Month: August 2019

Para mis amigos y colegas de habla española.  Por favor, difundan la voz…   

Todos sabemos que nuestro entorno está siendo rápidamente arruinado por un puñado de miembros de nuestra especie que han decidido tomar mucho más que su parte justa de los recursos de nuestra Tierra (de ahí el dinero y el poder) para sí mismos.  Papa Francisco los llama “adoradores de dinero.”  ¡Mira el Amazonas!  ¡Un desastre visible que nos afecta a todos! Al mismo tiempo, la mayoría de nosotros puede no saber, o incluso ser conscientes, del hecho de que las drogas sintéticas modernas están arruinando silenciosa y constantemente nuestra salud en nombre de la atención médica supuestamente para librarnos de enfermedades y mantenernos saludables.  En cambio, cada vez más de estos medicamentos están siendo generados por la misma maquinaria de desarrollo de drogas que defendemos y promovemos para luchar contra las enfermedades y el sufrimiento humano, con éxito discutible, debido a los dos problemas irresolubles únicos de la terapia sintética con drogas, es decir, el tiempo y nuestro cuerpo complejo.   Dado que nuestra economía y nuestro tejido social están arraigados y entrelazados, sólo podemos abordar una pequeña parte de ellos en la actualidad.  Sólo puedo hacer mi pequeña parte.  Algunos de ustedes están haciendo sus partes en el medio ambiente.  Sin embargo, todos estamos trabajando en contra de intereses codiciosos que tienen una enorme riqueza y poder sobre nosotros, y algunos de ellos son malvados o gravemente enfermos mentales.  Espero que los otros que no son ninguno despertaran un día cuando su lado humano y compasivo los llame.  A pesar de todo, esto no nos impide soñar.  Así, vamos a soñar en grande.  Esperemos que este sueño pueda tocar a las masas que juntos constituyen el poder real en un mundo democrático.    

Este es mi sueño: (1) Para el beneficio de nuestro medio ambiente, sólo usaremos energía renovable.  Todo lo que producimos, junto con la energía limpia, se degradará a cosas que son relativamente inofensivas para nosotros y para nuestro medio ambiente; (2) En nuestra atención médica, sólo practicaremos la verdadera prevención, usaremos las medicinas herbarias tradicionales, y sólo productos químicos naturales en nuestro sistema nuevo de terapia farmacológica, que han tenido innumerables años de contacto humano previo, rompiendo así el círculo vicioso.

#soñarengrande #Papafrancisco #adoradoresdedinero #Amazonas #drogassintéticas #medioambiente #interesescodiciosos #enfermedades  #atenciónmédica #medicamentos #enfermosmentales #lasmasas #verdaderaprevención #círculovicioso # medicinasherbarias #tiempoycuerpo #energíalimpia #dosproblemasirresolubles

We all know our environment is being rapidly ruined by a handful of ‘money-worshipping’ (Pope Francis’ words) members of our species who have decided to grab much more than their fair share of our Earth’s resources (hence money & power) for themselves.  Just look at the Amazon!  A visible disaster that affects us all! At the same time, most of us may not know, or even be aware of, the fact that modern synthetic drugs are quietly and steadily ruining our health in the name of healthcare supposedly to rid us of diseases and keep us healthy.  Instead, more and more of these drugs are being generated by the same drug development machinery we champion and promote to allegedly fight diseases and human suffering, with debatable success, because of the two unique irresolvable issues of synthetic drug therapy, i.e., time and our complex body.   Since our economy and social fabric are entrenched and intertwined, we can only tackle a small part of them at the present.  I can only do my little part.  Some of you are doing your parts in the environment.  However, we are all working against greedy interests that hold enormous wealth and power over us, and some of them are evil or seriously mentally ill.  I hope the others who are neither would wake up one day when their human and compassionate side calls them.  Regardless, these don’t prevent us from dreaming.  So, let’s dream big! Hopefully, this dream can touch the masses who together will constitute real power in a democratic world.   

Here is my dream:  (1) For the benefit of our environment, we’ll only use renewable energy.  Anything we produce, alongside clean energy, will have to be degradable into things that are relatively harmless to us and to our environment; (2) In our healthcare, we’ll only practice true prevention, use traditional herbal medicines, and only use natural chemicals in our new drug-therapy system, which have had countless years of prior human contact, thus breaking the vicious cycle.

#ruin #environment #monyworshippers #Popefrancis #Amazondisaster #healthcare #drugdevelopment #syntheticdrugs #herbalmedicines #renewable #biodegradable #irresolvableissues #cleanenergy #trueprevention #dreambig #traditionalmedicine #newdrugtherapy #naturalchemicals #mentalillness

For details see my paper, “A Disruptive Concept in Drug Therapy” posted on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/albert-leung-9b933913) and on my blog (www.ayslcorp.com/blog).

