Correspondent: The Anti-Fat Pill and the Bushmen Tx Date: 1st June 2003 This script was made from audio tape – any inaccuracies are due to voices being unclear or inaudible 00.00.00 Correspondent Theme Music 00.00.10 Music 00.00.15 Tom Mangold A hundred million westerners are now clinically obese. Soon it will be statistically safer to smoke than to overeat. 00.00.23 Music 00.00.26 Tom Mangold Far too many adults and children are hugely overweight. They look bad and feel worse, plagued by diseases such as diabetes and heart attacks. 00.00.36 Tom Mangold The world is begging for an answer. 00.00.43 Tom Mangold And it may lie here, a planet away from the groaning junk food bars of the first world, deep inside the remote and empty Kalahari desert of South Africa. 00.00.54 Tom Mangold Here nature has stored a secret known only to an ancient tribe that has survived for twenty thousand years. It is a magic plant with a miracle ingredient, which could help us all become thin once again. 00.01.08 Title Page THE ANTI-FAT PILL & THE BUSHMEN 00.01.22 Aston Jonesboro, Atlanta 00.01.25 Tom Mangold Today is a special day for some very well built people of this Atlanta suburb. This is a meeting of the local chapter of the morbidly obese support group. 00.01.37 Tom Mangold All these people have been snacking in the last chance saloon. Their overweight problems are now so serious and premature death so real a prospect that they are left with few options. One of them is radical surgery. 00.01.51 Gina Gina Barton, I live in Morro, I had my surgery September thirtieth and I’ve lost about a hundred and fifteen pounds since. 00.01.58 Applause 00.02.02 Tom Mangold Their guest speaker today is slim, young and charismatic and their last hope. He’s a surgeon. 00.02.08 Dr Titus Duncan Obesity is a disease. We have physical problems, tying your shoes, getting on the plane, getting on the train, getting on the bus. We have all sort of physical problems. We also have medical problems as well. So you have fatness in your liver, you have fatness in your kidneys, you have fatness in your heart. Obesity is a disease and it means that just like any other disease if left untreated it will eventually decrease the quality and decrease the longevity of your life. 00.02.35 Tom Mangold In plain English you’ll die soon unless. The answer; they’re all going to have their stomachs stapled down from the size of a football to the size of a human thumb. 00.02.47 Tom Mangold Until now the obese have had little choice between self-discipline, radical surgery or appetite suppressants that just don’t work. 00.02.55 Aston Dr Titus Duncan Most of the appetite suppressants decrease your appetite by stimulating your basal metabolic rate and making your heart beat faster, your blood pressure go up and it’s a potentially dangerous drug to take. If there are drugs out there where you can decrease your appetite without those type of side effects then yes, it may be useful. 00.03.16 Tom Mangold And suddenly something new has cropped up. Here in the Kalahari desert, the vast sandy wilderness that stretches across South Africa, Namibia and Botswana. A place of beauty and awesome hardship inhabited only by a tribe of bushmen amongst the earliest known hunter-gatherer civilisations on earth. 00.03.34 Singing 00.03.39 Tom Mangold The San tribesman’s rock paintings go back twenty six thousand years. Since then little has changed in their culture. 00.03.48 Tom Mangold A nomadic race without homes or possessions, the San have dug and scraped a bare living from the harsh environment since time immemorial. 00.03.57 Tom Mangold Throughout each millennium they developed a hunter’s instinctive knowledge of the flora and fauna on which their lives depended. This was their food and their medicine and their way of life. 00.04.11 Tom Mangold One such plant is the Hoodia cactus; a spiky, ugly set of tendrils that takes five years to reach maturity. 00.04.20 Tom Mangold But this unappetising plant-primitive contains something quite remarkable – a molecule that can kill the appetite stone dead. 00.04.29 Music 00.04.34 Aston Pretoria, South Africa 00.04.37 Tom Mangold Behind three separate layers of very high security fence lies the South African Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research – the CSIR. 00.04.47 Tom Mangold In the sixties scientists inside this well-guarded complex heard rumours of how the San tribesmen used the Hoodia to suppress appetite on long hunting trips. They took the plant and in their laboratories they tried to extract the active ingredient. 00.05.01 Music 00.05.03 Tom Mangold Hi, good morning, Tom Mangold, BBC television, we have an interview here. 00.05.07 Security Man Ok, you have any… 00.05.09 Tom Mangold Yeah. 00.05.09 Music 00.05.13 Tom Mangold Today it is the revelation of what they have found which has turned this place into a pharmaceutical Fort Knox. 00.05.19 Tom Mangold Ok, what have we got here? 00.05.20 Music 00.05.23 Tom Mangold This is my ID. We have an interview with Doctor Terblanche. 00.05.28 Aston Dr Petro Terblanche Director, Biochemtech, CSIR In the late sixties the scientists made an observation that the animal trials showed that the rats actually stopped eating and of course that triggered the inquisitive mind and we started investigating further. That was when the PhD student actually made an extraction and identify a molecule, which has never been seen before. So there’s, there’s an ingredient in the Hoodia plant, which you could only find through very high level and significant scientific research, which this student then identified and by scanning the world literature and the world databases realised that this is truly novel and that is the invention that the CSIR then patented. 