Viagra and Helicopter Gunships
The most powerful tools for conservationists in the Galapagos turn out to be Viagra and helicopter gunships. Introduced goats consume all of the vegetation that formerly fed the giant tortoises. Efforts at eradication were unsuccessful until the authorities brought dogs over from Switzerland to herd the goats into headlands whereupon they were shot from helicopters. Island after island is being declared free of goats and the tortoises are coming back.
Sea cucumbers are highly sought after in traditional Chinese medicine because they supposedly help us older guys, uh, “perform”. With Viagra as close as one’s inbox, however, perhaps the illegal harvesting of these animals will stop.
(Off the boat now, in Guayaquil and headed for Peru…)
ALISA
May 3, 2004 @ 11:45 pm
Is that a sea cucumber in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
ade talabi
May 5, 2004 @ 1:09 am
One will wrongly assume that, those remote parts of the world will have better herbal medicines than viagra. I have always maintained that the modern chemist, has not done a full copedia of availble herbal medicine, by extraction of the useful chemicals to enhance modern life.
We are still at lost for a cure for cancer. How could that be if the bio-medical profession have not failed woefully in their duty to the modern man? Could it be an archaic formalised process or the inability to want to go beyond what is thought behind the closed world of academia?
Bas Scheffers
May 5, 2004 @ 8:08 am
I have pondered on this and came to this conclusion as to why the scientific community shuns alternative methods: The problem is that different people react very differently (if at all) to “herbal” medicine. By the time you find the right one for someone, they probably will have died. If you use the less-than-perfect-with-many-side-effects-but-works-75%-of-the-time chemical sledge hammer, this is more likely to save someone.
So unless it is possible to predict which alternative medicine works for which persons and in which cases, the sledge hammer is the prefered option.
As for cancer, the problem is that there are so many different forms. And these are not “lung cancer”, “breast cancer” or “prostate cancer”. Breast cancers in two women can be completely different from each other and one of them may actualy be of the same type as some guy’s prostate cancer or another’s brain tumor. They are only just starting to clasify them properly and all the different research projects and charities that only sponsor one of the false clasifications mentioned above greatly duplicates efforts.
presidentpicker
May 5, 2004 @ 11:20 am
If there was any evidence that a herb is working for a certain disease it’d quite easy to synthesize the active chemical contained in the herb and evaluate its efficacy. One would guess that pharmaceutical companies look at herbs before sinking billions for finding a unique drug formula. turns out most of alternative medicine just doesn’t work. Modern drugs are far more complex chemicals than those found any herb.
Jon
May 5, 2004 @ 10:46 pm
I have a suspicion that the reason why drug companies and physicians avoid herbal drugs is that they cannot be patented.
Bas Scheffers
May 6, 2004 @ 5:07 am
They’ll find a way to patent anything they want. (start reading at paragraph
Dowbrigade
May 6, 2004 @ 5:21 pm
As someone who has done extensive research on ¨traditional¨medicine at Harvard and in the field, I can without hesitation report that they DO work, and that in fact the major drug companies employ hundreds of ethnobotanists and other researchers to search out these plants and try to isolate their active ingredients.
This is often not easy as many of these herbs, roots, vines nd flowers contain dozens of active ingredients, alcaloids and other chemical components. It is often the COMBINATION of two or more ingredients which make the cure work. In addition, these substances are used within belief systems and knowledge banks developed over hundres or even thousands of years, and often involve using combinations of different plants in exact propostions and a specific orders.
As is well know, the latest remaining repository of natural medicine is the Amazon river basin, where two river valleys only a few miles from each other may have startlingly different ecosystems supporting different cultures with different languages and completely different systems of herbal medicine. The struggle for control of these yet undeveloped areas is one of the great untold stories of our times.
It is obvious to me why there is a natural antagonism between the ¨Westernized¨medical system and the naturalists - they are direct competitors. A scientifically trained doctor - at least in the US as well as most parts of the western world - would never send a patient to an herbalist - ti might work! In addition, it is against everything he has been taught in medical school, and he or she has undoubtedly been propagandized with horror stories of drunken shamen taking advantage of or even causing serious harm to unsophisticated patients, usually poor and uneducated.
The sorry fact is that there are many charlatans on both sides of the scientific dividing line, and the main problem with the naturalists that I can see is that there is no reliable professional wathdog agency separating the good guys from the bad ones.
As a final comment, it is interesting to note that China (PRC) has gone farther than any other modern country in integrtaing traditional and folk medicine - doctors study herbalism in medical school and herbalists do not hesitate to send patients to a hospital if they see that antibiotics could save them. We could all learn a thing or two from the chinese medical system…..
