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3
Trailer
What is bioprospecting? Let us start with the Hollywood version. Deep in the rainforest of Brazil an old traditional healer lives, who has a herbal cure for cancer. Medicine
Man is a film classic from 1992 in which the legendary actor Sean Connery plays Dr.
Robert Campbell, a scientist who has learned about that herbal cure. He is soon joined
by a woman who also is a scientist, Dr. Rae Crane, played by Lorainne Bracco. The
two not only have a romance going, but they take part in a global activity. This activity
is what we call bioprospecting.
When conducting bioprospecting, scientists connected to the pharmaceutical
industry travel the globe to collect biological samples. Like Dr. Campbell in the film,
real bioprospectors sometimes acquire knowledge from traditional healers on organisms that they use to prepare medicines to treat various diseases. The natural medicines then provide the starting points for further laboratory analyses that aim to
develop modern medicines.
In the film, modern development approaches in terms of giant road construction
machines, and more and more of the forest is burned down, and the natural source of
the cancer medicine is threatened. The two bioprospectors involve themselves in a
dramatic battle in order to ensure the survival of the local indigenous people as well as
of the cancer medicine.
But in the film, we gradually learn that the work of Dr. Campbell has not always had
positive consequences. A few years earlier, he visited a neighbouring tribe in his search
for traditional knowledge to forward to the American pharmaceutical company that he
worked for. He found that this indigenous group had a pain reliever. The pharmaceutical
company set up a large laboratory with many research workers in the forest and developed a medicine that became a financial success. However, for the indigenous group the
consequences were fatal. From the laboratory staff they contracted influenza, against
which they had no resistance. All died. (. Photo 3.1)
Overview
In this chapter, we tell our version of the story of bioprospecting that in recent
decades has constituted an important and contested topic within the field of
environment and development. We also use bioprospecting as an example to illustrate
how elements may be studied and connected within the framework of political
ecology. First, we discuss the political economy of bioprospecting. Then we present
two sets of discourses and narratives that have dominated ways of telling about the
economic activity and its consequences. We continue by presenting a case study from
Tanzania of what bioprospecting there entailed for involved people, and we compare
these findings with each of the two leading discourses and related narratives about
bioprospecting. Moreover, we tell the story about a new medicine that began on a
mountain road in Norway and ended with the most-selling medicine of the largest
pharmaceutical company in the world.
Discourses and Narratives on Environment ...
3
Trailer
What is bioprospecting? Let us start with the Hollywood version. Deep in the rainforest of Brazil an old traditional healer lives, who has a herbal cure for cancer. Medicine
Man is a film classic from 1992 in which the legendary actor Sean Connery plays Dr.
Robert Campbell, a scientist who has learned about that herbal cure. He is soon joined
by a woman who also is a scientist, Dr. Rae Crane, played by Lorainne Bracco. The
two not only have a romance going, but they take part in a global activity. This activity
is what we call bioprospecting.
When conducting bioprospecting, scientists connected to the pharmaceutical
industry travel the globe to collect biological samples. Like Dr. Campbell in the film,
real bioprospectors sometimes acquire knowledge from traditional healers on organisms that they use to prepare medicines to treat various diseases. The natural medicines then provide the starting points for further laboratory analyses that aim to
develop modern medicines.
In the film, modern development approaches in terms of giant road construction
machines, and more and more of the forest is burned down, and the natural source of
the cancer medicine is threatened. The two bioprospectors involve themselves in a
dramatic battle in order to ensure the survival of the local indigenous people as well as
of the cancer medicine.
But in the film, we gradually learn that the work of Dr. Campbell has not always had
positive consequences. A few years earlier, he visited a neighbouring tribe in his search
for traditional knowledge to forward to the American pharmaceutical company that he
worked for. He found that this indigenous group had a pain reliever. The pharmaceutical
company set up a large laboratory with many research workers in the forest and developed a medicine that became a financial success. However, for the indigenous group the
consequences were fatal. From the laboratory staff they contracted influenza, against
which they had no resistance. All died. (. Photo 3.1)
Overview
In this chapter, we tell our version of the story of bioprospecting that in recent
decades has constituted an important and contested topic within the field of
environment and development. We also use bioprospecting as an example to illustrate
how elements may be studied and connected within the framework of political
ecology. First, we discuss the political economy of bioprospecting. Then we present
two sets of discourses and narratives that have dominated ways of telling about the
economic activity and its consequences. We continue by presenting a case study from
Tanzania of what bioprospecting there entailed for involved people, and we compare
these findings with each of the two leading discourses and related narratives about
bioprospecting. Moreover, we tell the story about a new medicine that began on a
mountain road in Norway and ended with the most-selling medicine of the largest
pharmaceutical company in the world.
Discourses and Narratives on Environment ...