Around a quarter of Western medicine is derived from rainforest plants. Yet this huge pharmacy has not even begun to yield up its treasures. According to one article, less than five percent of all known plants have been analysed, and less than 0.1 percent of animals. Add to this the vast ignorance surrounding rainforests, the well-established lack of comprehensive cataloguing and the sheer potential of the rainforest becomes clear.

This is huge wealth. The money made by pharmaceutical companies is huge. If the Malaysian government can succeed in diverting a portion of that wealth into Malaysia, it would certainly be a major push towards achieving Vision 2020.

And it is a path being pursued by the current government. During the United Nations General Assembly Special Session on HIV and Aids, one of the Malaysian government's key aims was to ensure that nations retained patenting rights to products found on their territory, particularly forest products.

And the people who know best about the benefits of rainforest herbs are the people who have inhabited the jungles for thousands of years. In Malaysia, they are the Orang Asli and Orang Asal.

In Southeast Asia there are more than 6,500 medicinal herbs used by indigenous people. And in another experiment held in Samoa, over 85 percent were shown to produce some biological activity in people: that is, they have some medicinal properties.

There is, however, a caveat. The land that indigenous people know is their land. If they are moved away from the lands that have been held and cultivated and researched by their ancestors for thousands of years, precious knowledge is lost.