00.06.10 Tom Mangold A miracle molecule. 00.06.12 Dr Petro Terblanche A new molecule. Very different from all other molecules ever discovered. 00.06.17 Music 00.06.20 Tom Mangold But in all the scientific excitement it first seemed that one tiny point would be conveniently overlooked. 00.06.27 Tom Mangold The Hoodia knowledge and the Hoodia experience belonged to the poorest people in the world, a people exploited, cheated and kept down for thousands of years. Would history now repeat itself? 00.06.45 Tom Mangold The San bushmen were discovered by white men on hunting trips over eighty years ago. From the very first moment of contact the First World considered these Third World people to be something worth keeping in zoos. 00.06.58 Graphic Establishing contact with the Kalahari Bushman was like gaining the confidence of a wild animal. 00.07.07 Tom Mangold As the white men studied their smaller fellow humans, gentle, dignified, they reached a conclusion somewhere between Adolph Hitler and Monty Python. It set the template for treatment of the San for the rest of the twentieth century. 00.07.21 Graphic Pygmies as treacherous and cruel as the land of their habitation – having no possessions but bow and dog – no history – no morality – no God. 00.07.31 Music 00.07.36 Tom Mangold To prove their point and have a bit of a laugh the superior whites played a gramophone record to the puzzled San. 00.07.42 Music 00.07.45 Tom Mangold And the white hunter’s conclusion? 00.07.47 Music 00.07.47 Graphic When startled, the Bush- man betrays animal cunning in a marked degree – but the Divine Spark of Intelligence hardly flickers. 00.07.59 Tom Mangold So as they weren’t really human it was legal to hunt and kill bushmen for sport. This American expedition to Southern Africa took place in 1925. 00.08.08 Music 00.08.11 Tom Mangold But by 1931 the San had become such an endangered species that a game reserve was created for them in the South African stretch of the Kalahari. 00.08.21 Tom Mangold Then twenty years later after the introduction of apartheid laws all the races were reclassified. The San officially became coloureds and lost their unique identity amongst various other skin shades. They also lost their homeland reserve. 00.08.36 Tom Mangold Most of them were forced to settle in a makeshift township at the edge of the Kalahari, an uninviting dump humorously christened ‘Welkom’ by the local white council. They were now forbidden to hunt and were consigned to a limbo land of semi-urban poverty and squalor. 00.08.54 Music 00.08.57 Tom Mangold And today a thousand miles away from Welkom, the San are still being exploited even in Nelson Mandela’s new South Africa. 00.09.06 Tom Mangold At Kagga Khama the stone soldiers stand guard over a land constantly re-sculptured by time. This was once the seabed. Today the stark shadows of time- scarred rock still mark traditional San territory. But this is also prime tourist country. 00.09.22 Music 00.09.29 Tom Mangold Each morning a small group of poverty stricken San bushmen and families leave their corrugated tin lean- to for a sad shuffle to put on a bizarre show for the visitors who will be paying to see them. 00.09.48 Tom Mangold At a fake San village near the tourist’s luxurious cabanas, the bush people change their dress. 00.09.56 Tom Mangold This is how western tourists still want to see them – wild, primitive, Godless. 00.10.09 Tom Mangold What the tourists won’t see are the bushmen smoking industrial quantities of marijuana. 00.10.18 Tom Mangold What they will see and buy are the cheap souvenirs. 00.10.25 Tom Mangold The tourists have been conned into believing that this sad little Potemkin village is a real San encampment in the desert. It’s nothing of the sort. 00.10.43 Man tourist Thanks. Thank you. 00.10.49 Woman tourist Do you speak English? What’s your age? Yes. 00.10.54 Boy 1 Five. 00.10.55 Woman tourist Five. And you? 00.10.56 Boy 2 Six. 00.10.57 Woman tourist Oh yes. 00.10.58 Tom Mangold What do you think of them? 00.10.59 Woman tourist Ah they’re lovely people. 00.11.01 Tom Mangold Yeah. 00.11.01 Woman tourist Yeah. Very nice child. I don’t know if they’re happy with this, all this? 00.11.09 Tom Mangold What do you think? 00.11.10 Woman tourist Normally they, it’s better to live in, in their own situation, not like monkeys for the tourist. 00.11.18 Tom Mangold Monkeys for the tourist. 00.11.22 Tom Mangold With the sideshow over the San too change for dinner. 00.11.30 Tom Mangold But they return not to an air-conditioned dining room but to the squalor of their real lives outside society. 00.11.42 Tom Mangold This is home to fifteen souls, filthy, ugly, cramped. 00.11.48 Tom Mangold The white tourist resort owners pay them nothing for their sideshow, don’t school the children and provide no medicine or welfare. 00.11.56 Tom Mangold This is the San tragedy in Southern Africa today. 00.12.04 Music 00.12.09 Tom Mangold But what the tribe never realised until now is that in reality they have been sitting on a potential green goldmine. 00.12.16 Tom Mangold Now they may not need to remain as history’s social castaways. They could become overnight millionaires. 