“There’s a gold rush atmosphere”

Willy Lewis, M.D.
By Willy Lewis, M.D.
Health & Medicine
Plants, medicines

Three quarters of plant-based medicines come from plants from biodiversity hotspots in the southern hemisphere (pictured: Stevia). The official search for active ingredients to produce new drugs and the collection of organisms for research purposes is called bioprospecting. The illegal appropriation of living beings or genetic information and the associated cultural knowledge in order to gain control over these resources is biopiracy. If organisms that supposedly contain active or effective substances are collected in an uncontrolled manner on a large scale, this threatens biodiversity.
©Ennira/stock.adobe.com

Effective natural substances often come from the Global South. In an interview, biologist Marco Thines talks about how people and nature should be protected from biopiracy - and what that means for research.

The interview was conducted by SALOME BERBLINGER

Prof. Thines, what is biopiracy?

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