I can only concur with SentientMeat. Out of sheer self-preservation we are obliged to make some reasonable effort to acommodate all other species on the planet. An odd little yam from the aforementioned Amazonian rainforest just happened to yield the prototype pseudo-hormones for oral contraceptives. Consider the implications of that one single medical discovery. A huge percentage of all new bio-pharmaceuticals come from the Amazon. How much more of it shall we slash and burn?
Yet, please consider a very mundane discovery. A biologist working with frogs would routinely perform open surgery on his subjects, stitch them back up and toss them into their muddy tanks. He began to notice that very few of the frogs ever became infected. After investigating, it was found that frogs (in general) have a fabulous complex of anti-fungal and anti-bacterial secretions in their skin. These secretions are currently being investigated as a powerful new antibiotic drug.
Which species do we let go extinct? The one that holds a cure for AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis … (need I continue)? At the very least we must begin a multinational effort to catalog and house biological material from around the world. We are rapidly extinguishing a vast legacy of nature’s adaptation across the aeons. It is literally as if we are heating our house by burning the furniture.
I am a devout capitalist, but the profits from discovering a single one of these vital biopharmaceuticals could easily outweigh the entire value of a world timber crop. The alleviation of human suffering goes light years beyond the money. It is precisely these reasons that cause me to advocate preservation of all old growth forests in the United States and the sustainable harvesting of large trees worldwide. Domestic replanting of trees has created a monoculture of Douglas fir that is engineered to grow so fast that it doesn’t even have a straight grain (no lumber, suitable only for plywood). Again, by reforesting with a single species, what miraculous possibilities have already been lost? It’s not as if we have anywhere near even 50% of the earth’s species cataloged in the first place.
This is a priceless heritage that we are squandering. Once again, our biosphere is uniquely suited to provide assimilable chemistries for the human body. What survives today, is the byproduct of untold millennia of winnowing and specialization. The survival mechanisms (as seen in the frogs) have been fine-tuned far beyond what we could hope to duplicate through organic synthesis and subsequent (long term) testing. We have had this magnificent medicine chest thrust into our hands and we are wiping our posteriors with the bandages contained therein.
This must cease immediately.