00.12.23 Tom Mangold And this is their passport to escape. A possible way out of the endless cycle of poverty and deprivation. The Hoodia plant. 00.12.32 Tom Mangold Until now only experienced San trackers and the tribal elders have known where to find it and how to cultivate it. 00.12.41 Music 00.12.46 Tom Mangold The cactus has been used for thousands of years by the San as a natural appetite suppressant to be taken during the long hunting expeditions for scarce game in the Kalahari. 00.12.56 Tom Mangold Sometimes the men would have to go days without a kill and they discovered that if they ate the Hoodia plant, it made hunger pangs obsolete. Truly a gift from their God. 00.13.07 Tom Mangold But when the gold rush to take and patent it began five years ago the little tribesmen discovered they were being quietly elbowed away. 00.13.18 Tom Mangold This is Petrus Vaalbooi. As soon as the San understood the value of their knowledge they elected him to represent their interests. He was and remains a true man of the Veldt – the wild outdoors. 00.13.30 Tom Mangold Is that dead? 00.13.31 Petrus Vaalbooi Bushman grass. 00.13.32 Tom Mangold Bushman grass. 00.13.38 Tom Mangold Does the, does the Hoodia grow in this kind of place? 00.13.42 Petrus Vaalbooi Might be…I’m looking for the Hoodia plant but I can never see. 00.13.47 Tom Mangold But you didn’t see one. No. 00.13.51 Tom Mangold Have you eaten it? 00.13.52 Aston Petrus Vaalbooi Chairman, San Council Yes. When I was born, I was little, young son, my father and my mother used to give me Hoodia. I eat and go in the veldt for hunting. I go with the great men, go in the veldt for hunting. I have nothing feed. I am take the Hoodia. He is my feed and he is my water. 00.14.10 Tom Mangold And did it, did it stop you feeling hungry? 00.14.13 Petrus Vaalbooi Stopped me feeling hungry for the whole day, I can work in the Veldt. 00.14.16 Tom Mangold Really. 00.14.17 Petrus Vaalbooi For a whole day. My family, my community, they stay with the veldt, born with the veldt and the veldt, the plants is my food. The plants…the same, I can help myself, I can help my community. My grandfather, my grandfather’s plants is here. They stay in this ground but now the ground, this ground is my life and I will be free on this ground. 00.14.52 Tom Mangold The road to freedom from poverty and hunger for the San runs through a small company called Phytopharm in Cambridgeshire who bought the license for Hoodia from the South African CSIR. 00.15.03 Tom Mangold Phytopharm then promptly sold the rights to develop the drug for thirty two million dollars to the giant pharmaceutical company Pfizer who are continuing trials on the plant. 00.15.13 Tom Mangold Doctor Richard Dixey is the boss of Phytopharm. Although everyone agreed that the San tribe held certain intellectual and commercial rights to the Hoodia, Phytopharm seemed unable to find the tribesmen to negotiate with in accordance with their moral obligations. 00.15.30 Tom Mangold When you were first involved in this project did you feel any personal obligation to pay royalties to the San tribe? 00.15.37 Aston Dr Richard Dixey Chief Executive, Phytopharm Indeed, you know, Phytopharm was founded because we realised that traditional medicines were the most valuable asset that traditional people had. So we’ve always been very, very keen. The irony of the project was we were approached by the CSIR in ninety-seven and we began scouring the Namibian desert region trying to find the San people because we wanted to see how it was traditionally used and we couldn’t find them anywhere. 00.16.03 Tom Mangold A hundred thousand San bushmen – hardly human needles in a haystack. The San were known throughout Southern Africa, as the tourist brochures would have confirmed. 00.16.12 Tom Mangold Action Aid, one of the biggest development agencies in Britain, had no difficulty in finding them. 00.16.19 Tom Mangold Were you then being naïve or deceitful when you said that the San no longer exist as a people? 00.16.24 Doctor Richard Dixey No, I was, I was being naïve. I mean I’m not an anthropologist and I, I assure you it’s a complex story but the reason why the San people were living in a refugee camp fifteen hundred miles away from their tribal land. Remember that’s like having a tribal group in Norfolk who’d been found in Greece. 00.16.40 Tom Mangold Well… 00.16.41 Doctor Richard Dixey It’s difficult. 00.16.42 Tom Mangold You say that but the people from Action Aid found the San tribe within twelve hours. 00.16.47 Doctor Richard Dixey The people from Action Aid were being guided because the San organised themselves into a council. 00.16.51 Tom Mangold Well, why couldn’t you be guided? 00.16.53 Doctor Richard Dixey Because the council didn’t exist when we were, when we started our relationship there was no San Council. It was founded after we entered our relationship with CSIR. 00.17.00 Music 00.17.02 Tom Mangold And in South Africa, even though the CSIR had been researching the Hoodia plant since 1963 and had even taken out a patent on P fifty-seven, the active ingredient in 1997, the truth is that by 2001 there had still been no attempt to contact the tribesmen. 00.17.21 Tom Mangold When did you first involve the San bushmen in financial arrangements over the Hoodia? 