>> t today on the "e"earth f fo- biododiversity.y. the woworld'ss specicies are didisappearing at a surprising rate, and the consequences for human health are enormous. comingng up on "earth focus." >> biodiveversity as a way toto describe the sheer variety of life on earth. life --- on land, air and sea.

the sheer diversity of life on earth is a testament to the majeststy, beaeauty, and wondert is the natural world. millions of species of plants, animals, and microorganisms and the environment that habit are part of a creature interrelatedd system. they depend onn what other for survival. huhuman beings are part of this intricate web of life. biodiversity is also a source of cultural and spiritual wealth, an essential part of human tradition and inspiration. the earth's natural systems provide a range of services vital to our survival. species for other our food, livelihood, medicines, as well as to purify our air and water.

oceans provide food and help regulate the climate. forest regulate water supplies and provide fuel. but all too often, we take these services for granted. totoday, human actionsns are pug naturaral systems to the limit, and this, scientists say, can undermine not only the quality of life, but human sururvival itselflf. we probably don't know the names of about 95% of everything livingng in the ocean. momost of the life in the ocean has neverr been studied by scscientists. >> therere may bee 100 milillion microbial species. there may be a billion. nobody has any idea about that whatsoever. >> most of the world's biological diversity is found in the world's rain forests of the coral reefs and new species

continue to be identified. deep ocean environment in particular often -- offer tantalizing prospects for the discovery of a known forms of life. no one knows how many species exist on earth. scientists have named at catalog just over 1 million species. what we do know for certain is that we are losing species at an unprecedented rate. losing species before we even knew they shared our planet. >> at the variety of life is going down quite rapidly. >> its going to change the nature of our culture, our cities, and how we go about our daily lives. >> i in earth's history, there have been five mass extinction events. the last of which occccurred 65 million years ago. >> there was a mass extinction from an enormous media or,,

asteroid that hihi thehe earth t cost tremendous debris to go up into the atmosphere and cooled the planet for a long time. >> half of all species went extinct, including the dinosaurs. the rate of species loss today is on par with that event, and is by far and away the highest rate of species loss since humans have been around. their rate of species loss today is probably at least 100 times that which occurred before humans were around. for many groups of species, the rate is near to 1000. mass extinction is caused by one species -- man. >> we are on pace t to lose 50%f species by 212100, largegely duo habitat loss and clclimate chan. >> the major danger is habitat destruction.

each spepecies has very special habitat requirements. once you destroy those, you destroy the spececies. >> we are cutting down our rain forests at ann alarming rate. wewe are overfishihing in the ocean, we are consumiming naturl resources at an unsustainable rate. the earth's surface has already been altered by humans. three-quarters will be altered in the next 30 years. pollution from farms, pesticides, and fertilizer runoff as causing dead zones in lakes and sees. 80 percent of the world's fisheries are depleted, over exploited, or in a state of collapse. one-third of all coral species are at risk of extinction. we are definitely a big past on earth. destroying some

ecosystems. >> climate change will make an already bad situation worse and could become a factor most responsible for species' extinction in the next century. based pcsy 30% of land- are at r risk fromm extinction y century's end. >> n nobody knows what that iss gogoing to mean. clearly, a tremendous problems with food, tremendous p problems with water, tremendous death of species and all kinds. heat waves everywhere. the roleg challenge is of carbon dioxide, which both heats up the notion that makes it more acidic. two degrees fahrenheit or 1 degrees centigrade causes something called coral bleaching. and prolonged, can lead to massive amounts of coral death.

the second thing carbon dioxide does is it dissolves in the ocean and makes the ocean more acidic. a more acidic pollution, it's much harder for organisms to secrete their skeletons, so coral has a harder time doing what is supupposed to do. >> you can quickly realize how the warming of the planet a and changing t the way the water cye of the plan works are two consequences of greeeenhouse gas emissions that cause climate change could affect the ability of species to live. cold-blooded species have to maintain their body temperatures by staying out of the heheat. if it is getting warmer, that forces them to move. right now, , we are living throh a mass migration of species towaward the poles of the plane, those that can get out the heat. > thehe most important thingo understand about biodiversity is not that individual organisms are important, but they persist that isological web interactive.

the loss of one species leads to ramifications on others. >> scientists and some not -- scientists now say the higher extinction we are experiencing could reduce nature's ability to provide food, clean water, and a stable environonment. >> what wewe really need to do s wait that as a species and understand that this plan that actually works not just as a physical system, but as a linked biological and physical systeme recognize is absolututely fundamental to our existence. >> biological diversity plays an important role in madison. plants were no further healing properties for thousands of years. , therly as 2600 b.c.

