According to CNN:
Hoodia There’s been lots of hype about hoodia gordonni, a cactuslike South African plant with appetite-suppressing chemicals (in one study, people who took it ate 1,000 fewer calories a day).

But the hoodia in that test isn’t available right now, says University of California, Los Angeles, expert and Health Advisory Board member David Heber, M.D., Ph.D. He says the hoodia products in stores or online probably contain other hoodia types that don’t work — or none at all.

The British company Phytopharm, which has a global patent on hoodia for weight loss, says real products are years away. Bottom line: The available hoodia products may be safe, but they’re useless.

To clear matters, here is the transcript from the program. As you will see, these products were not recommended at all, because they are either fake or contain too little of the active ingredient to do any good.

STAHL: Each year, we spend over $40 billion on products designed to help us slim down. But none of them seem to be working very well.

But now along comes hoodia. Never heard of it? Soon it`ll be tripping off your tongue, because hoodia is a natural substance that they say takes your appetite away.

It`s very different from diet stimulants like Ephedra and Phenfen that are now banned because of dangerous side effects. Hoodia doesn`t stimulate at all. Scientists say it fools the brain by making you think you`re full, even if you`ve eaten just a morsel.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE) STAHL (voice over): Hoodia is a bitter-tasting, cactus-like plant.

We were told that if we wanted to try it, we`d have to go to Africa, because the only place in the world where hoodia grows wild is here in the Kalahari Desert of South Africa.

Nigel Crawhall, a linguist and our interpreter, hired an experienced tracker named Toppies Kruiper, a local aboriginal Bushman, to help us find it. The Bushmen, who were featured in the movie, “The Gods Must Be Crazy,” speak a click language. Oba (ph) is their word for hoodia.

Toppies led us out into the desert.

(on camera): So, Toppies, do you eat hoodia all of the time?

NIGEL CRAWHALL, LINGUIST: He says, “I really like to eat them when the new rains have come. Then they`re really quite delicious.” STAHL (voice over): Toppies says there is a lot less hoodia than there used to be, because of the recent droughts. It was like being on safari and coming upon a tiger — sort of.

CRAWHALL: OK, here we go.

STAHL (on camera): Here?

CRAWHALL: Yes, right here.

STAHL: Right here.

CRAWHALL: This is a small one.

STAHL: This is it?

CRAWHALL: This is a baby.

STAHL (voice over): Toppies cut off a stalk that looked like a small spiky pickle, and removed the sharp spines.

(on camera): Now, let me ask, is that little amount is going to be enough to suppress my appetite for a full day?

CRAWHALL: OK, he says, “This is enough to make you lose your appetite. You won`t have any desire for hunger,” is what he said.

STAHL: All day?

(voice over): In the interest of science, I ate it.

(on camera): Ready, aim, fire. They do pay me for this. A little cucumbery…

CRAWHALL: Yes.

STAHL: … in texture, but not bad. I`m feeling extremely brave.

OK? Toppies, I`ve done it.

(voice over): The next day, I was ready to report.

(on camera): So, did the hoodia work? Well, first of all, I had no after-effect — no funny taste in my mouth, no queasy stomach, no racing heart. Nothing. And secondly, I wasn`t ever hungry all day. Even when I would normally have a pang, say, around lunchtime or dinnertime, I didn`t.

I had no particular desire to eat or drink for the entire day. So, I guess I`d have to say it did work.

(voice over): Although the West is just discovering hoodia, the Bushmen of the Kalahari have been eating it for a very long time. After all, they were living off the land in southern Africa for over 100,000 years.

Some of the Bushmen, like Anna Swartz, still live in old traditional huts, and cook so-called Bush food gathered from the desert the old- fashioned way.

Hoodia may or may not have anything to do with it. But you never see an overweight Bushman.

The first scientific investigation of the plant was conducted here at South Africa`s national laboratory. Because Bushmen were known to eat hoodia, it was included in a study of indigenous foods.

DR. RICHARD DIXEY, PHYTOPHARM: And what they found was that when they fed it to animals, the animals ate it and lost weight.

STAHL: Dr. Richard Dixey heads an English pharmaceutical company called Phytopharm that`s trying to develop weight-loss products based on hoodia.

(on camera): Was its potential application as an appetite suppressant immediately obvious?

DIXEY: No, it took them a long time. In fact, the original research was done in the mid 1960s.

STAHL (voice over): It took the South African national laboratory 30 years to isolate and identify the specific appetite-suppressing ingredient in hoodia. When they found it, they applied for a patent and licensed it to Phytopharm.

(on camera): Phytopharm has spent about $20 million so far on research, including clinical trials with obese volunteers that have yielded promising results. Subjects given hoodia ended up eating about 1,000 calories less a day than those in the control group. To put that in perspective, the average American man consumes about 2,600 calories a day; a woman about 1,900.

DIXEY: If you take this compound every day, your wish to eat goes down. And we`ve seen that very, very dramatically.

STAHL: If it`s a plant and it grows, why a patent?

DIXEY: The patent is on the application of the plant as a weight-loss material and, of course, the active compounds within the plant. It`s not on the plant itself.

