Bootlegacy

Bio – (prospectors or pirates? Neither metaphor is known for generosity, or good grooming)

29 Mar 2007 1 Comment

by liznevis in Distressed Genes, Splitting Heritage

No matter what you call these globe-trotting researchers (often pharmaceutical companies or entities hoping to attract the favorable attention of pharmaceutical companies), this is what their detractors say they do: 

1. Go someplace that has flora or fauna with unusual or unknown characteristics.  In a lot of these places, the people who live there are poor.  Possibly, given more money, the locals would have already paved over the flora, killed off the fauna, and built modern roads, houses, and stores.  At least, when I visited the Peruvian Amazon a few years ago, that’s what a couple of the local folks I met said they’d prefer to do.
2.  Ask local healers which plants or animal parts are medicinal, and for what, and exactly how to prepare them and how they work. 
3. Go home with the collected knowledge and materials and lab-tweak them into a mass-producible, marketable, globally shippable product.
4. Patent it and make a lot of money.
5. Never pay the so-helpful locals one thin dime.

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