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and economic strategies to ensure the sustainable harvesting of targeted organisms; use of 

 novel contractual or other legal mechanisms to ensure equitable distribution of potential 

 financial rewards; incorporation of systematists, ecologists, and anthropologists in integrative 

 surveys of a developing country's biological diversity; and production and documentation of 

 all collected material in the form of published works, and/or databases, reporting specific 

 locality and all features of biology relevant to standard botanical and zoological collections. 



Programs assure accessibility of inventory data to all individuals, including those not 

 associated with the ICBG, by housing catalogues and databases in public institutions (such as 

 universities and national museums) and, when databases are kept on computer systems in 

 private institutions, by including in publications specific references to these databases. 



The ICBG program raises novel legal issues that link ordinarily distinct legal fields, such as 

 environmental and intellectual proj)erty law. The principles were derived from the Request 

 for Applications issued in November 1991 by MH on behalf of the three Federal agencies 

 funding the program. They are considered minimum standards for treatment of conventional 

 intellectual property rights, plans for the distribution of benefits to developing countries, 

 disclosure to and consent of indigenous or traditional sources, respect for indigenous concepts 

 of intellectual property, balancing public access to and protection of proprietary information, 

 compliance with environmental laws, and attention to issues of sustainability. 



Thirty-four applications were receive and reviewed; three awards were made on September 

 30, 1993, for five years, and two other awards will be made in FY1994. 



CONCLUSION 



The number of potentially valuable drug development "leads" from plant and animal sources 

 is likely to be only one in 5,000-10,000, and, based on our experience with drugs for cancer, 

 the chances of discovering an effective commercial drug such as Taxol® are significantly less. 

 In addition, the time span for development of a drug to commercial use has been as long as 

 10-20 years, although we hope to quicken that pace significantly. Accepting that the 

 protection and maintenance of biodiversity must be capable of generating real economic 

 benefits to the society providing these services, one might think that drug discovery and 

 development (pharmaceutical prospecting) might not provide an economic incentive to justify 

 conservation of biodiversity. However, the development of new screens and the dramatic 

 improvements in screening technology, are significantly expanding the potential of natural 

 products as sources of new drugs and other bioactive agents (e.g., agrochemicals). The 

 emergence of increasing resistance of diseases, such as malaria, tuberculosis, and pneumonia 

 to commonly-used drugs, and the scourge of the global AIDS pandemic, make the necessity 

 to discover new drugs all the more urgent. While it is impossible to determine what 

 percentage of species have been fully investigated for pharmaceutical potential, it is likely 

 that the percentage is extremely small; some estimates place it at less than one percent. 



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