Plants for life: - Sacred Seeds Sanctuary

much-quoted WHO’s estimate that 80%of people worldwide rely on traditionalmedicine for their primary healthcare.The majority of these people are indeveloping countries, where rapidpopulation growth is expected to increasepressures on medicinal plant resources.The greater part of traditional therapyinvolves the use of plants. With little orno access to modern pharmaceuticalsand a strong cultural preference fortraditional medicine, medicinal plants aretherefore fundamental to the well-being ofbillions of people.Demand for traditional remedies is alsoincreasing in so-called developedcountries, alongside growingenvironmental awareness and a desirefor natural healing through naturalproducts.‘Modern’ medicineOf course, allopathic or ‘modern’medicine also owes a great deal tomedicinal plants. Catharanthus roseusfor example, treats leukaemia andHodgkin’s disease. Morphine andcodeine are produced from cultivatedopium poppy, Papaver somniferum.Aspirin was originally found in willow bark(Salix spp.). Quinine from the cinchonatree has been the primary treatment formalaria for centuries. Digitalin medicines,Digitalis spp.extracted from the leaves of the commonfoxglove (Digitalis spp.), are widely usedfor a variety of heart conditions. Topicalsteroids for eczema are produced fromthe yam (Dioscorea spp.) or from sisal(Agave spp.) and the alkaloidGalantamine, sourced from the bulbs ofsnowdrops (Galanthus spp.) is used totreat Alzheimer’s disease, slowing downthe progression of dementia.In many cases modern chemistry cannotoffer viable alternatives to activebotanical compounds. The compoundpaclitaxel (found in Taxus spp. and sourceof the anti-cancer drug, taxol) wasdescribed as the kind of molecule that nochemist would ever sit down and think ofmaking;“If contemporary chemistry is nowallowing us to merely copy suchmolecules, one can imagine the nearimpossibility of designing from scratch amolecule with a comparable combinationof form and biological function”(Capson, 2004).Predictions that advances in chemicalsciences and synthetic materialdevelopment would lessen the need fornatural materials have proved to bewrong, and modern medicine dependson the continuing availability ofbiological materials as anincomparable source of moleculardiversity.Taxus spp.In fact, as many as 50% of prescriptiondrugs are based on a molecule thatoccurs naturally in a plant, with some25% of prescription drugs derived directlyfrom flowering plants or modelled on plantmolecules (Foster and Johnson, 2006).Plants for life: Medicinal plant conservation and botanic gardens 7