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A billion-dollar drug was found in Easter Island soil – what scientists and companies owe the Indigenous people they studied

  • Written by Ted Powers, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, University of California, Davis
A billion-dollar drug was found in Easter Island soil – what scientists and companies owe the Indigenous people they studiedThe Rapa Nui people are mostly invisible in the origin story of rapamycin.Posnov/Moment via Getty Images

An antibiotic discovered on Easter Island in 1964 sparked a billion-dollar pharmaceutical success story. Yet the history told about this “miracle drug” has completely left out the people and politics that made its discovery possible.

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