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Showing posts from October, 2010

Protecting the Global Medicine Chest—and the biodiversity that produces it

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As climate change shrinks rainforests, coral reefs, and other natural areas worldwide, the global medicine chest is vanishing as well. It is precisely biodiversity that has given rise to the many healing substances in the world around us, scientists say. In the last 25 years, just one drug out of 800-plus approved by the Food and Drug Administration was discovered by chemists working purely in a lab, says the former director  of the National Cancer Institute . Here’s how to prevent the losses that imperil our own health, as well as that of the planet. [This information was correct in 2010, when this article was written for Prevention magazine.] I n the fall of 1973, a strapping 25-year-old was working at a job he enjoyed in a California sawmill, transforming trees into boards and training other workers. Until a fellow worker missed his hand signal to hold back the next log headed for the debarking machine. “The floor was covered with a thick layer of bark, so when the log rolled o