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ON the last day of the wake for Larry Cruz, I sat for breakfast with
René Bas, his wife, Jeanne, Kit Tatad and Rey Orosa.
Our conversation was pleasant but desultory
until it touched on alternative medicine, a subject that Rey knew a
lot about, including minutiae, like where to buy them and the
“effective” doses for a variety of complaints.
I was captivated. I’m not a believer (if
that’s the right word) in herbal nostrums and more especially in
acupuncture, yoga, tai chi, reflexology, aromatherapy and other
curious arts.
But I’ve kept an open mind about plant-based
compounds that have been found to be helpful against nasty diseases
like leprosy and malaria.
Botanists and medical researchers have been
scouring rainforests and tropical oceans for plants and organisms
that might have medicinal properties.
Among the latest discoveries are qinghaosu, a
species of wormwood, from which an anti-malaria compound had been
extracted. It has since been synthesized as artemisin.
The other example is the toxin known
collectively as red tide.
By studying how red tide microbes build their
deadly toxins, organic chemists could find a way to synthesize
compounds that show promise in treating conditions such as cystic
fibrosis.
With all this in mind, I thought it would be
worthwhile to write about the state of research on alternative
medicine.
The US National Institutes of Health (NIH) has
within its fold, the National Center for Complementary and
Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), set up nine years ago.
When its director, Stephen Straus, died last
year, the general expectation was that it would be abolished.
Instead, the NIH gave it a new lease on life by appointing a new
director, Josephine Briggs, a nephrologist and former NIH
administrator.
She justified the retention of the NCCAM by
saying that alternative medicine has an “enormous” interest in
the US. NIH has a duty to provide the public with information and
research findings based on “rigorous science.”
She herself has been keeping abreast of the
literature on the subject but, as she told Science on Feb. 8, 2008,
her concern is “answers as to which of these approaches really
help with the symptoms of aging.”
To know more, visit nccam.nih.gov/research/results/past/index.htm.
Pharmaceutical and cosmetic companies in France,
Germany and Switzerland have active departments doing R&D on botanicals
that might have commercial application. I found no indication,
however, that the governments of those countries were using the
public fisc on alternative medicine.
South Korea has a number of public research
institutions on ginseng and its possible medicinal properties.
However, nothing, except its value as a stimulant, has been
discovered.
As to be expected, the country that has made the
biggest investments in alternative medicine is China. There’s a
full article on it in the Feb. 8 issue of Science by Richard Stone
and Li Jiao.
The most recent venture of China into the field
is the Herbalome Project in Dalian, “a 15-year effort to identify
the constituents of herbal preparations used as medications for
centuries in China.”
There are as many as 400,000 such preparations
using 10,000 herbs and animal parts. They make up the pharmacology
of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).
Herbalome will use “high throughput screening,
toxicity testing, and clinical trials to identify active compounds
and toxic contaminants in popular recipes.” The objective is to
modernize TCM in order to put it on the same footing as mainstream
(largely Western) medicine.
Herbalome is not the only TCM research center in
China. The Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine has
been in existence since the days of Mao Zedong. There’s also the
Shanghai Innovative Research Center of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
The Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, an affiliate of the
Chinese Academy of Science, was given a grant to develop
purification methods for TCM preparations. The Ministry of Science
and Technology is considering a US$70-million project on TCM in the
next 5-year plan, beginning in 2010.
Not everyone is happy with all this attention.
Fang Shi-Min, a biochemist, is perhaps the most outspoken critic.
“TCM,” he said, “is not based on science but on mysticism,
magic and anecdote. [Herbalome] is a waste of research funds.”
He asked rhetorically, “Can you marry
astrology and astronomy, alchemy and chemistry?”
To which Guo De-an, the director of the Shanghai
Institute of Materia Medica, replied: “We need to ensure that TCM
is safe.”
All this will be discussed at the Xiangshan
Science Conference in April this year in Beijing, just before the
Summer Olympics.
Chinese media do not comment on any of these
initiatives because “criticizing TCM is unthinkable to many
Chinese and almost like committing a traitorous act,” Fang said.
More troubling than the lack of public
information is the official prohibition to share research findings
with scientists in other countries because of the fear that
international drug, health care and beauty companies may profit from
the work of Chinese scientists.
Perhaps we should begin looking also into the
medicinal properties of local plants and herbs. There’s a thriving
trade in them but they are all sold as food supplements in order to
evade government approval and regulation.
mlatimes@gmail.com
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