OPINION/COMMENTARY

Diminishing Biodiverse Returns

It took 20 tortuous years to get from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree to a medication for breast cancer. But now Taxol is a common treatment for women with early breast cancer, and despite the false leads and blind alleys in the laboratory, researchers and pharmaceutical companies had incentive to pursue the cure. That could change drastically if rules for patenting new discoveries derived from natural molecules (like those found in the yew plant) are changed. This week environmental ministers and delegates from around the globe have gathered in Bangkok to shape the future of so-called bioprospecting -- the process of collecting samples of raw living material, developing medication from it and then sharing the fruits of commercialization with the source country. The Bangkok meeting, sponsored by the United Nations, is officially called the Third Meeting of the Ad Hoc Open-Ended Working Group on Asset and Benefit Sharing of the Convention on Biodiversity. It is small by U.N. standards, but the stakes for drug development are far-reaching if a group of 17 developing countries succeed in altering international patent law....