Loss of Biodiversity Could Hamper Medical Research
Posted on: Thursday, 24 April 2008, 02:20 CDT
The trend of disappearing biodiversity may have a negative impact on the efforts of researchers who fear that the loss of species may prohibit them from making crucial medical discoveries.The report, found in a recently published book titled Sustaining Life: How Human Health Depends on Biodiversity, features the work of more then 100 experts.
"While extinction is alarming in its own right, the book demonstrates that many species can help human lives," said co-author Jeffrey McNeely, chief scientist at IUCN (formerly known as the World Conservation Union).
"If we needed more justification for action to conserve species, it offers dozens of dramatic examples of both why and how citizens can act in ways that will conserve, rather than destroy, the species that enrich our lives."
Creatures such as the southern gastric brooding frog (Rheobatrachus silus) have crucial information for future research, scientists said.
The frogs get their names from their unusual method of raising their young within the stomachs of the females.
However, research efforts were ended after the frog was last recorded in the wild in 1981.
"These studies could not be continued because both species of Rheobactrachus became extinct," said co-authors Eric Chivian and Aaron Bernstein from Harvard Medical School, US.
"The valuable medical secrets they held are now gone forever."
Other efforts by researchers include their look at how some bears are able to maintain bone mass when they enter a dormant state . Researchers said that further study of the bears could yield answers for osteoporosis in humans.
Bears appear to produce a substance that inhibits cells that break down bone and promote substances that encourage bone and cartilage-making cells.
Currently, 740,000 deaths a year are the result of hip fractures worldwide, a large number of which are caused by osteoporosis. By 2050 there will be an estimated six million osteoporosis-linked hip fractures globally, according to IUCN.
"We must do something about what is happening to biodiversity," the UN Environment Program's (Unep) executive director, Achim Steiner, said.
"Societies depend on nature for treating diseases; health systems over human history have their foundation on animal and planet products that are used for treatment."
The book has been published in advance of a biodiversity summit in Germany, which will draw up plans to end species loss by 2010.
"The UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) has achieved a great deal but it needs to achieve more if it is to meet the international community's goals and objectives,” said Steiner.
"We need a breakthrough in Bonn on all three pillars of the convention: conservation, sustainable use, and access and benefit sharing of genetic resources."
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IUCN
United Nations Environment Program
Source: redOrbit Staff and Wire Reports
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