Hoodia Scam Hoodia Gordonii is a natural appetite suppressant. Is the hoodia you buy online real or a scam?

Over the centuries, the San, who were the original inhabitants of Southern Africa, were pushed off their lands and forced to live as hunter-gatherers in the arid and hostile Kalahari and Namib deserts. They were hunted and killed as vermin by European settlers but the survivors displayed remarkable powers of adaptability to their harsh environment.

Their knowledge of the local flora and fauna, weather patterns and use of roots, barks and animal organs is unsurpassed. They became the subject of countless documentaries, picture books, postcards and research. But, while the researchers and photographers earned fortunes from the San, they themselves got nothing. They were reduced to isolated, landless communities on the fringes of the modern states.

In 1996, the existence of the San tribes was recognised when they successfully claimed the return of some of their ancestral lands in the Kalahari. They formed the Working Group of Indigenous Minorities in Southern Africa (WIMSA) to protect their interests. In 1997, WIMSA announced it would no longer allow free access to the media or researchers and began to draw up payment contracts.

Over the past four years, the organisation has taken legal action against the unauthorised use of their name and photographs of them in books, postcards, tourist promotions and so on. Last year, reports Peter’ Hawthorne of Time, for the first time, they negotiated royalty agreements with the producers of an award-winning documentary. Revenue is ploughed into education and community development.

A South African lawyer, Roger Chennells, fought two major claims on behalf of the San. The first involved rock art sites which date back 27,000 years. He wants the San to be involved in the management of the sites and to benefit from them,

The second involved their traditional knowledge. To keep hunger and thirst at bay, the San chew on pieces of the Hoodia cactus which acts like an appetite suppressant. South Africa’s CSIR isolated the active ingredients in the cactus and in 1997 patented it, as P57. The CSIR negotiated the commercial rights to P57 with Britain’s Phytopharm, which in turn sold them to the US pharmaceutical giant Pfizer for a reported $32m. Pfizer hoped to have P57 out as a super slimming pill within three years. However, Pfizer withdrew their participation after determining that this was not possible.

There is still a chance that a viable hoodia gordonii product can be sold in the future, even though it is likely several years away. The San people will benefit from this, as agreements have been made to share profits with them. In March, 2003, Southern Africa’s indigenous San people signed a landmark deal, securing financial rights to a diet drug developed from hoodia gordonii.

Under the deal, the San people would receive 8 percent of payments the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research receives while the drug undergoes trials.

Once the drug is commercially available, the San would be paid 6 percent of all royalties awarded to the South African lab, which holds the patent for the medication derived from the San’s traditional knowledge of the hoodia plant.

The San are among the poorest people in the region and the deal could bring in millions of dollars. The money would be divided among its people living in South Africa, Botswana, Namibia, and Angola and would be used communally, mostly for buying land and investing in education and development projects.

If you purchase illegally harvested hoodia products, you are stealing from the San people. Hoodia gordonii is not yet available as an appetite supressant in legal form.

San

From The Columbia Encyclopedia, Sixth Edition

SAN [San] , people of SW Africa, consisting of several groups and numbering over 85,000 in all. They are generally short in stature; their skin is yellowish brown in color; and they have broad noses, flat ears, bulging foreheads, and prominent cheekbones. The San have been called Bushmen by whites in South Africa, but the term is now considered derogatory. Although many now work for white settlers, about half are still nomadic hunters and gatherers of wild food in desolate areas like the Kalahari desert of SW Africa. Their social unit is the small hunting band; larger organizations are loose and temporary. Caves and rock shelters are used as dwellings. They possess only what they can carry, using poisoned arrowheads to fell game and transporting water in ostrich-egg shells. The San have a rich folklore, are skilled in drawing, and have a remarkably complex language characterized by the use of click sounds, related to that of the Khoikhoi . For thousands of years the San lived in S and central Africa, but by the time of the Portuguese arrival in the 15th cent., they had already been forced into the interior of S Africa. In the 18th and 19th cent., they resisted the encroachment on their lands of Dutch settlers, but by 1862 that resistance had been crushed.

