Latin American Center Symposium on Environment and Health: Exploring Natural Products

Abstract

This will be an interdisciplinary one-day symposium that should be of great interest to biologists, especially botanists, biomedical researchers, practitioners of complementary and alternative medicine, and public health workers. What do the forests in Venezuela and Brazil and plants from California yield as natural products that can be exploited as alternative therapies for the benefit of health? The popular press (e.g. every Monday, the LA Times health section gives an example of some kind of `cure') is a good source of information. Thus there is an ever-growing awareness of the possibility of using such natural products in place of other drugs. Most important, there is an attempt to place these products within the realm of solid science through the publication of evidence-based reports. The symposium will be organized around three international experts who will give formal presentations from 9:00 to 12:00 h. After a no-host two-hour lunch, we will reconvene from 14:00 to 17:00 h for a roundtable discussion. There is no charge for participation and everyone is welcome.