The following are basic points to recognize in order to understand the dead-end of modern drug therapy along with its vicious cycle, and why traditional medicines have never been properly evaluated, let alone validated.  If you have other better ideas to break the vicious cycle than what I have suggested, or have other logical reason to maintain its status quo, other than enabling a greedy few to exploit the health of the vast majority of other world citizens, including you and me, please tell everyone.

There are three kinds of therapeutics:

1. Synthetic chemicals – brand new to our planet, never before had any direct interactions with us in human history.  These are our modern drugs used in drug therapy.  It is now stuck in a rut for us all, except for drug makers and their associates who have finally attained their dream (I still believe they never expected or planned it, just dumb luck and then keeping quiet) – making and selling any toxic drugs that don’t have to be effective and safe, but they can charge consumers any price they want with total impunity, in perpetuity. 
2. Natural chemicals – consist of 2 kinds: (1) isolated, well identified, and defined, including artemisinin for malaria, lutein for eye health, and vincristine or taxol for cancer; and (2) those still present in their natural material sources (plants, including foods), which are often taken to represent the herbs.  Both these chemicals, inside or outside of herbs, have a long history of interactions with humans since we emerged as a distinct, animal species on earth.  Examples of the 2^nd type include coffee with caffeine and ginseng with ginsenosides.  Researchers who have confused the herb materials with one or two chemicals therein (which they assume to represent the herbs’ identity and quality) have been generating much of the irrelevant or irreproducible data during the past decades.  This has prevented the proper evaluation and validation of traditional medicines as a legitimate healing system even up to this date.  I bet some of the scientists who are most adamantly against true natural medicines have never spent any time with a truly qualified and experienced healer or practitioner of herbal medicine, or they may have been so brainwashed by Big Pharma or so enriched by the vicious cycle that they continue to defend its status quo.
3. Natural therapeutics (herbal medicines) – these are not chemicals isolated from their natural materials (e.g., herbs) but actually are the traditionally prepared materials themselves with their full complement of chemicals (known and unknown) used as a whole, which are no different from the foods we eat, handed down from our ancestors which we know as traditional medicines.   These are the true time-tested traditional therapeutics.  Many of these are still being used by the majority of our world’s population.  However, with the greed, now so obvious, of the pharmaceutical industry and its associates (esp. the insurance industry), these traditional medicines would not be around for too long, unless the vicious cycle of modern drug therapy is broken soon.

Among the 3 types of therapeutics, only the first one, synthetic chemicals, causes the vicious cycle.  The reason is that, being brand-new on this planet, they need to be truly time-tested in our body for much more than their measly 20 or 30 years that include clinical trials of up to 20 years

With the other 2 categories, since they are all natural chemicals, they have already gone through much of the time testing in our body.   This would make it relatively easy for us to go on as I have planned, already described in my recent books and posts on my blog and elsewhere.  My plan for shaping up some of the current deficient or fake herbal supplements on the market hasn’t changed, nor the introduction of simple herbal supplements and traditional formulas with their unique fingerprints. 

After 80 long years of trying, modern drug therapy has ended up in the vicious cycle that only benefits a few exploiters of our health.  It would do nothing for our health except they may offer temporary relief for some people, but will ruin it in the long term, because our complex body can’t be simplified, nor the time required for the drugs to realize their true effects, be shortened.  We need to overhaul the system, involving younger bright brains and new technologies, other than the biological and chemical ones that we have already been using, each of us digging deeper and deeper into our respective holes, lost in the minute entities, without a view towards our total health.

I am encouraged and glad to report that only after a few months being active on LinkedIn, my connections have increased many-fold.  Now, probably at least half of them are alternative healthcare professionals of various diverse fields.  Many agree with me that our body can heal itself when we keep it properly nourished, balanced, and healthy so that it can retain or strengthen our innate ability to resist or restore damage by outside stress (physical, chemical or biological); and with the practice of true prevention, we can avoid taking many of the toxic synthetic drugs.  I hope my fellow herbalists and alternative professionals will continue to support me and help me spread my message to the millennials and their children’s and grandchildren’s generations. 

As to my drug colleagues and friends, please ponder what you have done in the vicious cycle.  Maybe you can start thinking outside of your own holes (specialties) and communicate with your alternative counterparts and start working towards a solution to the so-far unresolvable time and our complex body.  Perhaps together, we can work out a solution to give us good health that we can live to experience, not just a myriad of individual complicated scientific achievements, lying around for future generations to try to decipher, provided our vicious cycle of toxic drugs hasn’t killed us all or turned us into a mutated species.

