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Comment by mycall | Hacker News Reader

O2/CO2 aside, the Amazon rainforest's biodiversity is unique and has been a source for medical resource. There is more at stake than just breathing.

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I hear this brought up a lot. Can you name a drug that has actually passed all the safety and efficacy trials that has been developed from something in the Amazon?

Quinine for one. There are many more if you are willing to do five minutes of research: https://www.conservation.org/blog/5-rainforest-species-that-...

It's 5 minutes of research if you know what you're looking for. It can be much more if you don't, and you don't know when and where to stop.

BTW, that's kind of the entire point of a site like HN. Experts from different fields (and hobbyists and laypersons) get together and exchange knowledge. Sorry to go on about this, but I've been seeing too many responses saying to go Google things.

> It's 5 minutes of research if you know what you're looking for. It can be much more if you don't, and you don't know when and where to stop.

I know nothing about the topic, but literally just Googled Drugs from the Amazon [1], and the very first example of the very first search result I came across was Quinine. [2]

[1] https://www.google.com/search?source=hp&q=drugs+from+the+ama...

[2] https://www.adventure-life.com/amazon/articles/medicinal-tre...

Even an answer of the form "here's a set from a quick DDG" is more productive, and might even teach the commenter something, as it provides a fixed (even if incorrect) basis for discussion.

Given the option between not commenting at all or offering some variant of JFGI, I'll strongly prefer the former. "You don't have to attend every fight you're invited to", or comment on every post. But if you do, try to land solid punches. Even if you're not Mohammed Ali.

(I've frequently learned things, and more than once entirely changed my mind, in researching to answer comments.)

That first google link is shit.

has been isolated the alkaloid d-turbocuarine, which is used to treat such diseases as multiple sclerosis, Parkinson's disease and other muscular disorders.

It’s a muscle paralyzing agent used in surgery. It’s not use in MS or Parkinson’s.

I wonder what else is wrong in the article.

Just type into google "drugs developed from amazon forest" and the results appear above the search results right in an answer box.

No need to wag your finger.

My question was specifically about drugs that had passed safety and efficacy trials that were derived from the Amazon. Doing 5 minutes if searching and looking at your links it looks like quinine and curare are two of them. There was some mentions of some potential agents, but none that had made it through full clinical trials to be FDA approved. Quinine was first used for malaria treatment over 400 years ago. Two drugs over 400 years doesn’t seem like a lot.

And it doesn’t seem that it will get higher. My impression of modern pharmaceutical research is that instead of focusing on natural medicinal compounds, it is more focused on discovering the exact mechanisms behind various disease processes and synthesizing molecules that either slow down or speed up key pathways along those processes.

> There are many more if you are willing to do five minutes of research

but thats also how you end up on a geocities site about anti vaxxing because big pharma doesn't want you to know about the amazon and yell "exactly, I knew it all along!"

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