Earth Charter Chicago

Nature’s Medicine Cabinet-Tropical Rainforests

Tropical forests, only seven per cent of the land mass in the world total, as far as the port of half the known species of plants. Experts say that only one of four square miles of forest can contain more than 1500 different types of flowers and 750 species of trees, all of which focuses on coping mechanisms for millennia that mankind is struggling to learn how for their own needs.

Forests are a source of drugs
Some bags of people worldwide on the curative properties of the forest for centuries and perhaps longer. But since the Second World War began the modern world to take note of the drug and dozens of companies working with the protectors of nature, local groups and governments to identify and catalog plants synthesize forests for their medicinal value.

Forest plant life-saving drugs
Nearly 120 drugs in the world today are directly from forest plants. And after the United States National Cancer Institute, more than two thirds of all medicines found to have properties against cancer of the forest plants. There are examples. And ingredients derived from a synthesis now extinct plant still green, only in Madagascar (deforestation destroys itself), the chances of survival for children with leukemia from 20% to 80%.

Some links in the forest are also to treat malaria, heart disease, bronchitis, hypertension, rheumatism, diabetes, muscle tension, arthritis, glaucoma, dysentery and tuberculosis, among other problems health. And many in the trade of anesthesia, enzymes, hormones, laxatives, cough mixtures, antibiotics and antiseptics are also of forest plants and herbs.

The untapped potential of the forest medicines
Despite these successes, less than one percent of the plants in the world of tropical rainforests have also been tested for their curative effect. Environmentalists and health advocates are also very interested in the protection of the rain in the world remaining forests as a store for medicines of the future.

The issue of preservation of forests
Saving tropical forests but is not an easy task, because the poverty-stricken indigenous trying to live a eke countries and many governments around the world as the equatorial regions, greed and economic desperation, destructive to cattle of ranching, agriculture and logging. In the forest to the farm, ranch and clear the forest some 137 species of plants and animals go extinct, too-every day, at Harvard, noted biologist, Edward O. Wilson. Environmentalists fear that the forest species, many potential therapeutic products for diseases.

What can you save forests – and lives
You can use your hand to save the rainforest in the world by observing and supporting the work of organizations like Rainforest Alliance, Rainforest Action Network, Conservation International and The Nature Conservancy, and using links on sites such as The Rainforest Site, Red Jellyfish and Care2, the funds for organizations working in the field, the forest for the country.