Before I became deeply embedded in the sphere of environmental policy, I used to be a chemical ecologist who spent two summers researching the Costa Rican and Ecuadorian tropics.  Yesterday, I decided it was time to go back to my "roots," and attend a session of the International Society of Tropical Forests conference.  I landed in a workshop on Intellectual Property Rights and Ethics led by New York Botanical Garden's Ina Vandebroek, who is an ethnomedical research specialist.

Ina's work, particularly in Bolivia, involves close interaction with communities who have a lot of local knowledge about plant and tree species endemic to their areas. The knowledge of medicinal plants, in particular, is of potential interest and value to pharmaceutical companies who may stand to profit from discovering a…