What the Leaves Can Tell Us

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Huffman also discusses watching a parasite-ridden, constipated chimpanzee in western Tanzania. Huffman saw the chimp reach for the shoot of a noxious tree that chimps usually avoid, peel it, and eat its bitter pith. Within 24 hours, all of its symptoms had vanished. It was the first time a scientist had seen a sick chimp select an unsavory plant known by humans to have medicinal properties, consume it, and then recover. One of Huffman’s key discoveries is that the pith the chimps eat contains around 20 compounds that have different levels of activity and exert different effects on intestinal parasites. "Some of the most bioactive compounds," he says, "act to paralyze the worm, inhibit movement, prevent egg laying. Other compounds are toxic [to the parasite]."

In modern medicine, we have opted for the magic bullet approach—the single-drug, single-action method to totally eradicating a pathogen. This promotes drug resistance, because the single mechanism stimulates the pathogen to develop a counterstrategy. In contrast, reports journalist Aisling Irwin, "Forest remedies rarely expunge the disease entirely; they just suppress it. The leaf-swallowing chimps still carry parasites, but in low, safe numbers. At the end of the rainy season, infections disappear naturally."

Opponents of herbal medicine disagree with this approach, sometimes with good reason. In some diseases such as AIDS, even a trace of the virus can infect others. But many of these same opponents miss one of the key principles of herbal medicine: Multiple compounds act synergistically. They assume that there is one key compound in the herb that can be isolated, synthesized, and used in pure form. Yet research like Huffman’s suggests that herbs may work because of the sheer variety of the substances they contain, not because of any single compound.

The critics of herbs are correct about one thing, however: There are hazards to green medicine. Some herbal preparations are toxic, which it would be foolish to ignore. But the current debate about the dangers of herbs often becomes overheated and unbalanced, especially in view of the fact that doctor-prescribed pharmaceuticals kill more than 100,000 Americans in hospitals each year.

The most implacable foes of holistic healing seem to believe that herbs can’t be trusted; their active compound must be synthesized and marketed as a prescription drug. This view implies that reliable medicinal wisdom was absent before randomized clinical trials began in the mid-20th century. These critics do not realize that humankind has been involved in a continuous, ongoing medical trial for the past 50,000 years. This colossal planetary experiment has been made up of countless single-case studies involving the use of herbs in every culture on earth. Every time an indigenous healer gave an herb to a sick individual, a new data point was added to the study, and the knowledge got around. If a Nobel Prize were given for arrogance, it would be awarded to the scoffers who breezily dismiss this accumulated wisdom.

Perhaps the only peer-reviewed medical journal to discuss t’ai chi and muscular dystrophy in the same issue, the bimonthly Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine features reviews of current research, original findings in the field of complementary medicine, provocative essays, and interviews with innovative practitioners of the healing arts.

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