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Are herbal medicines effective? Are organic foods really better for you? Will the cure to cancer eventually come from a newly discovered plant which dwells in the Amazon basin? Will medicines ever become affordable and available to the neediest? How will we produce enough food to keep up with an ever-increasing world population? Written with these issues in mind, <em>Let Thy Food Be Thy Medicine is a response to the current flood of conflicting information regarding the use of plants for both consumption and medicinal purposes. Kathleen Hefferon addresses the myths and popular beliefs surrounding the application of plants in human health, revealing both their truths and inaccuracies, and provides an overview of the technologies scientists are using to further their research.The book covers herbal medicines, functional and biofortified foods, plants and antibiotics, edible vaccines, and organic versus genetically modified foods, discussing each from a scientific standpoint. It these topics together for the first time, providing a much-needed overview of plants as medicine. Intended for scientists and professionals in related disciplines as well as the interested reader educated in the sciences, this book will confront claims made in the media with science and scientific analysis, providing readers with enough background to allow them to make their own judgments.
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Let Thy Food Be Thy Medicine This page intentionally left blank Let Thy Food Be Thy Medicine Plants and Modern Medicine Kathleen Hefferon 1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Th ailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Copyright © 2012 by Oxford University Press Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Hefferon, Kathleen L. Let thy food be thy medicine : plants and modern medicine / Kathleen Hefferon. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-987397-5 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Materia medica, Vegetable. 2. Herbs—Therapeutic use. 3. Ethnobotany. I. Title. RS164.H335 2012 615.3 ′21—dc23 2011050053 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper CONTENTS 1. Plants and Human Health 3 Our Early Relationship with Plants 5 Plants as Medicine 12 2. Bioprospecting for Medicines from Plants 14 Ethnobotany and Medicine 16 Modern Drug Discovery and Indigenous Cultures 20 Plants and Modern Drug Discovery 23 Examples of Medicines Derived from Plants 27 Impact of Biopiracy, Preservation of Biodiversity 37 Intellectual Property Rights for Indigenous People 38 Conclusions 41 3. The Lure of Herbal Medicine 43 History 45 The Bioactive Compounds in Herbal Medicinal Plants 50 Traditional Indian Medicine 56 Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) 62 What Nonscientists Should Know about Herbal Medicines 71 What Scientists Need to Know about Herbal Medicines 75 Could Herbal Medicine and Western Medicine Complement Each Other? 77 Conclusions 79 4. Farming Medicines from Plants 82 Why Farm for Pharmaceuticals in Plants? 83 New Pr