Ethnobotany, Traditional Medicine and Dietary Supplements: Research Priorities and Lessons to be Learned

Abstract

There are estimated to be 420,000 species of higher plants on earth, about half of which are found in the tropics. Over millennia, people have learned to use plants to sustain their lives. Ethnobotany is a science that studies the relationship between plants, people and traditional culture. This presentation discusses the study of plants used in traditional healing, with examples from Belize, Central America, The Pacific Island region of Micronesia, and New York City by a Dominican immigrant community. Traditional knowledge in many parts of the world, including our own, has “devolved”, or disappeared when its practitioners die without teaching the knowledge to the next generation. The implications of this for natural products research and development and safe and proper use of new plant species as dietary supplements will be discussed. Herbs used by traditional peoples have been subjected to many generations, even centuries of trial and error experimentation, and there is much that these people can teach us about their efficacy and use. Ethnobotanical knowledge can be of great value in addressing contemporary issues in supplement and drug development, public health and sustainable resource use and conservation. However, in seeking to fulfill this potential, scientists find themselves in a race against time, with both habitats being destroyed and indigenous knowledge about the uses of the plants and their environment rapidly being lost. There are ways to reduce this destruction of humanity's collective wisdom before it is too late.