A billion-dollar drug was found in Easter Island soil – what scientists and companies owe the Indigenous people they studied

#1

I say the people on Easter island should all get free rapamycin for life…

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#2

A PubMed search reveals over 59,000 journal articles that mention rapamycin, making it one of the most talked-about drugs in medicine.

And yet… no human clinical trials. Come on uber wealthy peoples. Soros… you look half dead… fund this instead of politics.

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#3

While I’m sympathetic to Indigineous people and do believe they have a claim to their environment, it is a nuanced story. This particular article is written very poorly, and does not articulate the grounds for any claims clearly. It does acknowledge some complexities, but then does nothing to draw any conclusions or counterarguments:

"*Moreover, because the islanders did not use rapamycin or even know about its presence on the island, some have countered that it is not a resource that can be “stolen.”

However, the discovery of rapamycin on Rapa Nui set the foundation for all subsequent research and commercialization around the molecule, and this only happened because the people were the subjects of study. Formally recognizing and educating the public about the essential role the Rapa Nui played in the eventual discovery of rapamycin is key to compensating them for their contributions.*"

Um, what “contributions”? You need to state them explicitely. It’s not enough to make some claim, without explaining the particulars. It’s one thing if a population developed a folk remedy that a scientist or pharma company simply took and put a patent on. That’s clearly wrong. The population in this scenario absolutely deserves compensation. But if they had no clue, and it was some molecule that happened to be in their environment and was discovered by an outsider, the claim becomes more murky. That’s where the nuance enters. Here the claim is that rapa was only discovered because a soil sample was taken which it would not have been taken if the local people were not being studied - is that even true? Even if true, it’s a stretch. They should not be studied without their consent, and if they were, they should definitely be compensated. But does that now extend to soil samples? I’m not sure I see the connection. I mean it’s part of their environment, but so is the sky. How far do such claims extend? Should the part of the sky above their land that includes a view of a given star mean a rocket reaching that star need to compensate them? How about the other direction. If the soil is in play, how about beneath the soil, all the way to the center of the earth, is that narrow band from the surface to the center all subject to claims? Obviously at some point we get into absurdities, but who determines where that line lies?

This is somewhat related to the concept of cultural appropriation, a very complicated subject.

Point being, it’s not a black and white issue of what if anything is owed whom wrt. rapamycin specifically (specifics always matter!), and the article makes a very poorly stated case. YMMV.

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#4

So do users of metformin have to pay the French people lots of money.

Also

" what scientists and companies owe the Indigenous people they studied"

They did not study the indigenous people.