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Crew collecting plant samples for HIV and Cancer screening, Sarawak Malaysia.
© M.R. Kadushin |
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Tracking Down a Power Plant
Who would have guessed that hidden inside a small tree in an obscure Borneo forest might be a cure for AIDS? This is a story about how scientific method, serendipity, and good old detective work really paid off.
Just a Routine Expedition
The National Cancer Institute (NCI) in Washington D.C., sponsors bio-prospecting expeditions to forests all over the world--typically tropical rain forests--to search for plants with medical applications. On a warm day in September, 1987, Dr. John Burley and his partner Bernard Lee, from Harvard, were collecting plant samples for NCI in a peat swamp forest near Lundu, in the state of Sarawak.
Dr. Burley cut a branch from a small tree, identified it as a species of Calophyllum , and added it to his inventory.
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