Quinine Essay ⋆ Environment Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Quinine , an alkaloid derived from cinchona used in the treatment of malaria, has been put to many uses over time, including as an insecticide and insect repellent, contraceptive, anesthetic, antiseptic, muscle relaxant, and fever reducer. Quinine is best known to many as the bitter flavoring used in tonic water, which gives drinks such as gin and tonics their characteristic taste; ironically, liquid extract of cinchona bark, from which quinine is purified, is administered as a cure for drunkenness.

Native to the Andes Mountains of South America, cinchona belongs to the plant family Rubiacaea. The genus Cinchona includes several other laurel-like evergreen trees and shrubs, which grow to about 49.2 feet (15 meters) tall. However, only Cinchona officinalis, C. calisaya, and C. pubescensalso known as C. succirubra-contain useful levels of quinine in their bark.

Peruvian Indians had long used infusions or powdered mixtures of cinchona to relieve fever and muscle soreness. By 1640, cinchona bark had been introduced to Europe as a cure for malaria, and was widely sold by 1677, when cinchona was formally entered into the British Pharmacopoeia. The identity of the species from which cinchona was harvested remained unknown to science until 1737; not until 1820 was quinine isolated from the bark. In 1944, chemical synthesis of quinine was finally accomplished, but refinement from natural sources is still the most economical method of quinine production.

In the mid-1800s the immense commercial potential of the cinchona market led Dutch and British interests to pirate cinchona seeds out of Peru and set up plantations in Java, Ceylon (Sri Lanka), and India. In fact, through the liberal ingestion of quinine-infused tonic water, British colonial authorities were able to govern India and Sri Lanka without high mortality due to malaria. By 1918, the Dutch cinchona plantations dominated the world quinine market. However, the Japanese occupation of Java in 1942 cut off the world’s supply of quinine, which led the Allies to return to South American sources of quinine. Seeds from British plantations in India were used to once again set up plantations in South America, the plant’s native environment.

Quinine and cinchona illustrate a common theme in the area of biological commodities. Raw, powdered cinchona bark was used as a medicine in South America and Europe for centuries, but upon the isolation of quinine from the bark, cinchona made the transition from valuable plant to patentable drug source. Peru and Bolivia, which were home to the first known stocks of cinchona trees and from which cinchona was smuggled, did not share in the bounties garnered from the South Asian quinine plantations.

Although quinine is still produced in South America, much of the world market is still supplied by South Asia and Africa. South American countries are unable to successfully compete in the world drug market even when the resources are indigenous to their countries. All too often, this is a pattern replicated in developing nations worldwide: Valuable commodities are patented by multinational corporations, with no benefits flowing back to the communities that originally developed their uses.

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