Sometimes your search for one topic leads you to another. For this post, I wanted to find an environmental dilemma that wasn’t so black and white. “Green” articles can get so… obvious. After all, how many of us are really pro-trash or anti-recycling? Where’s the controversy? So, I looked for a “green” issue where there are hard choices to make. I found it in the drug Paclitaxel.

Paclitaxel is a mitotic inhibitor used in cancer chemotherapy. It was discovered in a National Cancer Institute program at the Research Triangle Institute in 1967 when Monroe E. Wall and Mansukh C. Wani isolated it from the bark of the Pacific Yew tree, Taxus brevifolia and named it “Taxol.” Paclitaxel is now used to treat patients with lung, ovarian, breast cancer, head and neck cancer, and advanced forms of Kaposi’s sarcoma.

Terrific, right? Except for the fact that the process of cutting down the trees to extract the drug also threatens the Pacific Yew’s existence. Environmentalists, who are usually thought of as good-doers, are put in the position of being the foes of needy cancer patients. The big question: what is more important — the Pacific Yew or the human beings who need the drug?

This is an ethical question and I don’t have a satisfactory answer. As a I stated earlier, my research into this topic sent me off into another direction, one of scientific wonder. Because of the issues with the Pacific Yew, scientists were forced to focus on alternatives. As in many moments in science history, a discovery was made by accident. In 2000, significant amounts of Taxol was found in the bark, leaves, and fruit of the hazelnut tree. Even the fungi of the tree was found to produce the drug. This discovery was important because it could help produce the needed Paclitaxel, while saving the Pacific Yew from extinction.

In the world of scientific and medical research, no one really knows what secrets are contained on this planet. Each plant might have a purpose in the ecosystem that we’re not aware of yet. This is the best possible answer to give to the cynic.

“Why should I care if some strange-looking bird becomes extinct in Africa or if a plant dies out?” the cynic might ask.

The answer is, “Because you never know.”

All living things are connected. The extinction of some ocean fungus has a domino effect, as it kills off the fish that feed on the fungus. Many of our medicines are based on nature’s wonder. If the hazelnut is so important to produce a drug, how do we know that the next plant or nut won’t unlock the key to a cure for cancer? We don’t know. Perhaps the answer was to be found on the beak of the strange-looking bird that became extinct in Africa, and now we will never know — once it is extinct.

Some say that human beings are selfish. I don’t believe that. If we were REALLY selfish, we would be obsessed with the upkeep of the planet. We’re the ones living here.