00.17.25 Aston Dr Petro Terblanche Director, Biochemtech, CSIR There was not financial arrangements yet because there’s no money yet exchanged hands. We started discussions with the San Council eighteen months ago. 00.17.35 Tom Mangold That’s a long time since 1963 isn’t it? 00.17.38 Dr Petro Terblanche Yes. In 1963 there was no, there was no proof that the San people actually were the original owners of this knowledge. The second very important thing is we’re still today debating the issue and when it’s the right time to talk about a benefit sharing agreement. P fifty-seven at that time had twelve, fourteen years of development ahead of it, high risk. As a scientist, knowing what it will take to take that to full commercialisation... 00.18.05 Tom Mangold Sure, well I understand that but already millions of dollars are involved in this project aren’t they and I wanted to ask you how much have you given the San so far? 00.18.15 Dr Petro Terblanche We’ve given the San nothing because we haven’t received any money yet. 00.18.19 Tom Mangold But you must have received payment from Phytopharm. 00.18.22 Dr Petro Terblanche No. What has happened up to now, there was a technology transfer, which has a value and there was a signing payment of five hundred thousand dollars, which is discretionary investment in the programmes that CSIR is running to work with Phytopharm. 00.18.35 Tom Mangold So they have paid you half a million dollars? 00.18.37 Dr Petro Terblanche Yes. 00.18.38 Tom Mangold What belongs to you today? What do you own? 00.18.42 Petrus Vaalbooi I have nothing. 00.18.43 Tom Mangold Nothing? 00.18.43 Petrus Vaalbooi Nothing. I cannot buy for my cigarettes. I cannot buy for my family. 00.18.49 Tom Mangold How many shirts have you got? 00.18.50 Petrus Vaalbooi My son. 00.18.52 Tom Mangold Not your shirt? 00.18.53 Petrus Vaalbooi Not my shirt. My son he give to me. 00.18.54 Tom Mangold Trousers? 00.18.56 Petrus Vaalbooi My friend, he give it for me. 00.18.58 Tom Mangold Really? 00.18.59 Petrus Vaalbooi I am paid six hundred rand. It is all. I have two children on school. I have a wife. No money, six hundred must give the children to school, must give for my wife for her to eat, must give for me trouser and shirt. 00.19.18 Tom Mangold Nothing, you have no money at all? 00.19.19 Petrus Vaalbooi No money. 00.19.21 Music 00.19.24 Tom Mangold The complexities of high finance, the impenetrability of the big pharmaceuticals, the elusive suits were more than a humble San tribesman could handle. 00.19.34 Tom Mangold So Petrus Vaalbooi turned to the services of the respected human rights lawyer Roger Chennells to represent their interests. 00.19.42 Tom Mangold It turned out to be one very shrewd move. 00.19.45 Music 00.19.50 Roger Chennells We discovered early in two thousand and one that the San had been completely excluded from this deal that was about to break news, and after investigating it we realised that we had a lot of catching up to do and I was pulled in to take the matter forward. 00.20.04 Music 00.20.08 Roger Chennells And so we called for negotiations and the CSIR were understandably very alarmed at the potential damage this might have caused to their product. And so we very soon started negotiating about mid-two thousand and one, and we were across the table with the CSIR by June two thousand and one. 00.20.28 Aston Roger Chennells Human Rights Lawyer So our argument simply was that the traditional knowledge of the San was a core component leading towards the discovery, which led to the patent. 00.20.37 Tom Mangold And you won it. 00.20.38 Roger Chennells Well, we have won the argument. I think we also were very quick to accept the CSIR had scientific knowledge the San could never have brought to bear in order to develop the patent. So we recognised that there was a sharing involved and all the San really asked for was a fair share of the benefits in compensation for their knowledge. 00.21.00 Tom Mangold We're talking millions. 00.21.01 Roger Chennells Yeah. 00.21.02 Tom Mangold Millions and millions. 00.21.03 Roger Chennells We're talking millions of dollars but the exact amount coming out here is pure conjecture because we don't know how successful it will be and most people are trying to be very conservative, but even conservatively it's more money than we know what to do with at the moment. 00.21.15 Music Aston March 2003 00.21.21 Tom Mangold So for the first time someone is taking the San seriously. Recently a delegation from the San Council turned up at the CSIR to see, feel and touch and learn more about their possible inheritance. 00.21.34 Tom Mangold The delegation was led by Petrus Vaalbooi, now confirmed as their man in charge. 00.21.39 Music 00.21.42 Tom Mangold With a very basic graphic Chennells explains that if the Hoodia works on western waistlines then the percentages could amount to a huge fortune of millions of dollars to be shared by only a hundred thousand people. 00.21.55 Tom Mangold The idea is that the money will not be available for one big binge but will go into trust for education and welfare. 00.22.04 Tom Mangold The San delegation were taken to a Hoodia plantation near Pretoria, a top secret location where the plant is now being grown in industrial quantities. 00.22.13 Music 00.22.23 Tom Mangold The delegation tried its first cultured variety and recalled not only its appetite-suppressant values but its alleged aphrodisiac qualities too. 00.22.34 Petrus Vaalbooi Subtitles It's very good for men's problems. Once you've eaten this, you can really give your wife a good seeing to. 00.22.44 Music 00.22.47 Tom Mangold And then on to the laboratories where the trials have begun. 00.22.51 Petrus Vaalbooi Very important person, very important bushman. 