mesopotamia's used oil from cedar and cypress trees and the opium poppy to treat alien -- to treat ailments. ancient chinese, tibetan and indian medicines all prescribed drugs that are mostly plant- based. >> if you are o on the medicati, particularly foror cancer or infectious disease, it's a good chance the medicines that are saving your life would not exist or not for nature. >> most of the medicines we take are made in laboratories today. , their designion and discovery has is d directly relied very heavily on molecules' we hahave discoveredn plants, animals, and microorganisms. >> this includes drugs like stanton's which are widely used all over the world. insulin is a natural product. >> there is something that's used against herpes that comes

from a marine sponge. there is also a cancer -- an anti-cancer agent that comes from sea squirts. >> the rosy periwinkle, a plant found in nascar, revolutionized the treatment for hodgkin's lymphoma. was found inant the marquetry of and design -- amazon rain forest. morphine was isolated from the opium poppy. aspirin was synthesized from compounds found the part of the white willow and from the plant, but this week. >> today, a firsst-line treatmet we have e for malaria, one of te world's biggest killers, is that on a plant from china is currently o our best hope foa controlllling this tremendous disease. >> if you look at a all the new drugs approved by the u.s. food anand drug administration betwen

1981 and 2006, almost two-thirds of those would have had their origins in nature, not in our lab. what's more interesting is that oftentimes, nature gives us molecule's that t may not make t fully through fda trials, but teach us a tremendous amount about how our bodies work in helping disease. inre is a drug used patients and used on coronary artery stance. these are little mesh tubes that get put into the blood vesselsls and supply the heart with oxygenen. they are put in after a heart attack and the artery gets clogged. the drug comes from a soil microbes on easter islaland.

it's becoming incredibly useful. it turns out that t its value to medicine is far greater as a drug. we were able to understand a part of how a our cells know when to divide because of this drug. ththere is a protein in everery cell called d the molecularr targets and we only discovered this protein because we found this molecule in nature. this protein is the gatekeeper for when the cell knows when to divide. sometimes because nature works through trial and error as it tries to figure out t how to del with all the challenges that come up, it can come up with solutions or molecules t that no rational person might cononceive of. those sorts of innovations can be tremendously valuable to madison.

from acillin was derived bolt to become a widely used antibiotic to treat diseases like syphilis and staff infections. another antibiotic was developed from a fungus found in a soil sample inin the jungles f borneo. >> we found them from snakes have given us the ability to undedetand how t to freezee specific neurological cells and in some cases, provide therapeutic agents. >> particularly the stuff that lives glued down to the bottom of the ocean is a rich source of potentiall medicines b becaue those organisms cannot moved. that means h have to defend themselves by being nasty to eat. ththe things that makeke them ny to each are often in very small amounts very helpful to us. one of f the bebest examples in teterms of medicines are the coe

snails. therere are about 700 species. eachch of them has between 102 huhundred spepecialized poisonsy ed t to cture andnd kill their play. -- katrine kill their prey. only a h handful havave been lod at for medicine. >> these chemicals but from common sale -- from: snails are being investigated. there are clinical trials for new drugs for epilepsy, a clinical trial for drugs that will protect nerve cells during strokes, heart swelled during heart attttacks, and onone of te chemicals is on thehe market no it is the most important painkiller that has been discovered in essentially since morphine in the early 1800's. it is 100000 times more potent than morphine. it is based on one of these: stale poisons, just one.

it is being used for patients who no longer respond to a opiates. snailseople belilieve cone may have morore medicines imimportant to h humans than any otheher organisms on the planet with glolobal warming, if we are destroying "-- if we are destroying cororal reefs, we may lose the most valuable pharmacopoeia on the planet. when we lose species, thth are gone fororever. we c cannot buy them back, nor n we discover these potential secrets that could be lifesaving. if people understood that better, i think they would behave very differently. >> today, amphibians are one of the most threatened species on earth. nearly one-third are in dangeger g going extxtinct. >> they're very sensitive to changes in their environment. poisons, of climate change,

habitat destruction. if you have never held an end to be in your hand, you know that they feel moist and clammy. that is because they breathe through their skin. in order to do that, the skin is very thin and moist. it is used in of fact as a lung to some extent. many of them breathes through their skin exclusively. there are some animals that only breeze through their skin. they also take up water through their skin. as they do this, because they do not have a very effective barrier with the outside theyronment, they cannot -- can't absorbable lot of the toxins a and chemicals into ther bodies very readily. there are many well-documented studies that show various chemicals which are commercially applied as herbicides or pesticides commercially in the context of agriculture as well as in people managing their own homes and gardens, many of them

are chemically very similar to certain basic hormones in humans and other animals. they are so close chemically to the naturally occurring hormone is that they actually disrupt ourr normal and the current balance in our body. hence the term in the crown destructor. was untilious one recently among the most widely used commercial use herbicides in the world. is known to feminize males. chromosomeproducing elite male frogs, they would develop abnormal testes. in some cases, the testes will have follicles and produce eggs. with theireres behavior, physiology and so forth. frogs are very diverse and our species that specialize in different ways, whether it is their breeding biology or

