Species paying cost of bogus cures
MEDELLÍN: A pinch of powdered chimpanzee bone, some gecko saliva, a dash of vulture brain.
These are not the ingredients of a fairytale witches’ brew, but some of the prized substances helping drive the multibillion dollar illegal trade in animal parts touted to cure anything from a hangover or asthma, to cancer and AIDS.
Along with better-known products such as rhino horn, pangolin scales, bear bile and tiger bone, dealers do a brisk trade in some more obscure ones too – dried seahorse, sloth claws, manta ray gills, and macaque embryos.
Many are creatures listed as endangered or threatened.
And while some of the products are key constituents in centuries-old traditional cures prescribed by healers in Asia and Africa, others are fictional cure-alls sold by cynical quacks, experts say.
“We do see modern-day snake oil salesman,” John Scanlon, secretary- general of the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species said.
While stressing “we will never criticise any traditional practices”, he condemned “people who are promoting certain wildlife products as having properties that have no association with traditional medicine”.
“They’re really preying on people in very vulnerable situations.”
These include peddlers of rhino horn to cure cancer – an unproven claim that has contributed to the decimation of these majestic beasts.
Sudan, the world’s last male northern white rhino, died in Kenya this week.
In 1960, there were an estimated 100,000 black rhinos in Africa – today there are fewer 28,000 rhinos of all species left in Africa and Asia, according to a 2016 UN World Wildlife Crime Report.
“The current rhino poaching crisis, which began around 2007... does have its origins in bogus medicinal use,” said Richard Thomas of TRAFFIC, which monitors wild animal trade.
A surge in demand in Vietnam is ascribed to a senior politician claiming in the mid-2000s that rhino horn cured his cancer.
“This has no basis in scientific fact, but was almost certainly the urban myth that led to the crisis,” Thomas said. – AFP