Biopiracy started with a bounce

Biopiracy started with a bounce

Nature 451, 1055 (2008). doi:10.1038/4511055a

Author: Michael Gollin

Some people call it the original act of ‘biopiracy.’ In 1876, Henry Wickham, a self-trained rubber tapper under contract to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in London collected 70,000 highly perishable Hevea rubber seeds from Santarém in Brazil. Wickham rushed them on a