Biotechnology and ethnomedicine for human development

Abstract

Biotechnology is technology based on biology, especially used in agriculture, pharmacy, food science, environment and medicine. Ethnomedicine is a specialty of medical anthropology that studies traditional medicine, especially those that lack written sources, with an emphasis on cultural aspects, rather than biomedical ones. In this bibliographical analysis essay, we find that ethnomedicine is being used and transformed by biotechnology, since many medicinal plants are being processed in laboratories to later be mass-produced and spread to the population. The problem is that some plants and medicines are being patented and from that moment any country, which owns the plant, no longer has the right to produce products from said plant using the same technology. This situation especially impacts those of the third world, which is where a biodiversity of this type of plants is found. At this point biotechnology meets ethnomedicine, but unfortunately biopiracy also arises.