Online Database of Traditional Tibetan Drugs Launched

This article announces the February 2005 launch of an online database of traditional Tibetan medicines in China. The freely accessible database offers 3,000 entries covering Tibetan pharmaceutical resources, traditional prescriptions, ancient and modern literature about Tibetan medicine, and information regarding Tibetan medical experts and institutions. While the database is currently available only in Chinese and Tibetan, plans are underway to seek sponsors so that it can become a comprehensive multilingual website with news, views and other information about Tibetan drugs.

One of the goals behind creating the database is an attempt to "better protect, standardise and utilise the indigenous heritage of the Tibetan people," according to Ma Jianxia, the database's programme director and a research fellow at the Lanzhou centre. Information in the database includes details of the names of plants used in Tibetan medicine, where they are found and how to identify, collect, store and cultivate them, as well as pharmaceutical effects including any toxins. The article mentions that many Tibetan doctors and researchers volunteered to help refine the information that is now available.

The database is offered by two institutes of the Chinese Academy of Sciences: the Northwest Institute of Plateau Biology, and the Lanzhou-based Scientific Information Center for Resources and Environment. They are funding the database at a cost of approximately one million yuan (US$120,000).

The article concludes with Ma Jianxia's comment that the database developers "have yet to consider the intellectual property implications of making indigenous Tibetan knowledge freely available on the Internet."