I recently read that the LAL tests we conduct in my industry are produced from horseshoe crab blood ($19k/liter!), and today read this article about malacidin that is present in certain desert soils including CO. Malacidin has scientists hopeful about it's promise as a new antibiotic.
1) Fast forwarding past the years of clinical trials, vast testing, and expense that would precede FDA approval, and 2) making the assumption they would have to harvest new material as with the horseshoe crab, I wonder where this would fall legally to source the soil material? Doing some searching, I couldn't quickly find how soil producers are governed. Does anyone know?
What if a claim owner found that the overburden hiding their claim's values was actually significantly more valuable than the minerals? Could you harvest and sell it?
Same question if this material is present on property you own (unpatented most likely, but if patented changes the answer, I'm curious about that too)?
Edited for grammar.