
India blocks Colgate patents for spices - Garbage
http://www.deccanherald.com/content/490282/india-blocks-colgate-patents-spices.html
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audunw
Imagine all the countless hour of pointless human labor that could be saved if
we simply abolished patents. How many man hours has been wasted in these
thousands of cases? And for what? How is patenting combination of spices going
to increase innovation?

But then again I suppose this "solves" the problem that there's not enough
productive work to go around.

In a 100 years perhaps all human endeavor will be about fighting over
imaginary monopolies.

~~~
golergka
> abolished patents

> How is patenting combination of spices going to increase innovation?

I'm sorry, but you seem to have jumped from "patents" to "patenting
combinations of spices" here. I don't think that you did this intentionally,
but you replaced the topic in between; first, you formulate your thesis as "we
should abolishing patents", and later, you seem to be proving it, but you
really only prove a different thesis, "we should abolish patenting combination
of spices".

Don't you see the difference between these two?

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astazangasta
Err, this is called exemplification. It is a common rhetorical device. Really
this could have done with any patent, which all need to go.

~~~
golergka
With any? Really?

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jackgavigan
Some background on the TKDL:
[http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-battle-
for-...](http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/the-battle-for-ayurveda-
india-is-racing-to-record-the-details-of-its-traditional-medicine-760086.html)

Kudos to the Indian government for coming up with an effective way to combat
these bogus patents.

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rurounijones
OT but this is not the first comment to I don't think I am hijacking.

Page loads fine (Actually started reading the article) then goes to
[http://www.deccanherald.com/enable_javascript.html](http://www.deccanherald.com/enable_javascript.html)

How retro (Plus the fact that the page actually DOES work without JS...)

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sandGorgon
the "prior art" for this is ancient Indian textbooks of medicine -
[http://www.tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/common/SourceInfo.as...](http://www.tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/common/SourceInfo.asp?GL=Eng)

The TKDL (Traditional Knowledge Digital Library) interface really sucks.. but
still has useful info.

Ayurveda -
[http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/Ayurveda/Ayu_Advancesear...](http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/Ayurveda/Ayu_Advancesearch.asp?GL=Eng)

Unani (Islamic Indian medicine)
-[http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/Unani/Una_Advancesearch....](http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/Unani/Una_Advancesearch.asp?GL=Eng)

Siddha (South Indian medicine) -
[http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/siddha/Sid_Advancesearch...](http://tkdl.res.in/tkdl/langdefault/siddha/Sid_Advancesearch.asp?GL=Eng)

Try searching for something like "basil". you get comprehensive formulae for
ancient indian recipes, methods of application,etc.

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astazangasta
"Dalchini", BTW, is literally "lentil sugar". Put some in your lentils for
added yum.

~~~
selimthegrim
This is probably a misspelling for darchini, i.e. cinnamon

~~~
shrikant
It's not a misspelling: the Hindi word is _dalchini_ , and the Bengali word is
_darchini_.

~~~
selimthegrim
That's interesting, because my Urdu speaking family in Karachi always says
darchini for some reason.

cf. [http://dsalsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-
bin/philologic/getobject.p...](http://dsalsrv02.uchicago.edu/cgi-
bin/philologic/getobject.pl?c.3:1:5612.platts)

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themgt
"You know what they call alternative medicine that's been proved to work? -
Medicine." \- Tim Minchin

This quote used to really sum up my opinion, but the more time I've spent
growing and eating and researching a variety of plants/herbs/spices, it's
quite clear that many of them do have quite a lot of beneficial health
effects, often unique in being more effective or having less side-effects than
western medicine. Plants have chemical-producing machinery that is in many
ways far more advanced than what humans have developed.

And many of them have been under-researched, I think both because of 20th
century biases and the regulatory/patent environment, so in fact there's quite
a gap between what we call medicine and treatments in alternative medicine
which could be reasonably considered likely beneficial/effective.

Just as an example, go read the Wikipedia pages and some assorted Googled info
on what was listed in the article: nutmeg, ginger, “Bakul” tree, camphor,
cinnamon, turmeric, Indian banyan, black pepper, long pepper, Neem and clove.

~~~
pinaceae
absolutely.

so please, once you have a serious condition only take your spices.

no penicilin (or does it count as mold?), no insulin, no aneasthesia for you.
just a little cinnamon.

wear glasses or contacts? away with them! a little pepper in your eyes works
wonders.

and they wonder why seattle has lower polio vaccines rates than kazakhstan or
tchad.

~~~
venomsnake
English is not my first language, but I kinda read the OP's post as "Guys, we
should throw some money in investigating some natural remedies, using the
scientific method and stripping them of bullshit, to see what works, why and
how"

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boot13
Javascript required.

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jhdevos
In firefox: Preferences -> Advanced -> enable "Warn me when websites try to
redirect or reload the page".

Other browsers will probably have similar options.

~~~
madez
How to activate this on Firefox on Android? Do you know the name of the
corresponding entry in about:config?

