Cancer chemotherapy, biodiversity, public and private property: the case of the anti-cancer drug Taxol

The drug taxol has been hailed by many in the cancer community as a major b reakthrough in the treatment of cancer. It has already been approved in use against ovarian and advanced breast cancer in many countries worldwide. Ta xol has also promoted profound debates in the policy arena not, as one migh t expect, because of the characteristics or purposes of the drug itself, bu t because of other far-reaching effects. Taxol is a complex compound found in the bark of the Pacific yew tree, primarily in Oregon and Washington in the USA. The bark was first collected in 1962 and cytotoxicity demonstrated in 1964. Yet it was not until 1989 that the first results of clinical tria ls were reported. In the US taxol was then rushed through the Food and Drug Administration's regulatory procedures: approval being granted for use in refractory ovarian cancer in 1992. The controversies surrounding taxol surf aced in 1989 and grew substantially over the next few years. In this paper we examine two principal controversies concerning taxol, the first of which focused on apparent conflicts between the needs of environmental protectio n and those of cancer chemotherapy. Although the media portrayed this as a clash of interests between the environment and people with cancer, we argue that it was an attempt to increase lay participation in biomedical decisio n making and policy formulation. The second controversy was between health policy and the transfer of public scientific property to the corporate sect or. The pharmaceutical company Bristol-Myers Squibb was given exclusive rig hts to provide taxol from Pacific yew trees under a Go-operative Research a nd Development Agreement signed in 1991. While this was seen to be in the U S Government's (as well as the company's) interest, it provoked a public re action questioning the terms and consequences of the transfer of publicly g enerated scientific knowledge to the private sector. (C) 1999 Elsevier Scie nce Ltd. All rights reserved.