00.22.57 Petrus Vaalbooi Subtitle I'm a top doctor now! 00.23.00 Tom Mangold Petrus Vaalbooi and the San delegation must now show their respect for western hygiene. 00.23.05 Music 00.23.08 Tom Mangold This is a welcome new reality for the little bushmen to be partners in a multi-million dollar project and to be treated as equals. 00.23.16 Tom Mangold Now it's the turn of the First World to show off its skills to the Third. At last, some mutual admiration. 00.23.23 Music 00.23.28 Tom Mangold And this is the powdered version of the precious plant. Not just a bit of abstract chemistry, but with luck a nice little earner for decades to come. 00.23.37 Music 00.23.47 Tom Mangold But even if the Hoodia delivers its multi-million dollar promise the bushmen will have to face a huge dilemma. Do they binge and stay imprisoned in the poverty trap, or do they use their new wealth to lift themselves into the twenty-first century? 00.24.01 Tom Mangold And if they take that route, what happens to the San identity, their cultural heritage, which has been their shield throughout the ages? 00.24.12 Tom Mangold The truth is that years of exploitation, neglect and persecution has finally dumped these proud people on the outer fringe of South Africa's society. 00.24.21 Tom Mangold Like their fellow tribesmen performing for white tourists a thousand miles away, this group too has fallen victim to the twin dangers of alcoholism and drug taking. 00.24.32 Tom Mangold This man has been involved in a brawl at the liquor store with his own brother. 00.24.37 Tom Mangold And this man, still considered to be a tribal leader, whose name and photograph have been proudly published in San history books, has degenerated beyond repair. There are precious few leaders among the mature San today. 00.24.52 Tom Mangold We've seen the San and we've filmed them, generally suffering from severe problems of drug abuse, alcoholism and poor health. Is that largely the current picture? 00.25.04 Roger Chennells I would say it is, you know the society is very weak to protect itself, and similarly to the Aboriginals in Australia, they really find they, they're just totally vulnerable to all of the ills of society. They haven't got immune systems the same as we have. They are susceptible to, to alcohol in a way that we are not. So in every way unless they are handled very carefully they go down. 00.25.27 Tom Mangold They smoke dope as if it's going out of fashion. 00.25.30 Roger Chennells Yah. That's not all over Southern Africa, I might add. It's really much more in South Africa. But basically substance abuse and lack of a purpose of living in this strange environment, that is what binds indigenous peoples all over the world. 00.25.43 Roger Chennells And they're faced with a society that they don't aspire to be like, yet there is no other choice and their leaders are very often also a bit lost. Right at the moment they're in a situation where their conditions are really terrible. 00.26.01 Music 00.26.06 Tom Mangold So if the Hoodia can somehow bring about their salvation two more questions arise. Does it work, and will the money come in time? 00.26.14 Music 00.26.21 Tom Mangold The San's resilience is legendary so they can wait another five years while the plant undergoes clinical trials. But more immediate relevance is whether or not the Hoodia lives up to its claims. I thought I'd give it a try. 00.26.34 Tom Mangold But first with the San there's always some ceremony. So when in Rome… 00.26.38 Tom Mangold Okay. 00.26.39 San tribesman …firewater… 00.26.46 Tom Mangold Here's some more unusual tobacco for you. 00.26.49 David For me? 00.26.49 Tom Mangold David, it's for you, yes. 00.26.50 David Thank you. Just for the men. 00.26.53 Tom Mangold Just for men. I think you need Hoodia to make you feel good when you're smoking marihuana… 00.27.03 Tom Mangold Okay, what do you, have you taken the Hoodia plant yourself? Have you eaten Hoodia? Has he eaten Hoodia? David, can I try some Hoodia? Can I, have you got some Hoodia I can eat? And that's the Hoodia he's bringing now, is it? 00.27.19 David Yes, yes. 00.27.21 Tom Mangold Okay. 00.27.22 David This my plan. 00.27.24 Tom Mangold What's your plan? 00.27.25 David Yes, a plan. Put it in the fire. You heat it. 00.27.34 Tom Mangold Okay, now we cook that. How do we eat that? Because that's got spikes on it. I don't want to eat spikes. That's cooling, yes. And what does he do? He cuts the prickles off. 00.27.45 San tribeswoman He rubs it off. 00.27.55 San tribeswoman And it's also a very great cure towards illnesses. 00.28.00 Tom Mangold It's a great cure, is it? 00.28.01 San tribeswoman Yah, dangerous illnesses. 00.28.04 David It's very, very dangerous. 00.28.08 Tom Mangold Yeah, it’s different. It's definitely different. It tastes like nothing I've really eaten before. Um, it's bitter. It's not very pleasant, and I think if this is ever cloned into a pill, Europeans are going to have to put a lot of sugar into this. But it's edible… 00.28.36 Tom Mangold …but only just. 00.28.37 Tom Mangold Later that day I took the Hoodia under slightly more controlled conditions. This was no clinical trial, but I have to say it worked one hundred percent for me and I neither worried about nor consumed food for some twenty hours afterwards. 