Global Conservation and Human Health

Tropical rainforests, coral reefs, and other wild landscapes around the world provide the ingredients for life-savings drugs that help people survive cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and other grave conditions. More than one-quarter of all prescription drugs, including over 70% of all cancer medications, are based on natural sources. But the landscapes where these natural ingredients originate are rapidly disappearing. When ecosystems are destroyed and species are pushed into extinction, libraries of genetic information and treasure troves of complex organic compounds potentially useful to medicine are lost forever. See a list of prescription medications derived from natural sources. Learn more.

Have you benefited from prescription medicines based on natural compounds? If so, we invite you to join other survivors and medical professionals in signing a letter (PDF) telling the President and Congress that the time to act to protect global species and ecosystems is now.

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