Sir

In presenting traditional knowledge as a commodity, your News story “Tribes query motives of knowledge databases” (Nature 419, 866; 200210.1038/419866a) fails to emphasize the spiritual connection between indigenous peoples and Mother Earth. The use of traditional knowledge must reflect the values that are the foundation of the elders' practices, especially with regard to medicine. This principle must drive any discussion of how to document such knowledge.

The Centre for Traditional Knowledge understands this and is not asking aboriginal groups to make available their databases as implied in your story. Traditional knowledge should be documented in this way only if the communities themselves choose to do so on their own initiative. Our organization — not part of the Canadian Museum of Nature, though strongly supported by it through shared facilities and access to scientific expertise — is working only to create a database of expert practitioners and their expertise. We have nearly completed a needs assessment to see how to document their names and expertise in a useful and respectful manner.

Many industries, and governmental and aboriginal organizations, would benefit by identifying the expertise of elders through the use of a database. But only those who know how to work with the spirit world and the medicines will determine what, if anything, can be sold. It is hard to imagine a profit-based venture forming a good relationship with a medicinal plant. Practitioners know that respecting the plant is often essential to the efficacy of the medicine, which is not a miracle chemical compound but a measure of curative energy that draws its medicinal qualities from the relationship between the plant and the people or the person. And you can't buy a person's power.