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 31 bioprospecting sample DHJanzen100029.jpg high resolution
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| The raw biodiversity prospecting sample, before extraction - frozen butterflies, males on the right and females on the left. In 1963 when I was a graduate student, the pharmaceutical industry paid $25 for a sample of something brought back (generally illegally) from a foreign tropical country - a sample that could rarely be repeated, and was of dubious identity and handling history. Now, under a formal biodiversity prospecting contract - legal, repeatable, reliably identified, and delivered with a known history - these samples are worth about $1,250/sample - and nearly all of that was being spent in Costa Rica to obtain and extract to the sample that was then sent to Merck in New Jersey. | ||
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