Using the Pacific for research is about to get a whole lot harder - the Cook Islands has set up strict new rules to reign in foreign researchers exploiting the region.
The Cook Islands describes itself as the guinea pig of the South Pacific.
"I think we have been exploited and used for too long that someone must take a step to stop this," says Roro Daniel, Cook Islands Secretary of Health.
Five years ago local opposition stopped a New Zealand company implanting pig cells into local diabetics.
"Our first reaction has been an absolute no to the experimentation being conducted with our people," says Dorice Reid, traditional leader.
Since then 45 research projects have been carried out in the Cook Islands. Only two of them were co-authored by locals.
"Because there is no infrastructure in place, it is an easy place to pilot secret little projects and test it out on people," says Ngamau Wichman, from the Health Research Council of NZ.
But no more. Together with the Health Research Council, Cook Islanders have set their own rules and foreign researchers have to play by them.
"If I find there is no benefit to come to our people, it will automatically be out," says Daniel.
There are already fears that DNA collected from Pacific people for research purposes is on-sold without their knowledge. And talk in research circles is employees from some Pacific Island laboratories are also selling samples
"Some of us are fearing what happens to the specimen at the end of the analysis. Are they being used, are they being stored, are they being sold?" says Sitaleki Finau from Massey University.
It is a lucrative business. For $216 on the internet, researchers can buy T-cells of the Hagahai people from Papua New Guinea. Also for sale are cells from a one-month-old baby that died of congenital heart disease.
But for cultural reasons most Pacific people don't want their DNA used or sold.
"Pacific Islanders value body parts, body bits, body extracts, much more than say the average pakeha does," says Finau.
The Cook Islands now wants the blood of some of its people stored in Britain for past research, destroyed or returned.
"We are not allowed to access this and intellectual property has been taken away from us," says Daniel.
They swear they won't allow it to happen again.
