Half of All Medicines Come From Nature — So Extinctions Aren’t Just Sad, They’re a Health Problem

Think about the last time you or someone you know took a prescription medication. There’s roughly a 40-50% chance it came from a plant, animal, fungus, or microorganism — or was designed by studying one. Up to 50% of approved drugs over the last 30 years trace back to natural products, either directly or indirectly. In cancer treatment alone, out of 175 small-molecule drugs developed from the 1940s to now, 85 are either natural products or directly derived from them.

That’s a huge deal. And here’s the part that doesn’t get talked about enough.

We’re losing species faster than we can study them. Plants, animals, microorganisms — many of which we haven’t even identified yet, let alone tested for medical use. As one peer-reviewed source put it, we are losing organisms that may contain valuable new medicines before we ever get the chance to find out what they could do.

And when a species goes extinct, it’s not just the creature that disappears. The traditional knowledge passed down for generations about how to use that plant or animal medicinally disappears with it too. That’s centuries of real-world human experimentation — gone.

The result? Fewer options. Fewer starting points. Less molecular diversity to pull from when scientists are trying to develop the next generation of treatments. As researchers have noted, there will essentially be less choice for the future development of medicines as this trend continues.

This isn’t about hugging trees. It’s about the actual pipeline of future drugs — the ones that might treat diseases we’re struggling with right now, or ones that haven’t even emerged yet. Every extinction quietly narrows what’s possible in medicine.

So what can you actually do with this? Start by understanding that biodiversity and human health aren’t separate topics — they’re linked in a very practical way. If you care about medical research, about cancer treatments, about drug development, then the health of ecosystems is part of that picture. Organizations focused on conservation and biodiversity research are working on exactly this connection. Knowing that gives the whole conversation a different weight.