commercialisation and taxonomy II

[Peter Stevens]

Graduate students and postdoctoral researchers have been
affected most of all, from both developing countries and
from the North.

At the New York Botanical Garden in the Bronx, Andr=E9 M.
Amorim, a visiting botany professor from the State
University of Santa Cruz in Bahia, Brazil, has had trouble
completing his doctoral research because of the ban on
shipping even the tiniest leaf fragment.

His work focuses on Brazilian lianas and related vines and
shrubs, and it requires advanced molecular and genetic
analysis using equipment in New York.

"This is a real problem when Brazilian researchers are
working in other countries," Mr. Amorim said.

In some places, restrictions have forced biologists to pack
up and leave or to avoid the least-studied regions like the
Amazon, where the classification of species lags, and focus
on more accessible places like Hawaii or Puerto Rico.

In Sarawak, Dr. Navjot S. Sodhi of the National University
of Singapore abandoned a project to survey the bird species
in several national parks after tighter research
restrictions took effect in 1998.

"Sarawak is the best place on earth to work, because
there's so much rain forest left and the people are so
nice," Dr. Sodhi said. "They provided free workers to help
us, and we trained them in return and hired local guides.
We were only collecting blood samples from birds to look
for parasites and also collecting bird feces to study their
diets."

But word spread that a potential AIDS drug had been
discovered in the region. New rules greatly complicated his
program, he said. "Now, to collect bird feces we had to get
an export permit."

Officials began harassing his students.

"I couldn't take
the nonsense any more, and we pulled out," Dr. Sodhi said.
"I was willing to sign anything saying that we were not
doing any bioprospecting."

But there was nothing to sign.

Officials at some
companies that are sifting ecosystems for potential profits
say it is appropriate that scientists from universities and
other academic institutions play by the same tight rules.

"Academics have been kind of na=EFve to the question of
ownership of genetic material," said Eric J. Mathur, senior
director for molecular diversity at Diversa, a company in
San Diego that works around the world to find enzymes and
other substances that could make valuable drugs or other
products. "They think that under the guise of academia they
can do whatever they want. But if their work results in any
kind of invention - and most come serendipitously - you can
be sure their institution will want to own it and make
money from it."

Mr. Mathur said that the last year or so had finally seen
the biodiversity convention "start to come of age." In a
growing number of countries, he said, the general precepts
of the convention have translated into workable contracts
that, for the first time, clarify who owns what and how any
benefits will be shared.

But many scientists and some officials say there is clearly
the need for a system with two tracks, to separate and
simplify work that clearly has no commercial application.

The impetus for the treaty, scientists note ruefully, arose
largely from biologists, who in the late 1980's powerfully
promoted the notion that rain forests could turn out to be
medicine chests for the world. But the promise has rarely
turned into profits, with just a handful of drugs and
products reaching markets.

"It's never really panned out and was totally oversold,"
said Dr. George Amato, director of the conservation
genetics program at the Bronx Zoo.

Dr. Amato's program has frequently been stymied in helping
foreign researchers identify animal species and strains
through using genetic analysis, because no material can be
sent abroad. In one such effort, aimed at identifying a
strain of yellow-headed Amazon parrots, the DNA ended up
being tracked down in a stuffed museum specimen.

The worst side effect of the biology restrictions, many
experts say, is that young researchers are being driven
away from important ecosystems and fields of study.

In 1999, Christiane Ehringhaus, a German botanist pursuing
a doctorate at Yale, was teaching Brazilian students and
studying plants in the state of Acre in the Brazilian
Amazon when newspapers implied that she was collecting
seeds and insights from indigenous people in pursuit of
potential drugs.

Although she is still in Acre, Ms. Ehringhaus said the
resulting difficulties had prompted her to abandon botany
altogether and shift to social and economic studies.

"First," she said, "they drove me completely away from
medicinal plants and now from plants, period."

Prof. John H. Barton of the Stanford Law School, an expert
on the biodiversity treaty, said the biggest weakness in
the pact was its focus on biology as property. "It is much
more about sharing the profits from genetic resources than
it is about conserving biodiversity, about science,"
Professor Barton said.

Around the world, that focus has translated into warped
expectations and suspicions, Dr. Callejas said in Colombia.


"I have trouble convincing my closest friends that what I
do is because of passion, curiosity, a desire to know more
about a group of organisms," he said.

Everyone around him, he added, is convinced, with all the
talk of property rights and miracle drugs, that it is about
money.

"The convention," Dr. Callejas said, has produced a
"distorted view of what science is and who scientists are.
And so now, we are the problem, not the solution."

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