Dear friends

As a conus lover and a professional chemist, I have some knowledge on this
issue that I would like to share with you.
All this started following a paper by Eric Chivian, Callum Roberts and
Aaron Bernstein published in Science in 2003. The title: "The threat to
cone snails". On the contrary to some of the recent posts in the forum, is
in this paper that making an estimation of the harvesting of conus for
medical research mixed up with comments on global reef decline etc they
suggested that one way for protection is to include the entire genus Conus
under CITES. This means that the measure was suggested for protection
AGAINST the pharmacological industry. However, there were some points
raised which were very controversial from scientific point of view, and
this letter was replied in another interesting letter by Conus and
Conotoxin specialists like Thomas Duda, Jon Paul Bingham, Gabriella
Raybaudi, Bruce Livett, Alan Kohn and some other specialists. Clearly,
given the peptidic nature of the conotoxins is far more cheaper for the
pharmaceutical industry to copy the natural conotoxins and then synthesize
it at industrial level. It is not too complicated if you consider that the
most complex conotoxin has far less aminoacids than insulin for instance!
So the cones are just the template for copying. Not so many specimens are
needed for this in a molecular biology or biochemical lab, and people like
Jon Paul Bingham milk the venom from live Conus purpurascens on a weekly
basis. Apparently these points were missed up by Chivian et al., which
replied again in the same issue of Science in a much moderate manner.
Also, the decline of the coral reef at global level is a big issue, but
not for conus but for most marine organisms! Besides, many conus live far
away from coral, not to mention those very deep water ones!
The thing is that the controversial nature of the entire issue and the
fact that potential medicaments are involved rapidly attracted the
attention of media. I know that National Geographic covered this matter
some time ago, but very recently also in National Geographic there was
some sort of public debate between Chivian and Jon Paul Bingham.
Apparently the issue is now being covered also by BBC.
In any case, I do not think that there is a complot forfaited by
multinational Pharmaceutical companies for this Conus pseudoprotection,
nor there are any scientifically sound signs that the entire genus Conus
is threatened up to the point of including it in CITES, at least as a
whole. All this sounds more like the noise of the entire thing in the mass
media appealing to a general public interested in health issues, and not
in malacology.
Warmest regards to all

Manuel Jimenez Tenorio

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