Category: Plants & Medicine
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Drug Companies Harvest Cures From Chinese Herbalists
The collaboration between East and West on drug development is in many ways an unlikely one. Chinese and Western specialists approach pharmacology from very different angles.
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Who Profits from "Useful" Plants?
This is the silent plunder of natural resources from developing countries. Here we have a large multinational taking out a patent on a plant that grows naturally in a part of Africa and claiming it is their invention. Now the company is making a fortune selling it to the mass market, but the Tanzania communities that live in these regions will not receive one penny.
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Elixir of Youth from Madagascar Plant?
The cream, Sublimage, has its origins in the northern extremity of Madagascar from whence, almost a decade ago, Ormancey received a tip-off about a species of vanilla tree bearing an amazing, life-giving fruit, of which only 13 specimens remained.
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New York Botanical Garden and Pfizer Join to Look for Drugs in Plants
We want to know what builds plants,’ said Amy Litt, director of the genomics program, where researchers map plant DNA to chart the evolutionary differences between related flora. ‘It's entirely possible that we could come up with something that someone might use.
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Folk Remedy Really Does Repel Mosquitos
We actually identified naturally occurring chemicals in the plant responsible for this activity.
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Beautiful Flowers, the Shaman, and the Harvard Professor
So, Western medicine, with its expensive machinery and sophisticated scientists, has finally figured out what DaBuWan (the Suriname shaman) and his peers knew long ago. But how did they know it?
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Do Birds Chose Herbs to Protect Their Nests?
If the fresh herbs and plant materials that parent birds bring into the nest have a sufficient concentration of antimicrobial compounds, they could protect the nestlings from harmful bacteria.
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Plants That Save Lives Need Saving Themselves
A global survey carried out by more than 100 botanists and other scientists has found that more than 10,000 species of medicinal plants face extinction, including many used in prescription drugs that cannot be commercially synthesised.
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3000 Year Old Indian Herb Reduces Cholesterol
Scientists in the US say they have found evidence to back giving it to patients with high cholesterol