Biopiracy is a process whereby indigenous knowledge is patented for profit. A Mithraeum is a Mithraic temple, erected in classical antiquity by the worshippers of Mithras. In this exhibition, objects of biopiracy are presented within a process of initiation practised by worshippers of the cult of Mithras. They had a complex system of initiation. And they would meet in underground temples, now called mithraea (singular: mithraeum).

The Mithraeum was arranged as an image of the universe. The movement of the sun was understood to parallel the movement of the soul through the universe, from pre-existence, into the body, and then beyond the physical body into an afterlife. These objects of biopiracy have been arranged to form an iconographic choreography of the universal journey of the soul, the ancient Mithraic ritual whereby the soul exits from the world to begin its voyage across the cosmos.

Two texts by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak will be available for sale inside the exhibition for its duration; Death of a Discipline (2003), Spivak’s obituary to ‘Comparative Literature’, which is concerned not just with crossing national borders but with traversing disciplinary boundaries, and her earlier work Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999), which proposes an alternative to postcolonial discourse studies in the form of a kind of transnational cultural studies or transnational cultural literacy as discipline.

Objects of Biopiracy

1. Tumeric
In May 1995, two scientists at the University of Mississippi were granted an American patent for the use of turmeric to treat flesh wounds.

2. Tamarinde
The US and Japan have registered 60 patents on food and medicinal uses of tamarind, of which India is the worlds largest producer.

3. The Neem Tree
In 1994, the U.S. Department of Agriculture and WR Grace received a European patent on methods of controlling fungal infections in plants using a composition that included extracts from the neem tree (Azadirachta indica), which grows throughout India and Nepal. In 2000 the patent was successfully opposed by several groups from EU and India including the EU Green Party, Vandana Shiva, and the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements (IFOAM) on the basis that the fungicidal activity of neem extract had long been known in Indian traditional medicine.[16] WR Grace appealed and lost in 2005.

4. Maca
Maca growers and indigenous organizations were outraged when, in 2001, a New Jersey company, PureWorld Botanicals, received a U.S. patent for exclusive commercial distribution of an extract of maca's active libido-enhancing compounds, which it branded as MacaPure. Peruvian officials called the patent an ‘emblematic case’ of biopiracy and are preparing to challenge it in U.S. courts.

5. Yeast
In the United States, patent law can be used to protect ‘isolated and purified’ compounds – even, in one instance, a new chemical element (see USP 3,156,523). In 1873, Louis Pasteur patented a ‘yeast’ which was ‘free from disease’ (patent #141072). Patents covering biological inventions have been treated similarly. In the 1980 case of ‘Diamond v. Chakrabarty’, the Supreme Court upheld a patent on a bacterium that had been genetically modified to consume petroleum, reasoning that U.S. law permits patents on ‘anything under the sun that is made by man’. The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) has observed that ‘a patent on a gene covers the isolated and purified gene but does not cover the gene as it occurs in nature’.

6. Hoodia
A succulent plant that originates from the Kalahari Desert of South Africa. For generations it has been known to the traditionally living San people as an appetite suppressant. In 1996 South Africa's Council for Scientific and Industrial Research began working with companies, including Unilever, to develop dietary supplements based on hoodia. Originally the San people were not scheduled to receive any benefits from the commercialization of their traditional knowledge, but in 2003 the South African San Council made an agreement with CSIR in which they would receive from 6 to 8% of the revenue from the sale of Hoodia products. In 2008 after having invested €20 million in R&D on hoodia as a potential ingredient in dietary supplements for weight loss, Unilever terminated the project because their clinical studies did not show that hoodia was safe and effective enough to bring to market.

7. The Rosy Periwinkle
While native to Madagascar, the plant had been widely introduced into other tropical countries around the world well before the discovery of vincristine (also known as leurocristine and marketed under the brandname Oncovin among others; a chemotherapy medication used to treat a number of types of cancer). Different countries are reported as having acquired different beliefs about the medical properties of the plant. This meant that researchers could obtain local knowledge from one country and plant samples from another. The use of the plant for diabetes was the original stimulus for research. Effectiveness in the treatment of both Hodgkin's Disease and leukaemia were discovered instead. The Hodgkin's lymphoma chemotherapeutic drug vinblastine is derivable from the rosy periwinkle.

Two texts by Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak will be available for sale inside the exhibition for its duration; Death of a Discipline (2003), Spivak’s obituary to ‘Comparative Literature’, which is concerned not just with crossing national borders but with traversing disciplinary boundaries, and her earlier work Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999), which proposes an alternative to postcolonial discourse studies in the form of a kind of transnational cultural studies or transnational cultural literacy as discipline.