Neem, Turmeric, Basmati and now Cow's Urine Next in line to Neem, Turmeric and Basmati is the use of Cow Urine. USA has recently patented cow urine as a distilled bio-distiller. As usual, India has fight against this patent as cow urine is traditionally used for medicinal purposes in India. In this month itself, India has to take on two cases and the other one is regarding the transfer of rice germ plasm. Coming back to the latest case, cow urine is an active ingredient in most of our Ayurvedic preparations. India is going to challenge it in the International Patent Institute in Geneva. This particular patent filing in USA comes after our Indian Scientists obtaining a US patent in October 2002 for cow urine for its use in medications. The claims of the Indian invention were reduced dosage of antibiotics, drugs and anticancer agents that contain cow urine.

Our CSIR has developed drugs using cow urine for the treatment of asthma and blood clot dissolver. Institute of Microbial Technology in Chandigarh came out with a streptokinase, which is a blood-clot dissolver and thereby plays an important role in heart diseases and brain ailment. Even the poly-herbal formulation Asmon developed by Indian institute of Chemical Biology (Kolkata) that cures asthma contains cow urine.

The composition containing of cow's excretions- urine and dung, cow's milk, curd and ghee - the five ingredients together known as "Pancha gawya" is given to women after she delivers a baby. Pancha Gawya is the main ingredient of most of our ayurvedic preparations. Cow urine is believed to have therapeutic value. From time immemorial, we have the practice of mopping the floors (clay buildings) in our villages with cow dung. Even today, we have the practice of sprinkling water dispersed with cow dung at the entrance of our houses and the belief is that it repels microbes from entering into the house. On religious occasions (ceremonial occasions), our grandparents use to rinse the utensils with the dilute cow dung solution/dispersion. All these suggest that our forefathers believed that cow dung has anti-microbial effect and cow urine is the purifier. It is even believed that textiles especially the new ones if they are given a treatment with the ashes of cow dung before they are worn for the first time would have a beneficial effect, probably a hygiene benefit.

Indian systems of medicine require a thorough investigation and there is a dire need to file patents on the lead active molecules of our traditional concoctions using the modern and advanced analytical techniques. This author is aware of a one such major exercise initiated by CSIR 6-7 years back, but how far that effort succeeded in giving impetus to our medicinal research needs to be assessed. If patenting is for the purpose of blocking others from gaining monopoly, let us make sure that our traditional knowledge systems are not monopolized. It is not only nationalistic but also humane.

Related News item on this topic: Times of India, page 13, dated 12th October 2002. .