00.28.53 Tom Mangold You've eaten the Hoodia, have you? 00.28.54 Roger Chennells Yeah. 00.28.54 Tom Mangold What did it do to you? 00.28.56 Roger Chennells It's great. I really liked it. It needed some salt, I thought, to make it more palatable or some tomato sauce. But I didn't eat for about sixteen hours after quite a small piece. And I felt really good as well. I didn't feel nauseous. I really, my own tests I could have every day if I wanted to lose a lot of weight. It tasted good. 00.29.15 Tom Mangold I mean, it worked on you? 00.29.16 Roger Chennells It really worked. It's good. 00.29.17 Tom Mangold Has it worked on friends of yours who've taken it? 00.29.19 Roger Chennells I've given it to a dog who lost a lot of weight, a very plump dog. And I haven't offered it to friends. I thought that'd be a bit of an insult to offer it to my plumper friends. But what's important about it, I think, is that you lose weight without losing any of your body functions. You actually, you acquire a very strong libido in fact, a very strong life force, eating the Hoodia. 00.29.41 Roger Chennells So it could become a way of life. You could find New York salads, salad bars serving Hoodia with their Caesar salads, sliced Hoodia over cucumber sandwiches, or a Hoodia slimmer shake. So there are numerous ways in which the use of the word Hoodia and the magic molecule could help people not be so hungry and not eat so much. 00.30.02 Tom Mangold Did you find it had certain aphrodisiac qualities? 00.30.05 Roger Chennells I think I'll have to pass on that one, but I was alone in the desert and I would say I just felt really strong, put it that way. 00.30.13 Tom Mangold Something must have died in me because it didn't have that effect on me. 00.30.16 Roger Chennells I'm sorry. 00.30.22 Tom Mangold And back in Britain Phytopharm, the Cambridge- based company, have taken tests one step further running the first ever scientifically controlled clinical trial in humans. 00.30.33 Aston Dr Richard Dixey Chief Executive, Phytopharm You take a group of unhealthily obese westerners, these people from Leicester, and we put them in a phase one unit which means it's like a prison, this thing. You go into this unit, doors are closed. All you can do is watch TV, read the papers and eat. And of course these guys eat a lot. And then half of them got the drug and half of them got a placebo. 00.30.54 Dr Richard Dixey And at the end of fifteen days the group on the drug had reduced their food intake by a thousand calories a day. Now you probably only eat two thousand two hundred calories a day, so that is like a crash diet induced by an appetite suppressant. Now that's a really striking finding. 00.31.10 Dr Richard Dixey What happens is there's a part of your brain, the mid- brain - it's called the hypothalamus - and within the mid- brain there are nerve cells that are sensing glucose, sugar. Now of course when you eat, blood sugar goes up because of the food and these guys start firing and say you're full now. 00.31.28 Dr Richard Dixey Now the problem with people who are clinically obese is they'll go to the fridge at two in the morning and they'll eat three tubs of Haagen-Dazs or three tubs of ice cream, a huge amount of calories and they won't feel full. 00.31.40 Dr Richard Dixey Now what this plant contains is a molecule that's about ten thousand times as active as glucose. It’s going to the mid-brain, it's actually making those nerve cells fire as if you were full when of course you haven't eaten any calories. And as a result food intake falls, and that's how it works. 00.32.00 Music 00.32.06 Tom Mangold This very good news is already out. A plant with a miracle molecule that can help cure the overweight is like the pill that can turn water into petrol. That's worth stealing. So now a green gold rush has followed with bio-pirates trying to kidnap the plant. 00.32.14 Aston Reconstruction 00.32.22 Tom Mangold The bandits working on the fringes of the law have mounted operations to steal and illegally export the precious cactus. Last year a group of men were found in the Kalahari in Namibia cutting down wild plants. 00.32.35 Tom Mangold When challenged by the Namibian police they claimed to have permission to harvest, but it turned out to be a complete lie. They were trying to open up a grey market in Hoodia in the west, and they may have succeeded. 00.32.53 Aston Atlanta, Georgia 00.32.56 Tom Mangold I learned that the Hoodia was being talked about in the sunshine belt states of the U.S. 00.33.03 Tom Mangold And even though it's never been approved by the authorities it was even being sold openly on the net. 00.33.09 Tom Mangold Indeed the fame of Hoodia has reached Georgia and Alabama. One of several products already available by mail order only through the internet is Lipodrene. 00.33.20 Tom Mangold It's claimed to be the world's first Hoodia pill. 00.33.24 Tom Mangold In the United States Hoodia is already being marketed very quietly on the net. There are three appetite suppressants on sale. They all claim to contain the miracle molecule in Hoodia. Talk to me about them. 00.33.39 Dr Richard Dixey Well I think it's a disgrace, frankly. We have done five years work so far on this plant, and on the back of the clinical trials we've published, a bunch of people have got hold of and they've just taken the clinical data and the name of the plant and stuck it in their products. 00.33.54 Dr Richard Dixey In fact we analysed one of them to see if it contained any Hoodia. It didn't contain any Hoodia we could detect. 00.33.58 Tom Mangold Well what did it contain? 