The corkwood tree, and other native plants in the Duboisia genus, were being used in indigenous Australian medicine since at least the first written records from when the English arrived in 1770. But since the pandemic, corkwood found itself at the centre of pharmaceutical industry cartel practices.
The plant at the centre of the story is Duboisia myoporoides. Otherwise known as the soft corkwood tree, D. myoporoides contains hyoscyamine and scopolamine.
The chemicals are relatively well known psychoactives in many different traditional medicine preparations. They’re associated with witchcraft in Europe and the Americas via plants like datura, belladonna and mandrake.
But the hyoscyamine in particular is a precursor for making hyoscine-n-butyl bromide, which is prescribed to prevent abdominal spasms. As in many other cases, the pharmaceutical “innovation” is simply a purified and tested extract of an indigenous medicine.
This anticholinergic and antispasmodic drug has a global market of $108 million. It doesn’t appear that Aboriginal Land Corporations have benefited from these sales.
Australia’s place in the industry now centres on Kingaroy, in the South Burnett region of Queensland. There, farmers are growing D. myoporoides for processing at the Australian Alkaloids factory in conditions of secrecy.
“There’s no price we can see as growers,” one told the ABC anonymously in 2021. “We can’t see supply and demand, we have no idea of how much is being produced, how much is used in manufacturing each year, so there’s no visibility from the farm gate.”
Investigations from the ACCC and competition regulators in the EU followed. Fines of AUD $1.9 million in November 2022 and €13.4 million in October 2023 were the end result, with EU regulators finding, “the six companies,” including Australian Alkaloids, “coordinated and agreed to fix the minimum sales price” of hyoscine-n-butyl bromide.
The Duboisia genus has long been prominent in European knowledge of bush medicine. Duboisia hopwoodii use was recorded in 1770, and in 1879 an Australian pharmacologist isolated nicotine from the plant.
D hopwoodii is the chief ingredient in pituri, an indigenous drug associated with the Channel Country. Pituri is prepared by combining the nicotine-containing chewing leaves with the ashes of other unknown plants. The method is reminiscent of the preparation of coca leaves in the Andean-Amazonian region.
According to Jacqueline Healy, senior curator at the University of Melbourne’s Medical History Museum, Duboisia myoporoides came to prominence when it was used to prevent seasickness among Allied soldiers during the D-Day invasion of Normandy in 1944. Its leaves were boiled down to form a “mystery pill” reportedly caused some soldiers to drift off to sleep despite the rough seas.
It was later discovered that the remedy had such potent tranquilizing effects that it could be used in surgery. Its active ingredients remain in use for sedating eye surgery patients today.
This transformation of the corkwood tree from bush medicine to big pharma profit item underscores the delicate balance between achieving recognition of indigenous knowledge, on one hand, and on the other, indigenous groups exercising control over knowledge so they can benefit and contribute further medical innovations.
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