It makes me a bit nauseous to think of appealing for other species to be kept alive so we can heal ourselves when we're sick. We've done more to wreck the planet than any other species, and meanwhile out-bred most of them. (I'm not sure about plankton). However, appealing on that basis may work better than depending on human altruism.
"The world risks wiping out a new generation of antibiotics and cures for diseases if it fails to reverse the extinction of thousands of plant and animal species, experts warned Wednesday.
"Biodiversity loss has reached alarming levels, and disappearing with it are the secrets to finding treatments for pain, infections and a wide array of ailments such as cancer, they said, citing the findings of a coming book."
Makes sense. After all, earliest medicine was no more than the use of herbs and plant extracts by those who knew how to use them. (And leeches, by people who hadn't a clue what they were doing.) But that's not exactly what they're talking about here.
"The book contains a chapter describing how seven threatened groups of organisms -- amphibians, bears, cone snails, sharks, non-human primates, gymnosperms and horseshoe crabs -- can be valuable in finding cures for diseases.
"The Panamanian poison frog, for example, can make pumiliotoxins that may lead to medicines for heart disease, while alkaloids from the Ecuadorian poison frog could be a source for painkillers, it says."
When they say "source", I don't know if they mean dead ones, or live ones kept in a laboratory. And again I feel a bit sick.
"Technological revolution in the 19th and 20th centuries took the focus on finding cures away from nature as pharmaceutical companies relied on technical components to make medicines, [he said.]"
Yes, and half the time they were giving us so many side effects that one wondered which was worse -- the illness or the cure. I kid you not. They seem to have tested 1/4 of them on me.
"These companies are increasingly turning back to nature as they run out of chemical combinations, [he said.]"
Poor things ...
"One solution will be to 'take our eyes off the economy', [he suggested.]
"The real bottom line is clean air, clean water, clean soil that gives us our food, clean energy that comes from the sun, and biodiversity. These are ultimately the most important needs that we have to fight for at all cost."
The genius of it. It's the economy, stupid.
"Hundreds of international business executives, government officials, environmentalists and others have gathered for [sic] conference."
And they will go home and do what? 16,000 species are threatened with extinction and the most enthusiastic people I've heard talk about this are mostly amateur activists and volunteers. Or someone like David Attenborough who passed up the job of Director General of the BBC so he could continue making wildlife programmes. NOT international business executives. Not on your nelly.
SourceCategories: biodiversity, species, extinction, pharmaceutcicals, disease, cure, drugs, environment, conservation
One of the funniest things I've seen on TV for a while. Stephen Fry's programmme QI (BBC2) told us about Thomas Midgely Jr, who, having tested every substance known to man (well, nearly) found that putting Tetraethyl Lead in petrol stopped it knocking. He then went on to invent CFCs. The panel was laughing sufficiently at this point, but Stephen had more. Midgely didn't die in his sleep.