coloration. scientists have discovered particular features that have evolved in one group or another have interesting pharmacocological benefits for humans. in some cases, they are or were being developed as potential drugs. >> researchers are looking at how compounds from and to be and -- including those with hiv aids. at a time when antibiotic resistance is becoming more widespread, scientists say amphibians bailed the key to new antibiotics and ways of overcoming antibiotic resistance. >> there were two species of frog in australia known as the gastric brooding frog. they have one of the more bizarre reproductive biology is. ththe female frogs lay eggs externally, as most frogs do.

the male would fertilize them extra early as is typical, but the female would turn around and swallow the fertilized eggs into her stomach, where they would stay for several weeks, developing and ultimately should give birth orally. the frogs would literally p popd ouout of theheir mouth. if most people or frogs take something into their stomachs, it is digeststed. how come these eggs stay in the stomach for weeks s at a time, embryos thatat little frog leles foweekeks at a time and not be digested? as it turned out, studies in the 1980's began by australian biologist found out the tadpoles were secreting a substance which deactivated the stomach lining. it was not producing digestiveve enzymes. it was inhibititing the stomacah

activity and enabling it to serve as a uterus. there are some unfortunate syndromes in humans called ulcer's involving the lining of the stomachch caused by over secretion of digestive enzymes. these frogs were steady in the sense thatat hopefully it t migt provide some means of controlling human stomachh ulcers. the tragedy comes in that thehe species were only discovered in the 1980's. within a few years, thehey went extinct i in nature. ultimamately, those animals died out and the species was lost forever. they cannot bebe studied and longerer. a arctic ice e is turningng the survrvival of t the polar b with a loss of the polar bear may come the loss of potential medicines for diseases like osteoporosis, kidney failure, and diabetes. essentiallyears are

inin mobile as evevery hibernatg bebear i is for fiveve-seven mo yet they do not get osteoporosis. their bones don't thin. there are the only mammal that does not get osteoporosis with prolonged immobility. if we were in mobile for f five months, if we were hospitalized or paralyzed, we would lose one- third of our bone mass. mobobility, the balance shifts to losising bone. osteoporosis. this is an enormous public health problem in the united states and the rest of the world. 70,000 people bought in this country every year, costing the u.s. economy $18 billion a year. one-third of women over 65, post menopausal women, will have a fracture not caused by injury, but caused by osteoporosis.

polar bearsrs and other hihibernatining bears havave susubstances in t their blood tt prevent that from gettiting osteteoporosis. another thing about p plar bears -- they don't urinate for five- seven months or longer. yet they don't get toxic. if we don't get rid of ouour urinary waste for a few days, we are dead. ende is no treatment for stage renal disease or renal failure. the only thing you can do for someone whose kidneys not unching is to essentially -- his s kidney is not functionings to essssentially give them a kidney transplant.t. there is no medication they can take. 26 million americans s have chronic renal disesease. that number is increasing with untreated hyperertension a and obesity-relateted diabetetes. massive priorcome

to hibernating because they need to live off their body fat. they're eating it seal blubber to get that that, yet they do not get diabetic. when we become obese, we become diabetic. this is an epidemic disease not only in the united states, but around the world. there are half a billion people obese around the world. a greater proportion of women than m men. 295 million women and 210 billllion mend. 210 million men. of the cityty has d doubled i ie last years in united states anad it ldsds to tytype 2 diabetes, n enormous public health problem. it kills a quarter of a million people in this country every year andnd costs the economy $ 0 billion. we have no i idea how polar beas prevent becomiming diabetic, evn

though thehey are massively obe. we to understand that. wewe have to study ththem in the wild. they do not hibernate in zoos or in laboratories. polar bears have secrets to teach us. if people understood those connecections better, i think ty would have a much greater valuee to biodiversity, to ecosystems and individual species. >> we both have to understand what science is telling us. we are losing this diversity of life. that loss isis directly influencining our ability to led healthier lives. >> if we expropriate the whole earth and try to take o off, soe are the lords of crcreation -- e are not. we are one of millions of animals. to think ofof it as planet the ocean. we have to live within our

means. living within our means applies to ecology just as much as it applies to budgets. >> it does require immedediate action, because the longer we wait, the more severe things wiwill be. >> we are a sociaial primates. as a social climate, we spend a lot of time paying attention to each other. i think it is like a bunch off baboboons' sitting around grooom each other while the environmental law and sneaks that. all l of the sum, we should have been doing somomething abouttt. only sometimes make changes when they feel they have no other choice. is partly ththe role of physiciansns to help themm reale they have no other choice because of our health and our lives depend on it.

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