Monday, December 4, 2006

How Much Does It Cost To Remove A Tumour

medicinal

I will not reveal anything new if comment there are thousands of plants for therapeutic purposes that exist in nature . And I'm not going to discover anyone at this stage of life, that we are carrying that wonderful pharmacy is the world's flora and fauna due to the industrialization of certain areas without adequate environmental programs, to desertification caused by massive deforestation and population growth logical world (and irresponsible) increased use of raw materials . I know this is not new, but what if it is, is the emergence of new diseases that could become true pandemics the world's population.

One of these diseases is avian influenza , which is wreaking havoc in the global poultry population virulent because it can be disease. Well, there in the China Southern a plant species called "star anise" , which is obtained by an active ingredient for Tamiflu develop established by Swiss Roche laboratories to treat the disease.

But there are other examples that claim the use of plants in the production of drugs could be as the Vincristine (obtained from a shrub Madagascar) which is responsible for the survival of children in cases of leukemia have increased from 20% to 80%.

But we must not let be forgotten that half of our medicines is due to a mere hundred plants, as might be the Aspirin (extracted from the bark of white willow ) Morphine the ( poppy ) the Quinine (bark of the cinchona ) a call cardioregulador Digoxin (digitalis ) the antitumor Taxol (Pacific yew ) an antimalarial called Artemisinin (Artemisia ) the ziconotide, a pain reliever thousand times more potent than morphine , extracted from the venom of a snail reef Philippines, the Camptothecin, a medicine used ovarian cancer and advanced colorectal derived from a tree Sri Lanka and the Galantamine , one of the few resources against Alzheimer's disease, isolated from a variety of white daffodils used by Balkan folk medicine to soothe sore lower back.

And then there's still experimental p57 molecule, extracted from a cactus Kalahari Desert (South Africa ) that promises to revolutionize the control of obesity, the Halicondrina B, derived from a sponge from the depths of the Pacific Ocean , with impressive results in trials for cancer patients, Ixabepilone the , a substance of bacterial origin still being tested to treat advanced breast cancer.

However, thanks to the prominence acquired by the "Star Anise" large pharmaceutical companies are showing new interest in the possibilities offered by nature in natural drugs to combat new diseases and why not? of the old .

What we must not forget, is that pharmaceutical companies are primarily seeking to generate profits and to identify only 50 plant extracts may be promising, cost about a year of hard manual labor for a researcher . Of which may be obtained valid drug to alleviate disease 10% to 60%. And that, compared with the economic potential of mass screening of synthetic compounds on time, money, is very high for their interests .

But as I said before, thanks to the prominence of "Star Anise" a sector of the drug industry has continued with this passion for natural medicine. For this for some years, experts are exploring the rainforests and other remote places on "Bioprospecting missions" as referred to the search field of plants and animals with potential therapeutic value.

Maybe someone will ask why this change of attitude by the pharmaceutical company? Well is simple. Basically, that large investments in sophisticated methodologies for the production of synthetic drugs has been a major financial setback for many pharmaceutical giants and that has led them to stop to pick you create drugs which already existed, since the biosphere offers products that have passed the examination of natural selection, because they come from living things whose existence depends on their effectiveness . Thus, while antibiotics only kill microbes sometimes fail, their natural counterparts always do. Not surprisingly, in each of these compounds condense million years of evolution.

And talk about therapeutic biosphere, we must speak of the world's largest natural pharmacy, the Amazon , one of the most threatened regions of the world where one has arrived to study just over 10% of plants. Therefore, when thinking about the hundreds or thousands of plants that already have been extinct over the last decades, it is hard to resist speculating on the drugs that we have lost.

But not only by the degradation of the Amazon should worry. Nor should we forget that the pharmaceutical in developing countries come to seek and take their biomedicine, a large fraction of the economic pie that resulted from the massive sale of these drugs . This action is called biopiracy and is another form of choking to these countries without resources that should be a way for plants to grow economically . But history repeats itself and the big fish eats the small.

Let us hope that they turn on the light to those who have the power to change all that and as we seek ways to pollute less, our beautiful planet try to use everything it offers, in the most sustainable way possible .

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