00.34.00 Dr Richard Dixey It contained caffeine. It was a caffeine pill. And what had happened was they had seen the publicity about Hoodia in the papers and thought, great, we'll stick Hoodia on our caffeine pill, make it a miracle cure. 00.34.10 Tom Mangold And sure enough when we tested Lipodrene it turned out to have no discernible Hoodia in it. It's a plain fraud. 00.34.17 Country music 00.34.21 Aston Brundidge, Alabama 00.34.28 Tom Mangold So who's buying this stuff? Do they know the Hoodia claims are false? Does the very thought of a new miracle molecule have some psychological value? 00.34.36 Music 00.34.45 Tom Mangold First stop Amanda Ward, a housewife who lives in a trailer with her two children, two dogs and truck driver husband. 00.34.53 Tom Mangold Hi, are you Mrs Ward? 00.34.54 Amanda Ward Yes. 00.34.55 Tom Mangold Hi, I'm Tom Mangold. BBC Television. 00.34.57 Amanda Ward Ah, how ya doing? 00.34.58 Tom Mangold Hi, can I leave the car here? 00.34.59 Amanda Ward Sure. 00.35.00 Tom Mangold Great, thank you. 00.35.03 Amanda Ward I've done put out my big dog. 00.35.05 Tom Mangold Okay. Hi, it's nice to meet you at last. 00.35.08 Amanda Ward You too. 00.35.11 Tom Mangold She's been taking Lipodrene for three months since her husband bought her two bottles for Christmas. 00.35.17 Tom Mangold Amanda first heard about Lipodrene from her friend Tracy. 00.35.21 Tom Mangold And you're Tracy? Hi, how are you? Thanks very much for turning up. 00.35.26 Tom Mangold Amanda, let me just begin by asking you when it comes to doing something about it, a lot of people are simply going to say, why don't you eat less? Can you eat less? 00.35.37 Amanda Ward Oh, yeah. I've tried several diet products and I'm taking something now that really works. 00.35.45 Tom Mangold What, what are you taking now that works? 00.35.48 Amanda Ward Lipodrene. 00.35.49 Tom Mangold And how does it work for you? 00.35.51 Amanda Ward Well, my appetite is suppressed but I haven't been, I just haven't been sticking to my diet. 00.35.58 Tom Mangold Because you know they say it's got this Hoodia plant from South Africa? 00.36.02 Amanda Ward Yes, she gave me a pamphlet and I read it and it had three different factors in it that it really works on your hips and your thighs and your middle section and it was that one ingredient that they were really talking about. 00.36.19 Tom Mangold Supposing I said to you it hasn't got the miracle molecule in it, it's just another appetite suppressant, would you be surprised? 00.36.28 Tracy Yes. 00.36.29 Amanda Ward Yes, I would. 00.36.31 Tom Mangold Well, so much for the power of persuasion. People like Amanda are easy victims for the many snake oil salesmen already trying to cash in on Hoodia's fame. 00.36.41 Tom Mangold The company marketing Lipodrene is called Hi-Tech Pharmaceuticals, run by Mr Jared Wheat, a shy and elusive individual. His offices and mail order operation are in a rundown shopping mall on the outskirts of Atlanta. 00.36.56 Tom Mangold As well as selling Lipodrene they also market an alleged impotence cure. Last year Mr Wheat, a former bodybuilder, was warned by the American Food and Drug Administration for making false and exaggerated medical claims for one of his products. Now he's at it again, claiming that Lipodrene contains a miracle slimming agent. 00.37.16 Tom Mangold Hi, good morning. 00.37.17 Employee Good morning. 00.37.19 Tom Mangold We're from BBC Television. We wanted to see Mr Wheat if he's in. 00.37.22 Employee I'll give him a call. 00.37.24 Tom Mangold Thank you. 00.37.34 Tom Mangold Wheat's Lipodrene leaflet makes no sense once it emerges that there's no Hoodia in the pill. So will Mr Jared Wheat explain himself now? 00.37.47 Jared Wheat Hello, may I help you? 00.37.48 Tom Mangold Hi, are you Mr Wheat? Hi, I'm Tom Mangold, BBC Television. Hi, nice to meet you at last. We wanted to have a chat to you about, you know we're making a film about the Hoodia? And we wanted to talk to you about Lipodrene and all that stuff. Have you got a moment to talk to us? 00.38.00 Jared Wheat Err, I told the gentleman I spoke to last time I don't do interviews. 00.38.03 Tom Mangold Oh, why is that? 00.38.05 Jared Wheat I just don't. You guys always twist stuff in negative ways and I don't trust the press. 00.38.09 Tom Mangold We, we're not going to twist anything. 00.38.11 Jared Wheat I had the local TV station tell me something very similar recently and I just don't want… 00.38.16 Tom Mangold Well, we're BBC Television. We've come from London just to speak to you about that really. 00.38.20 Jared Wheat I spoke to your rep here recently, sir. I told him I had no interest whatsoever of doing any type of interview. 00.38.26 Tom Mangold The one thing I wanted to ask you was, where do you get your Hoodia from? Do you get it from South Africa? 00.38.33 Jared Wheat I am not going to comment on that either. 00.38.34 Tom Mangold But could it be that you're getting it illegally? 00.38.37 Jared Wheat Sorry. 00.38.38 Tom Mangold Can you talk to us later on, Mr Wheat? 00.38.40 Jared Wheat No, sir. I don't do interviews with the press. 00.38.43 Tom Mangold Perhaps can we make a date for a week from now? 00.38.45 Jared Wheat No, sir. You'd be wasting your time. 00.38.48 Tom Mangold But they're quite simple questions. We've got nothing nasty to ask you. 00.38.51 Jared Wheat I understand. No, thank you. 00.38.53 Tom Mangold Are you sure? 00.38.54 Jared Wheat Yes, sir. 00.38.54 Tom Mangold Okay, well thanks for putting up with us anyway. 