Discovering the world today?

I just learned that scientists can’t travel around the world to find new species and collect them. Something they could do before the year 1993 when the Convention on biological diversity came. You might wonder why and the reason is that important species, that can be used for example medicine, the country its found in should get paid for it. Everything to protect poor countries. And I really understand that thought that big companies shouldn’t be able to take important material from one country and make money at it.
But isn’t science and discovering new species and there use also something that should be free? If it isn’t will we really find out everything we have around us? I’m not sure that this rule is so good after all. I don’t think that making it more difficult for scientists to do their research is the way to go…

Carl von Linné

This week Carl von Linné would have turned 300 years old. So Sweden is celebrating his birthday and will continue doing that for the rest of the year. Now everybody is talking about him and what he was doing for science. But I can’t remember that we talked that much about him in school or even at the university when we learned about flowers, animals or stones. Makes me wonder why… Do we only talk about people when it is something special to celebrate?
An interesting aspect to things is the fact that I actually think that Linné is more famous in other countries than what he is in his own country Sweden . Why do we hide these splendid people and their discoveries? When we still use their knowledge today.