Brazil needs a national debate on bioprospecting

An overview of current state-of-art methodologies and strategies applied in bioprospecting for drug discovery is presented. In view of the distance between these conditions and those being applied in Brazil a proposal is made concerning the urgent need for a national debate involving the society, scientific community and government agencies to build national policies, plans and goals for bioprospecting of Brazilian biodiversity. Some suggestions on how to implement such debate and questions that should be discussed are presented.