STAHL: And so, no one else can use hoodia for weight loss?

DIXEY: As a weight-management product without infringing the patent, that`s correct.

STAHL (voice over): But what does that say about all these weight- loss products? Each one claims to have hoodia in it.

Trimspa says its X32 pills contain 75 milligrams of hoodia. The company is pushing its product with an ad campaign featuring Anna Nicole Smith, even though the FDA has notified Trimspa that it hasn`t demonstrated that the product is safe.

Some companies have even used the results of Phytopharm`s clinical tests to market their products.

DIXEY: This is just straightforward theft. That`s what it is.

People are stealing data, which they haven`t done, they`ve got no proper understanding of, and sticking on the bottle.

STAHL (on camera): You`re saying other people have gone out and extracted the hoodia plant and put it out for me to buy somewhere?

DIXEY: When we have assayed these materials, they contain between 0.1 and 0.01 percent of the active ingredient claimed. But they use the term hoodia on the bottle, of course.

STAHL: But you`re saying that small amount…

DIXEY: Does nothing at all.

STAHL: … has no effect.

DIXEY: None whatsoever.

STAHL (voice over): But Dixey isn`t the only one who has felt ripped off. The Bushmen first heard the news about the patent when Phytopharm put out a press release.

Roger Chennells, a lawyer in South Africa who represents the Bushmen, who are also called the San, was appalled.

ROGER CHENNELLS, ATTORNEY: The San did not even know about it.

STAHL: And this was something that was in their tradition.

CHENNELLS: They had given the information that led directly towards the patent.

STAHL (voice over): The taking of traditional knowledge without compensation is called bio-piracy.

(on camera): You have said — and I`m going to quote you here — “That the San felt as if someone had stolen the family silver.” CHENNELLS: I did say that.

STAHL: So what did you do?

CHENNELLS: Well, I wouldn`t want to go into some of the details as to what kind of letters were written or what kind of threats were made.

STAHL: But letters were written and threats were made.

CHENNELLS: Yes, we engaged with them. They had done something wrong, and we wanted them to acknowledge it.

STAHL (voice over): Chennells was determined to help the Bushmen who, he says, have been exploited for centuries. First, they were pushed aside by black tribes. Then, when white colonists arrived, nearly annihilated.

CHENNELLS: Around about the turn of the century, there were still hunting parties in Namibia and in South Africa that allowed farmers to go and kill Bushmen.

STAHL (on camera): Hunted Bushmen?

CHENNELLS: Yes, yes.

STAHL: Hunted as if they were animals?

CHENNELLS: It`s well documented.

STAHL (voice over): The Bushmen are still stigmatized in South Africa and plagued with high unemployment, little education and lots of alcoholism. And now, it seemed they were about to be cut out of a potential windfall from hoodia. And so Chennells threatened to sue the national lab on their behalf.

CHENNELLS: We knew that if it was successful, many, many millions of dollars would be coming towards the San.

STAHL (on camera): Many millions of dollars.

CHENNELLS: Many, many millions. They have talked about the market being hundreds and hundreds of millions in America.

STAHL: You seem pretty sure, I must say.

CHENNELL: Yes, I am quite sure.

STAHL (voice over): In the end, a settlement was reached. The Bushmen will get a percentage of the profits — if there are profits. And that`s a big if.

The future of hoodia is not yet a sure thing. The project hit a major snag last year. Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer, which had teamed up with Phytopharm, and funded much of the research, dropped out when making a pill out of the active ingredient seemed beyond reach.

(on camera): Can`t you make it synthetically?

DIXEY: It can be made. We`ve made milligrams of it.

STAHL: You have?

DIXEY: But it`s very expensive. It`s not possible to make it synthetically in what`s called a scaleable process. So we couldn`t make a metric ton of it or something, which is the sort of quantity you`d need to actually start doing something about obesity in thousands of people.

STAHL: Unable to make a synthetic pill, Phytopharm decided it would market hoodia in its natural form, in diet shakes and bars. That meant they needed the hoodia plant itself.

But given the obesity problem in the United States alone, it became obvious that what was needed was a lot of hoodia — much, much more than was growing in the wild in the Kalahari. And so they came here.

(voice over): This is one of Phytopharm`s hoodia plantations in South Africa. They`ll need a lot of plantations like this to meet the expected demand.

Agronomist Simon MacWilliam has a tall order: grow a billion portions a year of hoodia, within just a couple of years. But he admitted that starting up the plantation has been quite a challenge.

(on camera): Why is it so hard? I can see you`ve got some empty spaces here. What`s the problem?

SIMON MACWILLIAM, AGRONOMIST: The problem is we`re dealing with a novel crop. It`s a plant we`ve taken out of the wild, and we`re starting to grow it. So we have no experience. So it`s different diseases and pests which we have to deal with.

STAHL: How confident are you that you will be able to grow enough?

MACWILLIAM: We`re very confident of that. We`ve got an expansion program, which is going to be hundreds of acres. And we`ll be able — we`re ready to meet the demand.

