"Human beings stomp about with swagger, elbowing their way without concern into one ecosphere after another. The human race seems equally complacent about blazing a path into a rain forest with bulldozers and arson or using an antibiotic 'scorched earth' policy to chase unwanted microbes across the duodenum..Time is short."

Laurie Garret, The Coming Plague, 1994

Europe and the United States have extracted material resources from Latin America. Industrial nations consider Latin America as a cheap resource of meats, oil, rubber, medicines, and hard woods. Forests are being cleared for farming soy beans to feed Asians and Europeans. Ancient hardwood forests are being stripped for lumber and to make way for pastures to graze cattle, later sold to the U.S. corporations for fast-food consumption in hamburgers. In less than thirty minutes, a mahogany tree higher than the length of a football field is cut down, and ends its centuries-old life, never to be replaced.

The Amazon and Andes contain over 250,000 plant species, many which Indians use for medicines. Pharmaceutical corporations have long profited from coca leaves for Novacaine and Chinchona bark for quinine from the Andes. In this decade, Tajibo trees are also stripped of their bark to produce a reported cure for cancer. Sangre de drago and una de gato are other popular "folk" remedies used to treat AIDS and cancer. Their popularity has caused extinction in certain areas. The "Drug War" has destroyed coca plantations, introduced foreign predators, and poisoned vegetation. Cocaine producers pollute streams and have turned peasant workers into drug addicts. In sum, addicts in Europe and the U.S. and attempts to curb drug use have led to environmental destruction in Bolivia.

"Ecosystem disruption and subsequent loss of species have profound implications for human health (see Grifo and Rosenthal 1997). Damage to the ecosystem has caused changes in the equilibria between hosts, vectors, and parasites in their natural environments; for example, T. cruzi has switched from animals to humans as its primary host. In addition to global warming, acid rain, and pollution, Chagas' disease warns us of a potential huge epidemic."

Dr. Joseph Bastien, The Kiss of Death: Chagas' Disease in the Americas, 1998

Vast areas of forest are being scorched in the Andes and Amazon