#therapeutics #synthetic #chemicals #natural #herbal #medicines #time-tested #totalhealth #complexbody #deficientherbalsupplements #fakeherbalsupplements #toxins #stress #viciouscycle #statusquo #artemisinin #taxol #vincristine #lutein

It has entered the vicious cycle.  This means that no matter what drug is developed, whether or not effective or toxic, the drug makers will charge whatever they want and can get away with it, because few people are aware of it, even scientists who have created it.  If the drug has enough serious side effects, a new disease will be created which, in turn, needs more new drugs to treat, affording Big Pharma perpetual income.  There is plenty of incentive for greedy parties to maintain its status quo.

           Just check out the new drug, Valbenazine (Ingrezza), approved in April 2017 for treating the new drug-caused disease, Tardive Dyskinesia (TD), in people who have taken common drugs for mental and gastrointestinal problems.  In the USA alone, there are 500,000 citizens suffering from this new disease, each paying $200-$400 per day.  This would amount to roughly $37 billion to $73 billion per year to add to our national healthcare costs, a big chunk of which would go to the insurance and healthcare companies.  And this is only one drug!  Is this the kind of healthcare you want for your grandchildren and theirs?  Most people have never heard of this.  But it is quietly eliminating alternative therapies (at least trying) so that only new toxic synthetic drugs are produced and approved in an endless stream of drugs to feed the vicious cycle.  Before Valbenazine was approved for treating TD, I had thought that Big Pharma and associates might not know that drug therapy was heading towards its current unnatural state.  And when they finally came to realize that the new drug was to treat a disease caused by taking ‘common’ everyday medicines widely promoted and easily made available to the general public, they would understand the serious implications and would start to try to reassess their situation and perhaps reset their thinking and do right by the vast majority of other citizens.  But no.  It has been 2 years now.  Nothing seems to have been done to take advantage of age-old clinical experiences.  We are still doing the same so-called evidence-based science – from testing in test tubes to cells and small animals and then in humans for a measly few decades and consider the new synthetic drug safe.  But is it?    All I know is this vicious cycle has added another gold mine to its owners’ coffers, and simultaneously increasing our healthcare costs by tens of billions.   I think Big Pharma & Co. may even be quietly celebrating this in glee for over 2 years.  That suggests to me that they never had the health and financial wellbeing of other human beings in mind.  It is greed!  If one even had half a conscience, one would never try to exploit others’ ill health, especially that of the less fortunate, and profit from it.  Most of us are supposed to have religious or family values.  What happened?

           In earlier posts, I thought that most scientists would expect the occurrence of this vicious cycle sooner or later.   To me, it was only about 16 years ago.  Not soon enough, when compared to the length of my career.   This is because the drug technologies in which we are trained prompt us to just do our own tiny part(s) of the whole picture, totally ignoring, or unaware of, the fact that when a new drug enters our extremely well organized and functioning body containing billions of chemicals and cells, it meets apparent ‘organized’ chaos and causes more chaos.  It will take our body much more than a few decades to get used to the brand-new drug before allowing it to deliver its true benefits, if any.   And it takes time! This was what happened to our foods and traditional medicines eons ago when our ancestors tried them and found them safe and beneficial only after many of them, through generations, were probably poisoned, became ill and recovered, or died; then we have inherited this knowledge from them.  As intelligent human beings, we should be able to make this connection and reconsider our current no-win situation, unless some of us are blinded by greed.

Please read my next post, coming up soon.  Or buy a Kindle or e-version of my dual book as it has the capability of being searched for every word and phrase in both my memoir and newsletter [“My Life & Rollercoaster Career” published by CreateSpace Publishing Co., 550 pp.; Paperback $25.95, e-version $5.49].  It can be purchased from www.Amazon.com within seconds/minutes.

#toxicdrugs #viciouscycle #deadend #valbenazine #Ingrezza #tardivedyskinesia #billiondollars #drugcaused #statusquo #syntheticdrugs #healthcare #futuregenerations #alternative

I just came across this that I wrote more than a year ago before I published my last 2 books. Even though everything in it is all true, I can’t believe I actually wrote it.  It doesn’t sound that modest to me.  Probably for this reason I didn’t publish it then.  Now, I’m getting thinker-skinned every day because I need to get my message out to as many people as possible on this planet, and I don’t have any assistants to help me.   We, especially our younger generations, all know about our damaged environment. But few are even aware of the vicious drug cycle.  We can’t leave this mess for our grandchildren and theirs to deal with.  Please help me spread the message! 