Dowbrigade
May 6, 2004 @ 5:21 pm
As someone who has done extensive research on ¨traditional¨medicine at Harvard and in the field, I can without hesitation report that they DO work, and that in fact the major drug companies employ hundreds of ethnobotanists and other researchers to search out these plants and try to isolate their active ingredients.
This is often not easy as many of these herbs, roots, vines nd flowers contain dozens of active ingredients, alcaloids and other chemical components. It is often the COMBINATION of two or more ingredients which make the cure work. In addition, these substances are used within belief systems and knowledge banks developed over hundres or even thousands of years, and often involve using combinations of different plants in exact propostions and a specific orders.
As is well know, the latest remaining repository of natural medicine is the Amazon river basin, where two river valleys only a few miles from each other may have startlingly different ecosystems supporting different cultures with different languages and completely different systems of herbal medicine. The struggle for control of these yet undeveloped areas is one of the great untold stories of our times.
It is obvious to me why there is a natural antagonism between the ¨Westernized¨medical system and the naturalists - they are direct competitors. A scientifically trained doctor - at least in the US as well as most parts of the western world - would never send a patient to an herbalist - ti might work! In addition, it is against everything he has been taught in medical school, and he or she has undoubtedly been propagandized with horror stories of drunken shamen taking advantage of or even causing serious harm to unsophisticated patients, usually poor and uneducated.
The sorry fact is that there are many charlatans on both sides of the scientific dividing line, and the main problem with the naturalists that I can see is that there is no reliable professional wathdog agency separating the good guys from the bad ones.
As a final comment, it is interesting to note that China (PRC) has gone farther than any other modern country in integrtaing traditional and folk medicine - doctors study herbalism in medical school and herbalists do not hesitate to send patients to a hospital if they see that antibiotics could save them. We could all learn a thing or two from the chinese medical system…..
Gary
May 7, 2004 @ 4:10 pm
Here is some interesting information from the “National Council Against Health Fraud” (www.ncahf.org). They have a well documented position paper that outlines the role of herbalism and ethnopharmacology in modern medicine, here is a section that outlines some of the inherent risks of herbal medicine:
“Despite a long history of the scientific study, a popular view persists that medical science has ignored herbal sources of medicine. This idea is encouraged by herbal marketers who wish to portray their products as “nature’s secret remedies.” Media presentations have helped romanticize herbal remedies by showing ethnopharmacologists with native healers searching the Amazon rain forest for medicines. They have created the impression that plants are wondrous sources of only good things. This is a misconception. Herbs can also be highly toxic. Plants are sources of potent chemicals because they have developed defenses against natural enemies such as viruses, bacteria, fungi, and insects as part of the natural selection process. A review of 2,222 plants reported some antimicrobial activity in 1,362 of them, but all were too toxic for human use. Herbs with anti-cancer effects are a media favorite. However, stripped of romanticism the term “anti-cancer effects” means cytotoxicity, ie, “having a specific toxic action upon cells or special organs.” In other words, such herbal substances are selective poisons that can be used against cancer cells. Although there has been considerable media attention to taxol, the breast cancer drug derived from the bark of the pacific yew tree, the knowledge that plants contain anticancer agents is not new. The National Cancer Institute has been studying natural products since 1955. By the early 1980s, its Cancer Drug Development Program had screened nearly three-quarters of a million potentially active agents, including products of fermentation and plant derivatives. Each of the agents tested was thought to have potential when review began, yet fewer than 70 made it to market. Currently, only three anti-cancer drugs from natural botanical sources (vinblastine, vincristine, and taxol) are in use. In addition to fighting cancer, natural plant substances can also cause cancer. The best known example is tobacco (chewed, snuffed or smoked), an herbal product originally promoted for its alleged health benefits, now known to be responsible for more preventable premature deaths than any other cause in the US and Canada. Many other natural substances can induce tumors.”
If you want to read the entire statement it can be found here:
http://www.ncahf.org/pp/herbal.html
Personally, I hope that there is a lot of ‘good chemistry’ to be found in the undiscovered areas of this planet. The most alarming changes that have occured seem to be the loss of cultural knowledge and the environments that they were founded in. A paved earth has a pretty limited set of resources to pull from.
Harry Forbes
May 22, 2004 @ 2:26 am
Viagra will probably save the rhino as well. Not to be an intolerant racist, but before Viagra if you visited anywhere on the large continent west of the USA, males would spend a fortune — literally hundreds or thousands of dollars — for a few shavings of rhino horn, which supposedly performed the same trick as sea cucumber, and probably worked just as well.
Now for a small fee you can buy the little blue pill that REALLY does work, and there is one less reason to poach rhinos…and don’t forget that th above unamed continent represents a very large pharmaceutical (and formerly rhino) market.
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