STAHL (voice over): Which could be huge given the obesity epidemic.

Phytopharm says it`s about to announce marketing plans that will have meal- replacement hoodia products on supermarket shelves by 2008.

(on camera): Are these the same thing that I tasted when I was with the Bushmen in the Kalahari?

MACWILLIAM: No. I think you have had a slightly different species.

STAHL (voice over): This species has the advantage of growing a lot faster, but…

MACWILLIAM: It`s actually more bitter than the plant that you tasted.

STAHL: More bitter, huh? But I was planning on another day without thinking of food. How bad could it be?

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Are you ready?

STAHL (on camera): One, two, three, OK. Yes, it`s not good.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

Monday, 18 December 2006
Press Release: Department of Conservation 18th December 2006

Oprah-endorsed diet aid creates headache for DoC

A plant touted by Oprah as a dieting aid is creating a headache for the Department of Conservation (DoC).

Hoodia is a cactus-like plant native to the Namib Desert in Africa, and is widely believed to be an appetite suppressant. It is also a protected species, and as it gains popularity, DoC is seeing an increasing amount of products containing Hoodia entering New Zealand without the required certification.

Hoodia is protected under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species (CITES), an international agreement between governments to protect endangered plants and animals. DoC has managed CITES here since New Zealand became a member in 1989.

Hoodia can only be imported into New Zealand with CITES certification.

DoC CITES Officer, Jane Denton, says many people are not aware that Hoodia is a protected species.

“There is often a belief that natural or plant based products are harmless, however, more and more we are seeing the harm that trade can have on endangered species,” she said.

Ms Denton said much of the Hoodia intercepted at the border has been bought over the internet.

Products containing Hoodia that are not CITES certified will be confiscated at New Zealand’s borders. Companies found importing Hoodia products are liable for fines up to $100,000, and individuals can be fined $50,000 or imprisoned for up to three years.

More information on CITES can be found at www.doc.govt.nz , or www.cites.org .

We’ve received several email from readers that have become ill after taking hoodia pills they purchased locally or on the internet.  Complaints included stomach pains, rashes, nervousness, and nausea.  We urge you to reconsider buying hoodia products until a legitmate and licensed source is available.  At this point, we are waiting for Unilever to unveil their hoodia products, as they will probably be the only genuine and safe hoodia gordonii products on the market.

We could find only two studies of hoodia. In one, an unpublished 15-day clinical trial from a manufacturer, Phytopharm, nine volunteers who took pills containing P57, the supposed active ingredient, consumed fewer calories and lost more fat than those who took a placebo.

CR concluded:
Consumers have no way of knowing the type of hoodia or the amount of the plant or its active ingredient in these products, since dietary supplements are virtually unregulated. Given the very scanty evidence that hoodia works, and the even scantier evidence that it’s safe, particularly long-term, we do not recommend taking these supplements.

As part of the agreement, Unilever will commit to initial payments totalling approximately £6.5 million ($12.5 million) out of a potential total of £21 million ($40 million) in payments to Phytopharm. In addition Phytopharm will receive an undisclosed royalty on sales of all products containing the extract.

The extract of Hoodia gordonii, a South African plant, was licensed exclusively by Phytopharm from the South African Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) in 1997. Phytopharm has been actively developing the extract for incorporation into weight loss products.

Unilever and Phytopharm will collaborate on a five stage research and development programme of safety and efficacy studies with a view to bringing new products to market. Unilever will also manage a separate agronomy programme and will support the international patent programme for the products.

Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally, with more than 1 billion adults overweight – at least 300 million of them clinically obese – and is a major contributor to the global burden of chronic disease and disability (Source: World Health Organisation).

Commenting on today’s announcement, Dr. Richard Dixey, Chief Executive Officer of Phytopharm, said:

“We are delighted to enter into this agreement with the global leader in weight management products. Our partnership with Unilever supports the development of this product with milestones and a fully funded programme and we look forward to generating royalty income from our partner’s globally recognised brands.”

————————————————

Dixey said the deal with Unilever meant the consumer product company would use its financial and legal weight to start prosecuting companies profiting from alleged hoodia products.

In an attempt to attract the growing anti-obesity market, several companies claim their products contain extracts of the rare plant.

“It is mainly fraud… but there are occasional companies that have ‘hoodia containing’ products and we are obviously going to start moving against them,” Dixey said.

“A very important element of this deal is to have the right partner who will help us enforce the patent,” he added.

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. San people and hoodia gordonii

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.
San People
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.

Act responsibly when buying Hoodia on the internet.

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.

3.5 The plantings in South Africa and Namibia have not yet reached a stage where harvesting is possible, so all material currently in trade is probably from wild sources.

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.

Unilever has dropped their hoodia program after their safety and efficiency trials proved disastrous results. The use of hoodia gordonii was shown to have dangerous side effects including increased blood pressure, and had no significant effect on the calorie consumption of the participants.

It’s neither safe nor effective.

Phytopharm has also stated that they have tested many products that claim to contain the active ingredient in hoodia gordonii and found none that could fulfill their claims.