Editorial by Achim Steiner,
Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein
09 September 2010 - Biodiversity is essential
for the functioning of ecosystems - from
forests and fresh waters to coral reefs,
soils, and even the atmosphere
- that sustain all life on Earth. The ongoing
and escalating disappearance of that diversity
will harm society in myriad ways. One way
that is often overlooked is the damaging
impact on medical science.
For millennia, medical
practitioners have harnessed substances
from nature for treatments and cures: aspirin
from the willow and, more recently, Taxol
- the groundbreaking anti-cancer drug -
from the bark of the Pacific yew. Some of
the biggest breakthroughs may be yet to
come. But this can happen only if nature's
cornucopia is conserved, so that current
and future generations of researchers can
make new discoveries that benefit patients
everywhere.
Consider the polar bear,
threatened with extinction in the wild by
climate change. These mammals spend up to
seven months of the year hibernating, during
which time they are essentially immobile.
A human would lose a third or more of bone
mass when immobile for this period of time.
Astonishingly, hibernating
bears lay down new bone, by producing a
substance that inhibits cells that break
down bone and promotes those that produce
bone and cartilage. Studying hibernating
bears in the wild may lead to new ways of
preventing the millions of hip fractures
that result from osteoporosis - a disease
that costs $18 billion and kills 70,000
people each year in the United States alone.
While hibernating bears
can also survive for seven months or more
without excreting their urinary wastes,
humans would die from the buildup of these
toxic substances after only a few days.
Unraveling how the bears accomplish this
miraculous feat may offer hope to the estimated
1.5 million people worldwide receiving treatment
for kidney failure.
Polar bears, which pile
on fat to survive hibernation and yet do
not become diabetic, may also hold clues
for treating Type II diabetes, a disease
associated with obesity that afflicts more
than 190 million people worldwide, reaching
epidemic proportions in many countries.
But hibernating bears
are just the beginning of the story. The
wood frog can survive long periods of freezing
temperatures without suffering cell damage.
Might it hold the key to a way to better
preserve scarce organs needed for transplants?
Pumiliotoxins, like
those manufactured by the Panamanian poison
frog, may lead to medicines that strengthen
heart contractions - important in treating
cardiac disease. And the 700 species of
coral reef-dwelling cone snails may produce
up to 140,000 different toxins, large numbers
of which may have value as medicinal compounds.
Yet only about a hundred have been investigated.
One of these toxins,
now available as the drug PrialtÔ,
has been shown to be 1,000 times more potent
than morphine, without causing addiction
or tolerance, as opiates do. Clinical trials
indicate significant pain relief for advanced
cancer and AIDS patients.
The loss of biodiversity
has already closed promising new avenues
of medical research. Australia's gastric
brooding frog, Rheobatrachus, begins life
in the female's stomach, where it would,
in all other vertebrates, be digested by
enzymes and acid. This could have led to
new insights into preventing and treating
peptic ulcers, but studies could not be
continued: both species ofRheobatrachus
are now extinct.
In 2010, the United
Nations International Year of Biodiversity,
governments are supposed to reduce substantially
the rate of loss of the world's rich array
of animals, plants, and other organisms.
This has not happened. Indeed, the pace
of biodiversity loss has accelerated, and
we are rapidly entering what scientists
are calling "the sixth wave of extinctions."
The next opportunity
for governments to commit to reversing these
losses comes at the 65th UN General Assembly
in New York this September, followed by
the meeting of the Convention on Biological
Diversity (CBD) in Nagoya, Japan.
This needs to be the
year when a cure for environmental degradation
is found and a far more intelligent management
of a natural world starts taking shape:
this will be a key breakthrough for the
wealth but also increasingly the health
of humanity in the 21st century.
Eric Chivian and Aaron
Bernstein are physicians and researchers
at the Center for Health and the Global
Environment, Harvard Medical School, and
the lead authors of Sustaining Life: How
Human Health Depends on Biodiversity. Achim
Steiner is a United Nations Under-Secretary
General and Executive Director of the UN
Environment Programme
Copyright: Project Syndicate,
2010.
www.project-syndicate.org
