Imagine a drug, based on a molecule already found in our bodies, with the potential to treat conditions ranging from kidney stones to Alzheimer’s. In its natural form, it has been used in the world’s most populous country for thousands of years. There’s just one problem: According to many of its dedicated users, the only really dependable way to get it is by torturing an animal to death.

It sounds like an ethical dilemma from a freshman philosophy class, but that, more or less, is the story of bear bile and its key ingredient, ursodeoxycholic acid (UDCA)—a molecular magic bullet that seems to promote as much controversy as it does healing. It’s a classic example of medical tradition colliding with modern conservation values, with science playing traffic cop.

For more than 3,000 years, bear bile has been used as medicine in Asia, where it is thought to heal by expelling excess heat from the body. China’s state pharmacopoeia says that it relieves convulsions and improves vision. In China, Korea, Vietnam, Japan, and other countries with large Asian populations, traditional health practitioners prescribe extracts of bear bile for everything from flabby libidos to cancer.

Asia’s rising human population has increased the demand for bear bile products, even as the animals themselves are being squeezed into ever-smaller habitats. Prices for bear bile have soared; according to Animals Asia, a Hong Kong-based conservation group, bear bile powder cost $600 per kilogram in China in 2004, and a whole gallbladder can fetch $33,000 per kilogram in Japan.

The inevitable black market has spilled over into North America. Bears are poached from British Columbia to Virginia, and their paws and gallbladders exported legally or smuggled out to Asia. Levels of protection vary from state to state, country to country, and species to species, and different species’ gallbladders are virtually indistinguishable. The global illegal trade in bear parts, estimated at $2 billion annually, has stricken the population of seven of the world’s eight bear species. Asian bear species, including the Asiatic black bear (Ursus thibetanus) and the Malayan sun bear (Helarctos malayanos), are most at risk. Products made from Asiatic black bear bile are available throughout China, says Jill Robinson, founder of Animals Asia: “You see it everywhere—teas, tonics, wine, soda, even face masks in Beijing beauty stores for women to improve the glow of their skin.”

The most disturbing trend is the advent of bear farms in Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, South Korea, and China. Animals are confi ned to small cages and fitted with metal catheters to “milk” their gallbladders, resulting in a continual supply of bile for as long as the animal stays alive. Conditions are often unsanitary, and bears frequently die from infection and other trauma. Even though the practice is illegal in Vietnam and South Korea and regulated by the government in China, thousands of bears languish on farms—an estimated 1,300 in South Korea, 3,400 in Vietnam, and more than 7,000 in China, according to the wildlife trade monitoring network Traffic.

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