Pharmaceutical companies should pay for raiding nature's medicine cabinet

Canning, Adam D.;Death, Russell G.;Waltham, Nathan J.

Abstract

[Extract] In 2019, the pharmaceutical industry profited from US$1·2 trillion of global spending on medicines. Most of this is simply a cut of the $125 trillion worth of services provided by nature every year. Almost two-thirds of all small molecules approved by the US Food and Drug Administration between 1981 and 2014 were either inspired by, derived from, or mimicked natural resources or consisted of natural products. Even the COVID-19 pandemic solution could be derived from nature, with a vaccine developed from the blue blood of a living fossil—the horseshoe crab. After having existed for 450 million years, the horseshoe crab faces a declining population attributed to deteriorating coastlines, commercial fishing, and now blood harvesting for pharmaceutical benefit.

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398

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1474-547X

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10303

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Elsevier

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DOI

10.1016/S0140-6736(21)01686-X