Future cures under threat

2008-04-24 12:29

Singapore - The world risks losing new medical treatments for cancer, osteoporosis and other ailments if it does not act quickly to conserve the planet's biodiversity, a senior UN environment official said on Wednesday.

Earth's organisms offered many naturally occurring chemicals with which scientists could develop new medicines - but many such organisms were threatened by extinction, said Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Program, or UNEP.

"We must do something about what is happening to biodiversity," Steiner told reporters.

We already depend on biodiversity

"We must help society understand how much we already depend on diversity of life to run our economies, our lives but more importantly, what are we losing in terms of future potential."

Steiner was announcing the conclusions of a new medical book on the sidelines of the UNEP-organised Business for the Environment conference in Singapore. About 600 business executives and environment experts took part in the two-day conference, which ended on Wednesday.

The book "Sustaining Life" was based on work by more than 100 experts and was supported by various organisations including the UNEP, Steiner said. Its main authors were based at Harvard Medical School.

Lost before it could be used

"Because of science and technology ... we are in a much better position to unlock this ingenuity of nature found in so many species," he said. "Yet, in many cases, we will find that we have already lost it before we were able to use it."

He mentioned the example of the southern gastric brooding frog, discovered in Australian rain forests in the 1980s.

The female frog raises her young in her stomach. Preliminary studies showed that the baby frogs produced substances that protected them from their mother's digestive enzymes and acids, and could have led to insights on treating human peptic ulcers, Steiner said. The frog has become extinct, however, according to the book.

16 000 species threatened with extinction

Last year, the Swiss-based International Union for Conservation of Nature's Red List of Threatened Species labelled more than 16 000 species as threatened with extinction.

Steiner said the book looks at seven groups of threatened organisms for potential or known medical value: amphibians, bears, cone snails, sharks, non-human primates, horseshoe crabs and gymnosperms (a type of plant life).

Several drugs such as the widely used cancer drug Taxol were isolated from gymnosperms. The book's researchers believed many more possibilities exist.

They also believed some bears might produce a substance that could stave off the bone-wasting disease osteoporosis in humans.

- AP