​Biopiracy Consequences 

Biopiracy's short-sightedness is not only destructive of Reconciliation, but it also works against our health and survival!

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Robert Tindall says in The ​Jaguar That Roams the Mind: An Amazonian Plant Spirit Odyssey that, "...biopiracy by Westerners...[has] alienated the healers of

the forest. Some tribes and healers, therefore, have begun keeping their medicines to themselves. The extent of this tragedy cannot be fully appreciated until our dependence on indigenous medicinal knowledge is fully acknowledged.

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Anthropologist Jeremy Narby writes, '75% of the modern pharmacopoeia's plant-based remedies were first discovered by 'traditional' societies....less than 2% of all plant species have been fully tested in laboratories, and the great majority of the remaining 98% are in the tropical rainforests...without the botanical knowledge of indigenous people, biotechnicians would be reduced to testing blindly the medicinal propoerties
of the world's estimated 250,000 plant species.'"

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The folly of alienating native healers, or allowing them to go extinct, is further underlined by ethnobotanist Mark Plotkin, who witnessed a traditional healer
curing severe Type 2 diabetes with a preparation of plants.

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Biopiracy enriches drug companies for now, but threatens our access to some
of the world's greatest teachers, healers, and medicines!

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