00.38.57 Jared Wheat Okay. 00.38.58 Tom Mangold Goodbye to you. 00.38.59 Jared Wheat Yes, sir. 00.39.01 Tom Mangold Might as well buy one while I'm here. 00.39.05 Music 00.39.10 Tom Mangold The San should survive these crude attempts to steal their treasure, but the real challenge is whether they can survive a future that holds out more money than they can conceive. 00.39.20 Tom Mangold If the Hoodia delivers its promise and becomes an overnight success like Viagra, how can even educated leaders like Petrus remain on the edge of civilisation and join the twenty-first century at the same time? It's a challenge that can only be met with the help of a new generation. 00.39.37 Tom Mangold You may be very, very rich in a few years time. What do you want to do with that money? What is the advice you're giving your people and your children to do with millions, you may have millions of dollars? 00.39.53 Aston Petrus Vaalbooi Chairman, San Council The first thing is education in our language. It's the first thing. My heart is broken when I've see by myself in the years of apartheid our people was put down on the ground. You could never speak my own language. He must hold it in his heart. 00.40.11 Petrus Vaalbooi But now the government is open the door. The CSIR is come inside, take our hand, shake our hands and they can say us. San people forgive us that move, some, all the people in one way. 00.40.31 Tom Mangold There are very few San children at this desert school near Welkom. There's no money for the transport to bring them in each day and no money to pay for the basics in school. Those who manage to receive even a primary education do so through the kindness of charity. 00.40.48 Tom Mangold This is nine-year old Sandy, granddaughter of Petrus Vaalbooi. She's one of the lucky ones and says she wants to become a doctor. 00.40.56 Tom Mangold If she makes it she'll be one of a tiny handful of San who has received sufficient education to give something back to their tribe and help lead them to a future, one which can compromise between the past and the present and retain the best of both. 00.41.11 Children singing 00.41.18 Tom Mangold What's the basic plan on investment and spending? 00.41.21 Aston Roger Chennells Human Rights Lawyer Well, we’re trying to use the problem to help the San to work out their own solution, and not impose a solution that will be rejected and opposed. So we see it as an opportunity to really rectify some of the development problems of the past. And these vast sums of money will be able to buy farms, to educate people, put up schools when the government's clearly not doing enough. 00.41.46 Tom Mangold You're going to effectively have to start from scratch with the San, aren't you? 00.41.51 Roger Chennells Yeah, effectively, yeah. 00.41.52 Tom Mangold There's nothing there. There's no infrastructure whatsoever. 00.41.54 Roger Chennells There's nothing there and there are no human skills. Very few human skills available, so yah, it's an awesome task. 00.42.01 Tom Mangold If the Hoodia works, if everything happens as you hope it will, you are going to be personally rich beyond Croesus, aren't you? 00.42.10 Aston Dr Richard Dixey Chief Executive, Phytopharm Gosh, what a nice thought. You know, I've worked twelve years now. Now obviously I passionately hope this succeeds but I've become sanguine over the last twelve years. This is a risky game. 00.42.23 Tom Mangold But if it succeeds, it’s a hypothesis, the market, the estimated market potential is up to about three billion dollars. 00.42.33 Dr Richard Dixey Well, you're asking, it's a bit like, you know… 00.42.35 Tom Mangold Yes, is that right? 00.42.36 Dr Richard Dixey It could be more. 00.42.37 Tom Mangold Yes, I'm just asking you to consider the possibility that you will become very, very, very rich. That's all. 00.42.43 Dr Richard Dixey Gosh, what a wonderful thought. 00.42.44 Tom Mangold Yes, will you? 00.42.45 Dr Richard Dixey Yes, of course. It'd be wonderful, but of course I could easily get nothing, but I agree I could become super-rich. Gosh, what would I do with all that money? 00.42.55 Tom Mangold Well, hopefully not spend it all on food. The ironies are delicious. An impecunious and hungry Third World tribe may have the solution for a developed world that is eating itself into a pandemic of serious weight-related illnesses. 00.43.11 Tom Mangold But while the benefits of the Hoodia may save western lives, it could equally unbalance a tribe that has somehow managed to survive the worst that civilisation has thrown at it. 00.43.21 Tom Mangold The miracle molecule has several years testing to go before it has a clear future - hopefully time enough for the San to prepare for theirs. 00.43.33 End music 00.43.42 Voice over You can comment on tonight’s programme by visiting our web site at: www.bbc.co.uk/correspondent Credits 00.43.41 Reporter TOM MANGOLD Camera BRIAN GREEN Sound Recordist TIM PARR Dubbing Mixer PHITZ HEARNE VT Editor ROD HUTSON Graphic Design STEVE ENGLAND Production Team JULIA DANNENBERG SARAH EVA MARTHA O’SULLIVAN AGNES TEEK Production Manager JANE WILLEY Unit Manager SUSAN CRIGHTON Film Research NICK DODD Research ANNA FESTUS LIZA KEY CLAIRE McFALL TOM WATSON Picture Editor ROBERT MOORE Produced & Directed by DOMINIC OZANNE Deputy Editor DAVID BELTON 00.43.50 Voice over Next week - Evan's Euro Adventure. All you need to know before the government tells us if we're going to get a referendum. 00.43.59 CORRESPONDENT 00.44.00 Editor KAREN O’CONNOR © BBC MMIII 00.44.03 End BBC Correspondent 1 1