With an ingredients list that includes rhino
horn and tiger bone, traditional Asian medicine is on a collision course
with wildlife preservation.
It looks innocuous enough: a small vial bearing a white
and orange label with the words 'Shi-He Ming Yan Wan'. Yet the pills
contained within are said to hold great healing powers, able to cure
just about anything, from a mild fever to a brain haemorrhage; from
cancer to AIDS. The pill's power, it is claimed, comes from a small
amount of rhinoceros horn. Little wonder then that people pay as much as
US$50,000 for a kilogram of the stuff, roughly the same as the price of gold (see 'The rhino toll').
The rhino and its horn are not alone: powdered tiger bone is used to
treat rheumatism; the scales of the toothless, anteater-like pangolin
are believed to reduce swelling and improve blood circulation; and guilinggao,
a jelly derived from the shells of freshwater turtles, was used to
treat smallpox in a nineteenth-century emperor, with little success — in
Taiwan it is now reputed to cure cancer. It is a similar story for many
other endangered species whose commercial use is restricted — or banned
outright — by the Convention on International Trade of Endangered
Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
RICHARD JONES/REX FEATURES
The illicit trade in wildlife is a booming industry, estimated by
the US congressional research service to be worth as much as US$20 billion globally each year1.
Although this figure includes trade in bushmeat, skins and exotic pets,
in the expanding Asian market, estimated to be the largest in the
world, a significant driver is traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
Indeed, despite showing signs of decline in the 1990s, the poaching and
trade of endangered animals such as tigers and rhinos is once again on
the rise. Yet cheaper and more potent alternatives are available.
Organizations such as the American College of Traditional Chinese
Medicine say that sustainable substitutes have been used successfully
for nearly two decades. So why is there still a burgeoning market to use
these precious animals in traditional Asian medicine?
Rich person's remedy
One
likely factor driving this demand is the rise in the wealth of China,
says Sabri Zain, director of advocacy for Traffic International in
Cambridge, UK, which was established in 1973 to monitor wildlife trade.
“Currently China is the biggest market,” he says. This dominance is not
just a consequence of China's population, or the fact that traditional
Asian medicine has its roots there, but to the country's rapidly rising
incomes. “There are more people who can afford it,” Zain says.
The
market for these substances also seems to be expanding. A range of new
products has emerged over the past decade, available as black market
products or through online stores. “Tiger bone is now being used in
wine,” says Debbie Banks, a senior tiger investigator with the
Environmental Investigation Agency (EIA), a campaign group in London. It
is a similar story with other new products made with tiger bones, such
as shampoo — or indeed with tiger penis soup, which has no perceived
medicinal value whatsoever, she says. In fact, these wines, shampoos and
soups are not part of the traditional medicine repertoire at all.
However, they do lean on the same beliefs, says Banks. “They are seen as
status products,” she adds.
Indeed this association with status
is a major issue, reflected in the demographic of the modern-day user of
these products, says Zain. “It's a myth that these products are only
being consumed by an older generation. It's not just the old fogies, it
is also young, wealthy professionals,” he says. “It may be a way of
showing their peers that they can afford these very expensive medicinal
products.”
And there appear to be plenty who meet that financial
test. In 2008, a survey of nearly 1,000 people from six cities across
China found that 1.9% of respondents had consumed a medicine or tonic containing tiger within the past 12 months2. If this represents national consumption, it would mean a user base of around 25 million people.
In
Vietnam, which is one of the largest markets for TCM outside China,
traditional remedies are sought after. If incomes were to increase, so
too would consumption of products containing endangered species3.
This is hardly surprising, says Zain, given the perception that
products such as rhino horn are capable of curing cancer — a medicinal
property previously unheard of in traditional Asian medicine.
Horn of plenty
So
what of these purported health benefits? The use of rhino horn dates
back at least 1,800 years and is referenced in Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica,
the very first book of Chinese herbal medicine, says Huijun Shen,
president of the UK Association of Traditional Chinese Medicine in
London. Shen has nearly 30 years experience as a traditional medicine
practitioner, having trained and practised in China before moving to the
UK in 1995. Tiger bone is a more recent addition to the TCM apothecary
but is similarly well established in the Chinese literature as a
medicinal treatment. Yet despite their place in the East Asian medicinal
tradition, the clinical applications of both rhino horn and tiger bone
are limited, so their use is rare. Even before tiger and rhino products
were banned in China in 1993, demand for them was weak, says Shen. “I
never used them, even when they were legal,” he recalls, “because they
were so expensive.”
In fact, in nearly two millennia, there is no
record of rhino horn as a treatment for cancer, says Shen. Rhino has
very few medicinal uses, the main one being to treat what is known in
TCM as 'heat toxin in blood' syndrome (there is no direct modern
medicine equivalent, although it is usually caused by serious infections
and can lead to toxaemia or septicaemia). Today this condition is
treated with cheaper and more effective alternatives. “Normally we just
use antibiotics,” he says. Modern TCM practitioners, he adds, are often
trained in both TCM and Western medicine.
