Chemical Prospecting: Hope For Vanishing Ecosystems?

The effort to protect the biodiversity of developing countries is a struggle of economics. Currently policies and practices in developing countries can often lead to deforestation. Whether it is for timber or cattle or agriculture the land is of greater value if it is cleared. Chemical prospecting offers hope of changing the attitudes and policies of developing countries toward their biodiversity. The pharmaceutical company Merck is paying the Costa Rican National Institute of Biodiversity (INBio) US$1 million over the next 2 years for the right to search for natural compounds that could be used in drug manufacturing. INBio also gets royalties from anything that goes to market. INBio gives half the money to the Ministry of Natural Resources which uses the money for conservation programs. INBio uses its portion of the money to train parataxonomists to catalog the rich biological storehouse of the Costa Rican forests. It is estimated that they contain 5-7% of the worlds biodiversity. Plant insect and microbial samples are cataloged collected prepared and then sent to Merck for analysis. The extracts are put through 50-100 bioassays in order to determine their possible medicinal value. It is estimated that for every 10000 compounds tested 1 will go to market. Merck does not expect to find wonder drugs growing in the forest rather it is looking for compounds that it can modify or use as the ingredients of other drugs. Merck has also donated US$135000 worth of equipment and set up a training laboratory to train Costa Rican researchers. INBio hopes eventually to do all the work itself including the bioassay. This system is expected to work in Costa Rica because of the philosophy of its government. This type of activity could easily be just another method of exploiting the land and peoples of developing countries. Caution must be exercised to ensure that conservation of ecosystems is at the foundation of such activities rather than simply trading resources for cash.