Bibliography: See E. M. Thomas, The Harmless People (1959, repr. 1969); J. B. Wright, Bushmen Raiders of the Dakensberg, 1840-1870 (1971); L. J. Marshall, !Kung of Nyae Nyae (1975) and Nyae Nyae !Kung Belief and Rites (1999); R. B. Lee and I. DeVore, Hunter-Gatherers (1976).

Hoodia Gordonii is a succulent plant that grows in the African Kalahari desert. It thrives in extremely hot weather, and it takes many years to mature. The plants, which are native to a narrow region of southern Africa’s republic of Namibia, on the edge of the Kalahari Desert, are pollinated by flies - and flies regard the sickening smell given off by the blossoms much as a hungry teen-ager would the aroma of Big Macs while sitting in the drive-through lane. Hoodia gordonii is very rare and is protected by national conservation laws in South Africa and Namibia. It can only be collected or grown with a permit.

Bushmen have used hoodia for several centuries, to help ward off hunger when on long trips in the desert. They would cut a piece of the plant, which is about the size of a cucumber, and eat it. It takes a piece of fresh hoodia, about 2 or 3 inches long, to get the appetite suppressing benefit. Scientists have found that one molecule in the plant is responsible for the appetite reducing effect. This molecule has been named P57.

Phytopharm owns the patent to P57, and no other company or individual can sell hoodia as a weight loss aid.

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer entered a deal with Phytopharm and tried to isolate P57 into a form that could be marketed to the public. After several years of research, they determined that this was not possible, and they pulled out of the agreement.

Hoodia is currently being sold online by various companies and individuals. They are selling dried, powdered hoodia. However, the appetite suppressing ability of hoodia gordonii is only found in large fresh pieces of the plant. The powder that you purchase contains such a small amount of P57 that it cannot produce the desired effect. These products are not regulated or inspected, and the exact contents are not known.

Phytopharm is still working on developing a viable source of hoodia gordonii that can be marketed to the public. They expect this to take several years. When this is available, it will only be sold by companies that are certified by Phytopharm as being authentic and having the correct amount of P57 to benefit the user.

The current supply of genuine hoodia gordonii is very limited, and is considered rare. The South African government has chosen to protect hoodia gordonii as an endangered plant. In October, 2004, CITES (Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora) provided added protection. Hoodia gordonii cannot be exported as a weight loss product. Limited amounts of the plant can be exported, but only as herbarium collections. The extent of illegal trade is unknown.

According to CITES:
3.4 The potential impact of illegal trade is considered to be very high because of the threat of over-exploitation after the patenting of compound P57 by the CSIR, in South Africa. Hoodia products are widely advertised on websites and all the material used to manufacture these products is thought to be derived from wild-harvested plants. There are at least ten companies offering Hoodia products for sale on their websites. Very high actual and potential impacts of trade can be expected, since some pharmaceutical companies require wild material for extraction of the active compound.

2.7 All Hoodias have been subject to collecting by succulent collectors, and several taxa have been impacted by habitat disturbance (e.g. road construction, mining and overgrazing).
Harvesting for medicinal properties has occurred in the past as part of traditional practices, but harvesting for commercial purposes is becoming a large potential threat. Since the isolation of the active ingredient in H. gordonii and the extensive press coverage that projected huge financial benefits to be derived from exploiting this species, there has been an increasing interest in the harvest of Hoodia spp. Although H. gordonii is abundant and widespread, collectors of plant material cannot always tell the different species apart, and collecting from the wild is likely to impact a number of Hoodia species. Harvesting requires cutting off the above ground parts of the plant and it is relatively easy to decimate small populations.

Therefore, the hoodia gordonii products you purchase on the internet may not be actual hoodia gordonii, may contain little to no P57, and are probably exported illegally and are encouraging the extinction of this plant.