The Amazon rainforest has evolved for at least 55 million years. It is likely home to millions of compounds of potential medicinal value. In just 50 years 100 million hectares, 390 billion individual trees 16,000 visible species and (estimated unknown) >100,000 types of non-visible fungi, bacterium, microbes etc, have been destroyed. It's why I found this wide-eyed statement in TFA particularly cringe:

  The discovery shows that "there is terrifically interesting stuff
  hiding in plain sight".