According to Zain,
anecdotal evidence suggests that using rhino horns to treat cancer was
fabricated recently by illegal traders to boost their market. And,
judging by the increase in poaching, it appears to be working. “Rhino is
probably the most worrying trend,” says Zain. That's because, until
2007, the number of rhinos being poached seemed to be dropping
dramatically. Since then, however, there has been a resurgence, from
8–10 illegal rhino horn seizures a year to 200 or more in 2007. It's not
entirely clear what has caused this increase, but seizures on the
ground and at international borders are still on the rise — this year
the tally is expected to reach more than 400. Moreover, Zain says, based
on the number of poached rhinos, the number of illegally traded horns
that evade capture by the authorities is also increasing (see 'The rhino
toll'). Indeed, in autumn 2011, the International Union for the
Conservation of Nature announced that wild populations of black rhino in
West Africa are considered officially extinct.
MARK DE FRAEYE/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY
Tiger-bone remedy for sale in Vietnam.
It is a similar story with tigers, says Banks. Back in 1993, after
intense international pressure and under the threat of sanctions from
the US government, China's state council prohibited the import or export
of tiger bone and rhino horn, and banned the sale of medicinal products
containing them within the country (with an exception for research into
substitutes) under penalty of death. In 1999, China established an
anti-smuggling unit. Following these measures, according to Chinese
CITES officials, seizures of tiger parts seemed to decline, as did the
availability of tiger products on the street4.
Investing in extinction
Since
2002 the declining trend has reversed, and seizures of tiger parts are
now four times what they were a decade ago. Tiger skins alone can fetch
in excess of US$20,000 per hide, so this rise
cannot be attributed solely to supplying traditional medicine. But with
each set of tiger bones worth as much as $7,000 it is unlikely that a smuggler would sell the skin without also trying to profit from the bones.
Even
if ever more affluent consumers in countries such as China and Vietnam
are ramping up demand for traditional Asian medicines, why opt for
hugely expensive products, and potentially risk the death penalty, when
alternatives are available that are not only cheaper, but which are also
claimed to be more effective? China's Northwest Institute of Biology
has conducted many different studies into the properties of sailong
(mole rat) bone and its use in treating rheumatism. Moreover, there are
a number of drugs containing it approved by the Chinese regulatory
agency to treat rheumatism. The Chinese authorities actively encourage
using sailong bone as an alternative to tiger bone.
Yet
many believe that the Chinese authorities could be doing much more.
China does have harsh punishments for those caught trading in illegal
wildlife, and regular seizures of animal contraband are made at its
borders. But within China there is little policing, says Banks; bones
and skins are openly sold in markets. And, as of 2011, the death penalty
is no longer applied to this crime.
What's more, the Chinese
government's attitude to farming animals for use in traditional medicine
is a concern, says Banks. Bears are farmed for their bile, which is
used to treat gallstones. There are also many officially sanctioned
tiger farms4.
Most only hold a dozen or so tigers, says Alasdair Cameron, a
campaigner with the EIA, but several house more than a thousand of the
big cats. He estimates that there are between 6,000 and 10,000 captive
tigers in the country. And with reports of China importing hundreds of
live rhinos too, it raises the question of why they are breeding these
animals if not for their bones and skin.
“The Chinese government
has categorically denied that this is what they are doing — and that
these live rhinos have been brought into the country to meet the demand
for recreational zoos,” says Zain. But the cramped conditions the
animals are kept in suggests otherwise, he says. More to the point, some
of these tiger farms were set up before 1993 with the stated aim of
breeding tigers for use in traditional medicine and for their skins —
before the ban on tiger bone was introduced — and have never closed,
says Cameron.
“You could argue that these breeding farms will take
the pressure off wild animals,” says Zain. This is the argument for
crocodile farms, which produce meat and skin. But the reality is that
farms maintain demand for the animal parts, yet cannot cope with any
surge in demand. If this happens, the temptation will be to satisfy it
by hunting — putting pressure on wild populations. “There are millions
of crocodiles in the world,” Zain observes, “but only a few thousand
tigers.” So farming tigers not only encourages the capture of wild
animals for breeding but also stimulates demand for the products. With
so few tigers left in the wild, it would only take a small increase in
demand to push them over the edge into extinction, he says. What's more,
it's not really in the interest of tiger farmers to prevent the
extinction of wild populations: after all, once they are extinct there
would be no reason to control the trade in tiger body parts.
“The rarer something is, the more valuable it becomes.”
