RIO DE JANEIRO — Somewhere in the Amazon there may be flora and fauna that hold the key to curing diseases such as cancer and multiple sclerosis.
That, at any rate, is the vision. But many scientists say that the search for the next miracle drugs is being hampered by Brazilian laws meant to curb "biopiracy" -- the use of wild plants with recognized medicinal or other properties by international companies to develop products and get patents without sharing the commercial benefits with the source countries.
Many countries have such concerns, and the United Nations Convention on Biological Diversity has guidelines to help ensure that nations reap some of the benefits of the discoveries and folk wisdom from their forests.
Brazil has strict regulations that apply to Brazilians and foreigners, but foreigners are more likely to get arrested. Over the last decade more than 30 have been detained, and their research samples confiscated or destroyed.
The Amazon rain forest is thought to contain at least 30% of all plant and animal species on the planet, most of them uncataloged. At the same time, loggers and farmers are steadily shrinking its area by an estimated 19,000 square miles each year, according to Nature magazine. .
But scientists say the rules are so stringent and overzealously enforced that it has become impossible to ship samples abroad for analysis, reducing research to a crawl and leading many to move their research to Ecuador, Bolivia and Peru.
Last year, police tracked two German researchers across eight Brazilian states and seized the spiders they were allegedly planning to ship to the United States.
In 2002, Marc Van Roosmalen, a Dutch scientist who has discovered about 20 new monkey species, was accused of biopiracy after authorities removed 27 rare monkeys from his home in the Amazon city of Manaus. Roosmalen said he was only studying and caring for the animals, not exploiting them for profit, and had applied for permits in 1996 but got no response.
Brazilian scientists are feeling the squeeze too.
"The situation is so frustrating, I've all but given up," says Paulo Buckup, a professor of ichthyology at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro who collects river fish for research. "Brazil has lost the capacity to control its own resources because it doesn't know what it has."
Biopiracy haunts Brazilian history, beginning with Henry Wickham, an Englishman who smuggled rubber seeds out of the country in the 19th century and broke Brazil's global monopoly.
