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Women the world over may find a miracle brewing in a place called Uruka Amahuaja, a cluster of huts in the Venezuelan rain forest, reachable only by dugout canoe. Biologist Ramiro Royero has set up a computerized field office there to collect data on a plant still unknown to the outside world: a shrub whose poinsettia-like leaves are steeped as a medicinal tea by the Piaroa tribe to relieve menstrual cramps--without the caffeine jitters and other side effects caused by most of today's commercial remedies...
Maria Lopez, 59, a tribal matriarch, assesses Royero's work with the eye of a seasoned businesswoman--and for good reason. She knows that if the plant has commercial value, Venezuelan law may soon give the Piaroa rights for compensation from drug companies, which would have to recognize what the community calls its intellectual property. In years past, says Lopez, "we always gave up our medicines without any economic gain for ourselves. We won't make that mistake again...
...quarter of all prescription drugs today are linked to the kinds of indigenous discoveries that make Brazilian catuaba bark a rain-forest version of Viagra for the herbal-supplement crowd. Two of Eli Lilly's more successful cancer drugs, Velban and Oncovin, were developed from Madagascar's rosy periwinkle plant, found through a shaman some 40 years ago. In the 1990s the two cancer drugs produced combined sales of $100 million a year. In September, Lilly, based in Indianapolis, Ind., agreed to pay up to $325 million to join San Diego's Amylin Pharmaceuticals in developing a potential diabetes treatment...
Their company, Aresa, a Copenhagen-based biotech start-up, has genetically modified a common weed called thale-cress so that its leaves turn red when the plant comes in contact with nitrogen dioxide--a compound that naturally leaches into the soil from unexploded land mines made from plastic and held together by leaky rubber seals. Aresa is growing large patches of the stuff on old army shooting ranges that have been seeded with land mines...
...above the enormous gas reservoir, and you won't see a rig. Instead, the company overcame underwater peaks, subzero temperatures and powerful currents to build extraction installations directly on the seabed half a mile (1 km) below the surface. In a couple of hours, extracted gas reaches the Nyhamna plant, where it's processed and sent to Britain via the world's longest underwater pipeline (it's a trip that can take as little as two days). In full swing, the $9.2 billion project will pump up to one-fifth of Britain's gas. More than that, though, StatoilHydro...