods Must Be Crazy."
Kruiper led 60 Minutes crews out into the desert. Stahl asked him if he ate hoodia. "I really like to eat them when the new rains have come," says Kruiper, speaking through the interpreter. "Then they're really quite delicious."
When we located the plant, Kruiper cut off a stalk that looked like a small spiky pickle, and removed the sharp spines. In the interest of science, Stahl ate it. She described the taste as "a little cucumbery in texture, but not bad."
So how did it work? Stahl says she had no after effects - no funny taste in her mouth, no queasy stomach, and no racing heart. She also wasn't hungry all day, even when she would normally have a pang around mealtime. And, she also had no desire to eat or drink the entire day. "I'd have to say it did work," says Stahl.
Although the West is just discovering hoodia, the Bushmen of the Kalahari have been eating it for a very long time. After all, they have been living off the land in southern Africa for more than 100,000 years.
Some of the Bushmen, like Anna Swartz, still live in old traditional huts, and cook so-called Bush food gathered from the desert the old-fashioned way.
The first scientific investigation of the plant was conducted at South Africa's national laboratory. Because Bushmen were known to eat hoodia, it was included in a study of indigenous foods.
"What they found was when they fed it to animals, the animals ate it and lost weight," says Dr. Richard Dixey, who heads an English pharmaceutical company called Phytopharm that is trying to develop weight-loss products based on hoodia.
Was hoodia's potential application as an appetite suppressant immediately obvious?
"No, it took them a long time. In fact, the original research was done in the mid 1960s," says Dixey.
It took the South African national laboratory 30 years to isolate and identify the specific appetite-suppressing ingredient in hoodia. When they found it, they applied for a patent and licensed it to Phytopharm.
Phytopharm has spent more than $20 million so far on research, including clinical trials with obese volunteers that have yielded promising results. Subjects given hoodia ended up eating about 1,000 calories a day less than those in the control group. To put that in perspective, the average American man consumes about 2,600 calories a day; a woman about 1,900.
"If you take this compound every day, your wish to eat goes down. And we've seen that very, very dramatically," says Dixey.
But why do you need a patent for a plant? "The patent is on the application of the plant as a weight-loss material. And, of course, the active compounds within the plant. It's not on the plant itself," says Dixey.
So no one else can use hoodia for weight loss? "As a weight-management product without infringing the patent, that's correct," says Dixey.
But what does that say about all these weight-loss products that claim to have hoodia in it? Trimspa says its X32 pills contain 75 mg of hoodia. The company is pushing its product with an ad campaign featuring Anna Nicole Smith, even though the FDA has notified Trimspa that it hasn't demonstrated that the product is safe.
Some companies have even used the results of Phytopharm's clinical tests to market their products.
"This is just straightforward theft. That's what it is. People are stealing data, which they haven't done, they've got no proper understanding of, and sticking on the bottle," says Dixey. "When we have assayed these materials, they contain between 0.1 and 0.01 percent of the active ingredient claimed. But they use the term hoodia on the bottle, of course, so they -- does nothing at all."
But Dixey isn't the only one who's felt ripped off. The Bushmen first heard the news about the patent when Phytopharm put out a press release. Roger Chennells, a lawyer in South Africa who represents the Bushmen, who are also called "the San," was appalled.
"The San did not even know about it," says Chennells. "They had given the information that led directly toward the patent."
The taking of traditional knowledge without compensation is called "bio-piracy."
"You have said, and I'm going to quote you, 'that the San felt as if someone had stolen the family silver,'" says Stahl to Chennells. "So what did you do?"
"I wouldn't want to go into some of the details as to what kind of letters were written or what kind of threats were made," says Chennells. "We engaged them. They had done something wrong, and we wanted them to acknowledge it."
Chennells was determined to help the Bushmen who, he says, have been exploited for centuries. First they were pushed aside by black tribes. Then, when white colonists arrived, they were nearly annihilated.
"About the turn of the century, there were still hunting parties in Namibia and in South Africa that allowed farmers to go and kill Bushmen," says Chennells. "It's well documented."
The Bushmen are still stigmatized in South Africa, and plagued with high unemployment, little education, and lots of alcoholism. And now, it seemed they were about to be cut out of a potential windfall from hoodia. So Chennells threatened to sue the national lab on their behalf.
"We knew that if it was successful, many, many millions of dollars would be coming towards the San," says Chennells. "Many, many millions. They've talked about the market being hundreds and hundreds of millions in America."
In the end, a settlement was reached. The Bushmen will get a percentage of the profits -- if there are profits. But that's a big if.
The future of hoodia is not yet a sure thing. The project hit a major snag last year. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which had teamed up with Phytopharm, and funded much of the research, dropped out when making a pill out of the active ingredient seemed beyond reach.
Dixey says it can be made synthetically: "We've made milligrams of it. But it's very expensive. It's not possible to make it synthetically in what's called a scaleable process. So we couldn't make a metric ton of it or something that is the sort of quantity you'd need to actually start doing something about obesity in thousands of people."
Phytopharm decided to market hoodia in its natural form, in diet shakes and bars. That meant it needed the hoodia plant itself.
But given the obesity epidemic in the United States, it became obvious that what was needed was a lot of hoodia - much more than was growing in the wild in the Kalahari. And so they came here.
60 Minutes visited one of Phytopharm's hoodia plantations in South Africa. They'll need a lot of these plantations to meet the expected demand.
Agronomist Simon MacWilliam has a tall order: grow a billion portions a year of hoodia, within just a couple of years. He admitted that starting up the plantation has been quite a challenge.
"The problem is we're dealing with a novel crop. It's a plant we've taken out of the wild and we're starting to grow it,' says MacWilliam. "So we have no experience. So it's different? diseases and pests which we have to deal with."
How confident are they that they will be able to grow enough? "We're very confident of that," he says. "We've got an expansion program which is going to be 100s of acres. And we'll be able - ready to meet the demand.
This could be huge, given the obesity epidemic. Phytopharm says it's about to announce marketing plans that will have meal-replacement hoodia products on supermarket shelves by 2008.
MacWilliam says these products are a slightly different species from the hoodia Stahl tasted in the Kalahari Desert. "It's actually a lot more bitter than the plant that you tasted," says MacWilliam.
The advantage is this species of hoodia will grow a lot faster. But more bitter? How bad could it be? Stahl decided to find out. "Not good," she says.
Phytopharm says that when its product gets to market, it will be certified safe and effective. They also promise that it'll taste good.
For more information visit: http://www.hoodiagordoniiplus.com/?aid=943365
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