Thesis

I have returned from my sabbatical refreshed, recuperated, and ready to again tackle the monsters of the world with my unique observations, novel solutions, and penetrating insight. After all, “the writer is the engineer of the human soul.” I feel the need to build something.

It has been a while since I’ve sat down to write anything of any substance. Since my draft thesis for my ‘Law of Indigenous Peoples’ class was due last Friday, I’ve basically avoided writing. Even though I always complain about waiting until the last minute to do essays, there is something to be said for such an approach. In less than 12 hours, I did research and wrote a twenty-page article. In truth, if I had been allowed to go beyond twenty pages, I could have filled another ten without difficulty. I think when I sit down to work in a single marathon session that I can keep my mind focused on the overall picture instead of getting bogged down in the details. Heck the worst paper I’ve ever written was written in a class where the professor made us write the paper in separate sections and then paste the whole mess together. I just work backwards to that professor’s thought.

Anyway, my Law of Indigenous Peoples paper turned up some fascinating new discoveries for me. I’d never truly thought about the potential that bioprospecting had for bettering our lives without significantly worsening the lives of others. Here are just some of the things that scientists have found by looking at the knowledge and genetics of indigenous peoples:

Malaria kills more than 3,000 sub-Saharan children each day. The primary drug used to combat Malaria is Quinine, which kills the parasites in the bloodstream. This drug was discovered in the bark of a tree known to Andean natives who’d observed sick jaguars eating the bark. A plant native to Madagascar has been the source to two potent anti-cancer drugs. A pair of African plants produce a natural sweetener (2,000 times sweeter than sugar for the same volume), but that is indigestible, and therefore has no calories. Local communities in rural India have used the juice of the neem tree to treat skin disorders and scabies, and it can also be used as a natural insecticide. African natives revealed to us the uses of the endod berry, a derivative of which may be used to combat zebra mussels which threaten Great Lakes marine ecology. On top of this, genes from native plants have been used to create disease resistance and pest resistance for agricultural crops. A fungus found in the soil in an area of South America is even being investigated for its anti-ant properties.

With the benefits possible that are still out there, I’m not sure what kind of objections indigenous communities could offer up that should outweigh the potential discoveries still to be found. Ultimately, my paper brings this to light. Native peoples claim that their cherished beliefs (like the sanctity of their knowledge and culture) are being trampled when scientists come onto their lands to do research. Even if we discount my personal view that their views are largely bunk and take at face value that their culture is being destroyed by the invasion of materialistic investigation, can we in good conscience forbid scientists to continue this research?

One of the advances so far discovered is a genetic group that confers a resistance to adult leukemia. My research has uncovered that roughly ~262,000 people in the world die each year from adult leukemia. If we accept that the native cultures are inherently valuable, the question must arise as to their value. Just precisely how many lives is their culture worth? 262,000 lives-worth each year? That’s a heavy price to pay, and I’m not sure that it has been put explicitly that their resistance is costing that many lives, just from one discovery alone, each year.

It needs to be said, and it needs to heard: Their beliefs are not worth a two-and-a-half million people per decade.