It is known that many plants and animals help to produce medicines. Because of deforestation many plants and wildlife are becoming extinct. Who knows if the cure for many disease are not still there and if those species disappear for complete, we are never going to be able to synthetically produce the medicines able to treat and cure some illnesses?!
Here is a short list of some of the drugs, their origins, and what they do:
Drug /// Plant or Animal or Fungus /// Effect
Aspirin - Willow tree bark - pain killer
Antibiotic Penicillin - mold (fungus) on citrus fruits -fights bacteria
Guggulsterone - sap of the Guggul tree -lowers cholesterol
Cytosar-U® - Caribbean Sea sponge -treats leukemia and lymphoma
Ecteinascidin - Tunicate or Sea Squirt -experimental cancer treatment
Prialt™ - Cone Snails -Pain Killer (1000 times stronger than morphine)
Taxol® - Pacific Yew tree -Cancer drug
http://publications.nigms.nih.gov/medbydesign/chapter3.html
"Deforestation is clearing Earth's forests on a massive scale, often resulting in damage to the quality of the land. Forests still cover about 30 percent of the world’s land area, but swaths the size of Panama are lost each and every year. The world’s rain forests could completely vanish in a hundred years at the current rate of deforestation" http://environment.nationalgeographic.com/environment/global-warming/deforestation-overview.html
Not only through the food chain all the species are connected. Some chemicals act as immuno-defenders making us all interdependent!
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