Here is what I wrote:

I am Albert Y. Leung, an accomplished scientist but lousy businessman.  I hold degrees of B.S. in Pharmacy and M.S. and Ph.D. in Pharmacognosy, the latter two from the University of Michigan.  In 1991, I formulated and manufactured the first successful herbal drink based on the traditional Chinese medical theory of yin/yang balance.  In 4 years, its annual sales reached 1.3 million bottles.  Since then, many imitations have come and gone.  Most don’t work because they have little or no herbs in them, only some standardized chemicals.  Yet, with slick marketing, some continue to be on the market, because up to this day there is no easy way to tell an adulterated from a true herbal product despite both may have the exact same formula on their labels.  I have been an outspoken advocate of herbal product identity and quality for 40 years and have addressed practically all aspects of herbs in my newsletter (Leung’s Chinese Herb News, published between 1996 & 2004).  Even today, despite many advanced techniques using expensive instruments, none is practical for determining whether an herbal product is real or adulterated.  The main reason is that these techniques have all been developed for pure chemical drugs and not for herbs with a myriad of chemicals.   Our Phyto-True system developed though an NIH grant based on my multifaceted approach is the only system that can easily tell a fake from a real herbal product.  But it was too late to save my business before one of my major clients switched to cheaper adulterated products.  Because of the above sequence of events, I am well-known to consumers of herbal drinks and to scientists involved in herbs and natural products.  And consumers continue to seek out my products.  My second herbal drink (PhytoChi™, launched around 2,000) is still being sold worldwide, though only the Czech version is genuine; others are imitations, all adulterated.   Nevertheless, I’d have a ready audience of at least tens (if not hundreds) of thousands when my book comes out. 

The appeal of my book is not just to the people interested in herbal drinks but also to those who may be interested in reading about my tortuous journey from childhood to adulthood, and then accomplished scientist, of at least equal status to the best in the supplements & natural products field.   My experience, expertise and insight into this field often allow me to see as obvious certain aspects of herb research which my eminent colleagues don’t see.  The most important issue is multicomponent herbs vs. single-chemical drugs.  Without clearly differentiating these two has led to the current mess in supplements, including irreproducible and meaningless research, wrong or poor-quality products, continuing controversy, and so forth, which most experts involved don’t even seem to notice due to various reasons (self-interests, complacency, bias, etc.).  Because of the above, billions of our tax dollars have been wasted yearly in generating useless data without giving consumers a true alternative to toxic drugs. These will all be detailed in my book along with my personal story of how, as an ‘idiot boy’ with various born handicaps, have made good through the love and help of family, friends, classmates, and others.

I was born and raised in Hong Kong, as a child, I couldn’t concentrate on any subject that I found boring and flunked out of elementary school and then the sophomore year of high school. My father used to call me ‘saw jai’ (‘idiot boy’ in Cantonese) because of my spacey, clueless, and trusting nature.  This inborn nature cuts both ways. It makes me vulnerable to being exploited when my guards are down, and this happened a number of times, including losing my trademarks along with my business in 2010.  Around the same time, I initially turned down a 2011 Michigan Alumni Distinguished Lifetime Achievement Award when the Pharmacy Dean called to offer it to me. On the other hand, it provides me with an unusual insight into things technical, including: (1) on second try, getting a publisher for my Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients Used in Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics, (Wiley, 1980; now in its 3^rd Ed.); (2) beating a competitor (the most famous natural products professor, Dr. Norman Farnsworth) whose team had built the world’s largest database (NAPRALERT) with government funds, in a database contract (SBIR, Phase II) offered by the National Cancer Institute in 1988; and (3) being awarded an SBIR research grant (Phases I & II) in 2001 by NCCAM, NIH, leading to the Phyto-True™ approach to meaningful identification and quality control of complex herbal products, published in 2010. I believe what I have to say in my book would positively impact the health, wellbeing, and pocketbook of millions of fellow citizens. But I need help to reach them.  Please spread the word, by forwarding this to your friends, relatives, and colleagues.  Thank you!

But the way, all the above are described in my combined book, memoir + newsletter, “My Life & Rollercoaster Career…” (550 pp., paper back, $25.95; e-version, $5.49).  I recommend the e-version, because any topic by word or phrase can be easily searched and located.  Thank you all!

#viciouscycle #toxicdrugs #damagedenvironment #grandchildren #generations #scientists #traditionalChinesemedicine #UniversityMichigan #pharmacognosy #yinyanbalance #NIHgrants #phytotrue #standardizedchemicals #slickmarketing #standardizedchemicals #adulteration #herbalsupplements #Czechphytochi #mentalhandicaps #meaninglessdata #idiotboy #controversy #NCCAM #napralert #NCI #SBIR #Michiganalumniaward

In my last post, “Thank you, America!” I told you my being admitted to the University of Michigan with a teaching assistantship.  That was real luck!  But then, I almost blew it…

On my arrival in America the last week of August, 1962, I met up with a college friend, Leo Lee, in San Francisco.  We had each bought a ‘See-USA-in-3-months’ Greyhound bus ticket for $99 before we left Hong Kong.  We had planned on doing a little sight-seeing along the California Coast, before heading northeast towards our respective final destinations, