Neem - The Divine Tree (video with transcript)

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this is important. if a child takes this and doesn't get sick

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for a year. can you imagine if you
give it to a hundred children

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out of whom ten would otherwise die,
so i believe it's important

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we have to sell this directly
to people because if you go through all

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the scientific procedures it will take
fifteen or twenty years and everyone will be dead

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we can't afford that so what we
have to do is cut the chain. we've proven

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that the product isn't dangerous it can't
kill so we have to act fast and give it

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to the children

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now people are asking to buy it
for their homes saying that since they've

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been using it they haven't had
malaria so what am i suppose to do fold my

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arms and sit around and wait.

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the plasmodium which is the parasite which causes malaria is transmitted to human blood by

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the mosquito

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if you have a way of preventing the
plasmodium from settling in the blood

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then you pretty much have a way of
stopping the development of malaria

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the evidence we have that it works, is that we conducted a medically

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supervised trial in the neighborhood of
Pikine and the result was that during the entire

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year there was no malaria

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that was a very valuable experiment in
terms of using Neem

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in Sengal

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you want to try to cut the profits
of the multinationals how many companies

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are there already in the US and france making
malaria drugs and how much money are they

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bringing in. it's up to us to take responsibility
responsibility

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South of Dakar

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the town of Kaolack is locally known as
the mosquito capital of the world

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Cheikh was inspired to begin his
own neem research after watching a TV

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documentary about it's uses in india

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fashion experimenting with himself and
his family he started booking his own

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neem oil medicine

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and giving free samples of the local
health centers

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people are finding that the
malaria medicines they buy from the

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chemist don't work.

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you take them and you don't recover

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but with Neem, automatically the malaria is under

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control

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although people locally have
started buying his medicine

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Chiekh Bamba is not aiming to make a
profit from it of but all his research

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gave him another idea to use the Neem oil he extracted to make his own brand

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of soaps and skin creams which have
become popular around town and

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allowed him and his family to
build a small but thriving business

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which in turn allows him to keep the
price of the medicine to a minimum

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it is not much but we've tried
to do what we can with an oil press

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pestle and mortar and some
basic kitchen equipment

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with that we started  extractng neem oil
little by little

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on the outskirts of dakar we found
a small business beginning to invest in

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its own neem research

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funded from sales of organic fertilizers
insect repellents & cleaning products

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all made from neem.

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We at Chemiques couldn't just sit around

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doing nothing for waiting for mana to fall
from the sky. The solution we

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chose is to do what we can with our own money and manufacturer marketable products

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that can provide us with our own resources

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and develop our independent research

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we have the natural resource, we
have the people with the intellectual

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skills and technical training and we
have the people who can manufacture

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products to international standards.

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the obstacles we face are part of a
much larger global issues and if you

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don't understand that, nothing will make
sense.

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that's why we say 'we are neem militants'

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The Mahatma ate chapatis,

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boiled beets,

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some raw vegetables, and oranges.

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On the side of his plate was a large lump of very bitter

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neem leaves,

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a notable blood cleanser

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With his spoon he separated a portion and placed it on my dish.

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I bolted it down with water,

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remembering childhood days when Mother had forced me to swallow the

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disagreeable dose.

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Gandhi, however,

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bit by bit was eating the neem paste with as much relish as if it had been a delicious sweetmeat.

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in this trifling incident

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i noted the mahatma ability

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to detach is his mind from the senses at
will.

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Dr Raghunatha Rao of the institute of
nutrition in hyderabad

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once Neem to be used everywhere that
mosquitoes breed such as overhead water

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tanks and the standing water of rice
paddy fields. When the mosquitoes lay their

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on the surface of the water

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they come into contact with the neem concentration that is present in the

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water medium.

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When they come into the contact the neem
principles act as a growth retardent

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and they will not allow the
mosquito larvae could grow into fully

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grown adult so

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before they attain the adult stage they will die

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unless or until there is the adult stage they
cannot do go to the human beings they

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cannot go to the pigs

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to suck the blood.

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in terms of uh... what we've just talked
about

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neem inhibiting

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mosquito larvae growth

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what would you say are it's advantages over alternative methods for doing

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the same thing? if you

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promote pesticides for the control
of mosquito population particularly

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in rice fields, you need to dump tons
of pesticides

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in the environment

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it damages the environment. so. nobody has
got right to damage the environment

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we have to protecting the environment
so neem plays a major role.

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At the moment neem pesticides only
account for 0.2%

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of the total global pesticide industry
which is worth seventeen billion pounds

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a year.

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over the past decade name has become the
subject of controversy

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it's all about if anyone should profit
from the tree and its unique properties

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companies have the right to take up
patents on name, that amounts to them

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stealing the knowledge of indigenous
people

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the environmentalists doctor vandana
shiva campaigns on this issue

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my consciousness about the Neem

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really started when i started to look at
the

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high cost of industrial agriculture and
i started to look at farming

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and find out how dependent agriculture
remained on chemicals that were created

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for war

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then we had the Bhopal1984 2nd December night, killed three thousand

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people in one night,

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one pesticide plant leak.

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my first response was why do we have to
have such genocide when

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we have trees like the neem,

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so i collected saplings

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and went to Bhopal when we had a very big
convergence

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all concerned citizens of india

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started a campaign called 'No more Bhopals, plant a Neem'

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in 1995 doctor Shiva
discovered that an american agro-chemical

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company, W.R.Grace,

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had taken out a patent on the fungicidal use of neem.

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BBC- She decided to challenge their right to
do this at the european patent office

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this landmark case was to last for ten
years and eventually doctor shiva's

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team won.

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Dr. Shiva: We wanted to

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reveal what bio privacy is; this patenting of
traditional knowledge and indigenous

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biodiversity.

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We fought a patent that's held by the biggest super-power of the world and one of

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the biggest chemical giants of the world

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would be an effective patent to take on.

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The claim they were making in it was
basically inventing

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the use of neem products to control fungal diseases

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inventing the way to make an extract, inventing  the percentages of extract

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and we were able to establish

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what has been claimed

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by Grace and the US department of
agriculture

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as a novel invented step, this is

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everyday use.

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BBC -This is the place where a lot of india's
patent laws

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and up being argued over and sometimes
defeated; it's the supreme court

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here in new delhi

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Prashant Bhushan has fought in
many such cases

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Do you think you can ever be justified
to have patents.

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uh... on any application what so ever on
biological life forms?

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Dr. Bhushan: No. In fact i feel that there is no
justification to have patents at all

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and certainly not for life forms
BBC: What's wrong with patents?

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Bhushan: I feel that giving a monopoly right
to a person just because he got there

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first

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it's not morally justified it's not even
justified in terms of expedience because

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justification which is normally given
for this is that it will encourage

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research and development and private
companies and put in more money if they

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can profit from it

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but in fact most of the basic research
that has been done in the world so far

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on anything has been done in publicly
funded institutions and therefore I see

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no reason why private monopoly
rights for profit should be created on

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the basis of intellectual property

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i feel that we are creating a society
based on greed when we allow and

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encourage these kind of intellectual
property rights