Bioprospecting & Deforestation in the Tropics

[Date of Submission]

Introduction

Bioprospecting is a process of searching for useful drugs which could be used as medicines. These drugs include production many of the medicines which are used to cure the medical problems which at times are pronounced to be as medically incurable as according to the drugs available at the time. As human is a creation of nature, therefore the nature contributes a lot towards the ailment of the human, one of the purest form of contribution by nature is of the drugs that are found in forest or in the tropic regions, which can be used in order to manufacture medicines for the cure of many deadly diseases and are also considered to be the best and the only method of manufacturing medication for many such diseases which are pronounced to be as impossible to be cured by the available of the current drugs.

Bioprospecting is the process of extraction of useful organic compounds or of the extraction of the natural medicines which are extracted from plants, fungi, microorganisms which are found to be growing in extreme weather conditions, which are mostly found in the areas like tropic, forests and rain forests. The tropics are known to be the most important areas for the exploration of the compounds like flora and fauna, the presence of which is a possibility to the cure of many of the incurable diseases. Furthermore, there is no doubt about the fact that there might be other such precious compounds which are present in the tropics but have not yet been explored and the exploration of which can help to cure the diseases that are currently known as incurable (Wilson, 1992; Reid et al., 1993; PAHO, 1996; Weiss and Eisner, 1998).

The production of such medicines which can proof to be a cure for such diseases that are currently known to be incurable is only possible if the regions or the areas where these compounds are tend to be found are not diminished. In other words, the term being referred to here is of the deforestation, which is causing many of the forests to diminish and along with them the diminishing of the only sources of these precious drugs and compounds which can not be found any where else or under any other climatic conditions (Newman, 2001).

Discussion

According to a study the bio-prospecting can result in the exploration of a large number of new drugs, each one of which can be used to manufacture a cure for a new disease or to bring advancements to an existing disease's cure. If the importance of this is seen from the tropical forests perspective, then it can be seen that one half of these unexplored drugs or compounds is is found to be present in the tropical forests, these amount is expected to be around 125000 currently unexplored flowering plants. The different parts of these flowering plants which include stems, roots, leaves, fruit and flower of these 125,000 species is currently unexplored and each ...