But perhaps the most disturbing notion is the prospect that people
might trade in endangered animals as a means of “investing in
extinction”. This is the idea that by actively buying up and stockpiling
rare animal parts, one can not only push up the price, but also
encourage further poaching that will eventually force the species into
extinction. In cold-blooded business terms it makes an awful lot of
sense, says John Scanlon, secretary-general of CITES in Geneva,
Switzerland. “If something is rare it becomes more attractive,” he says.
“And the rarer something is, the more valuable it becomes.”
Scanlon
concedes that he only has “rumour and anecdotal evidence” that anyone
is actually 'investing' in the demise of a species. “It's still
speculative,” he adds. According to the EIA, however, tiger farms are
stockpiling the bones and skins of tigers that die. Indeed, Chinese
authorities have set up two operations — one in Guangxi and one in
Geilongjiang — to dismember the carcasses of dead tigers and destroy all
but the bones and skins4.
The Chinese authorities say this is to ensure there is adequate
supervision of the carcass and body parts, but why the bones and skin
are then not destroyed is not clear. So although there is no proof of
people stockpiling wild tiger parts, it is certainly happening in farms.
Dampening demand
There
is no simple solution to tackle illegal trade in these endangered
animals, says Scanlon. But the hope is that progress can be made by
adopting diverse tactics, including controlled delivery, tracking
illicit substances to the buyer. “It has been used to combat illicit
trade in drugs and we are now training wildlife enforcement officials in
the same technique,” says Scanlon. “We have employed two staff who have
vast front-line experience with police and customs in China and South
Africa to assist us in the fight against wildlife crime.” And CITES has
scheduled a December 2011 training course on controlled delivery
techniques for staff in 20 states in China.
Furthermore, in 2008,
despite having a remit limited to international trade, CITES took the
unusual step of issuing an advisory notification to signatories, which
include both China and Vietnam. The notification stated that countries
in which intensive breeding of rhinos or tigers takes place should
ensure that none of the animals are bred for their parts or derivatives.
It even suggests the use of DNA profiling, so that illicit trade can be
traced to source. But, as Scanlon points out, the notification is
merely advisory and not binding.
Ultimately, Zain believes that
the solution must come through demand reduction — “to make it socially
unacceptable, or dispel the myths concerning these products”, he
explains. “If there is no demand for a product then there is no trade.”
Such an approach has already successfully reduced the demand for tiger
skins among Tibetans. Following a campaign to raise awareness of the
tiger's plight, and an appeal by the Dalai Lama in 2006 for Tibetans to
stop wearing the fashionable tiger-skin chubas, demand fell
dramatically. Tiger skins were burned and it became socially
unacceptable to wear or sell them, and demand in Tibet has all but
disappeared5.
The
truth is that simply prohibiting trade or the use of animal parts
doesn't stop the poaching. “After the ban, demand still didn't disappear
completely,” says Shen. Even changing the traditional medicine formulae
has minimal impact. “Most practitioners would not use these
substances,” Shen says. But people don't always go through a
practitioner. “For TCM you don't need a prescription — you can buy any
Chinese medicine over the counter.”
Demand reduction will take
time. “Cultural and historical beliefs play a big role,” says Shen, and
with traditional medicine, attitudes and beliefs run deep. Providing
sustainable and effective substitutes for tiger bone and rhino horn is
one thing, but getting people to use them and believe in them is
another. Indeed, one of the findings of Traffic International's survey
in Vietnam was that there is a powerful underlying belief that medicines
made of wild animals are of a higher quality than those using farmed
animals or synthetic substitutes. In essence, getting users of
traditional Asian medicines to change their ways is as much about
changing tradition as it is about advancing medicine.
The illicit trade in wildlife is a booming industry, estimated by
the US congressional research service to be worth as much as US$20 billion globally each year1.
Although this figure includes trade in bushmeat, skins and exotic pets,
in the expanding Asian market, estimated to be the largest in the
world, a significant driver is traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
Indeed, despite showing signs of decline in the 1990s, the poaching and
trade of endangered animals such as tigers and rhinos is once again on
the rise. Yet cheaper and more potent alternatives are available.
Organizations such as the American College of Traditional Chinese
Medicine say that sustainable substitutes have been used successfully
for nearly two decades. So why is there still a burgeoning market to use
these precious animals in traditional Asian medicine?
It is a similar story with tigers, says Banks. Back in 1993, after
intense international pressure and under the threat of sanctions from
the US government, China's state council prohibited the import or export
of tiger bone and rhino horn, and banned the sale of medicinal products
containing them within the country (with an exception for research into
substitutes) under penalty of death. In 1999, China established an
anti-smuggling unit. Following these measures, according to Chinese
CITES officials, seizures of tiger parts seemed to decline, as did the
availability of tiger products on the street4.
Nenhum comentário:
Postar um comentário
Observação: somente um membro deste blog pode postar um comentário.