To all herbalists and herbal scientists!!
We must join forces to prevent this from happening!
A colleague and friend, Roy Upton, recently sent me a chapter he had written for a book titled, “Evidence-Based Validation of Herbal Medicine” published by Elsevier Inc. in 2015. It is Chapter 3, Traditional Herbal Medicine, Pharmacognosy, and Pharmacopoeial Standards: A Discussion at the Crossroads. That is a detailed account of a historical look at the diverse field of pharmacognosy. If you have time and patience, I recommend it, though I can’t guarantee that you would get a clear idea of what pharmacognosy actually is, after reading it.
I have tried my best to explain “pharmacognosy” in the Preface of my Memoir and in pp. 428-431 under “Pharmacognosy Revisited” of my dual book, “My Life & Rollercoaster Career.” But the subject is so broad and complex that it is not easy to narrow it down to a single word or phrase. From both Roy’s and my attempts to describe it, I have come to the conclusion that, after millennia of evolution from traditional herbal medicine to the science of pharmacognosy (broadly, the study of natural drugs) and with a heavy dose of drug influence, pharmacognosy in the West is now nothing but drug discovery and development. Decades of my personal training and experience in traditional Chinese medicine, along with Roy’s description of how pharmacopoeial standards evolved over time, have led me to the following realization of the plight of herbal medicine:
1. Despite the detailed pharmacopoeial standards set for raw herbs, from the originally basic organoleptic (e.g., morphologic & sensory), microscopic, simple physicochemical testing, to the more advanced, genetic, and finally, precise chemical requirements, the last (i.e., chemical) alone has triggered the demise of herbal medicine. Under current ‘modern’ herbal practice, once a so-called active chemical, among countless others, is identified in an herb and assigned to be its marker of identity and quality, you don’t need any of the other non-chemical standards anymore, unless your final product is a formula of raw powdered herbs. This has been the industry practice for at least 20 years.
2. With the above rationale, most commercial herbal products/supplements are probably standardized to a particular chemical marker, but contain no herbal elements. This is because, as far as I know, there are still no standards for finished commercial herbal supplements, despite the existence of copious nonchemical pharmacopoeial standards for the raw herb ingredients.
3. The main reason we are in our current status quo is that, as scientific herbal experts, we have been confused since day one after the passage of DSHEA in 1994. We regulate herbs as food, yet we continue to analyze them as drugs, using the wrong drug-oriented technology and expect the results to meet drug standards. Obviously, this would not happen as it is no different than analyzing chlorogenic acid in echinacea or in coffee, and call that chemical echinacea or coffee. Because of this scenario, traditional herbs have never been properly studied or their therapeutic values validated. Most, if not all, such studies have used the wrong pharmaceutical approach specifically designed and established for simple chemical drugs, which is not suitable for complex herbs and foods.
In the quality control of drugs, we need standards, such as pure aspirin in aspirin work; and not just another painkiller like morphine. But with complex, multichemical herbs, there are no simple standards for them. Most herb standards (aka reference materials) are based on some specific chemical(s) in the herbs, assumed to represent the herbs. They are not true standards, only based on assumption or wishful thinking, which is neither science nor tradition. At the present time, the closest to true herbal standards is the Representative Botanical Reference Material (RBRM) of our Phyto-True system (see an earlier post). With this RBRM, appropriate results from herbal research or analysis can now be achievable. The P-T system was developed as a byproduct of a Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant of $1.4 million awarded to my company, Phyto-Technologies, Inc., in 2001 by the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Health (NCCAM), NIH. And its RBRM was recently granted a European patent.
Posted January 6, 2019