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THE DYING JUNGLE - PART 2 By Devon Severin “Rain forests are vast but they are also vulnerable.” Right now as we speak, the rainforest is slowly depleting into a wasteland. Okay, so every minute that you read this paper, at least one tree has been cut down, or is being marked to be cut down. Think about when you’re sick. You go to the doctor, and the doctor prescribes you drugs to take so that you feel better. Well, most the ingredients that you have in those drugs come from the rainforest. Your Aspirin, Advil, prescription drugs and everything else prescribed to you has one or more ingredients from the Amazon Rainforest. If you didn’t have the Advil to get rid of your headache, your whole day would be down the drain.
This picture was provided by: http://www.denheller.com Since early times, plants have been used in Brazil to heal. There are an estimated 1,400 tropical plants that may contain substances that are active against cancer. And if we cut down the rainforest, we may never find a cure for Cancer, Aids, and many other diseases.
Picture provided by: http://www.ascendingenrerprises.com/amazonherb.html
When a U.S. botanist, Monie S. Hudson,
examined fifteen hundred rainforest plants he gathered in Costa Rica,
he found that almost fifteen percent carried potential in the fight
against cancer. Alkaloids from the leaves of the rosy periwinkle have
been successful in treating Hodgkin’s disease and childhood leukemia.
The Brazilian pit viper, one of the world’s deadliest snakes, gives
venom that is now a drug for high blood pressure. The western countries
import tens of thousands of tons of plant material each and every year
for drug production, to keep you feeling better. One very important
drug that we use today in heart surgery was found in the rainforest.
Formerly used as poison on the tips of arrows, this poison paralyzes
the animal or creature’s nervous system. This poison is a sticky
black substance, curare, from the resin of a jungle liana, Chondodendron
tomentosum. It is used to relax the body muscles and let the surgeon
work. Now physicians are highly aware that the Amazon rainforest is
a place for discovery and by cutting down the rainforest it would be
a major set back to fight against anticancer and other drugs. In short, within the rainforest is the
possibility of many unsolved mysteries waiting to be solved, if only
given the chance to do so.
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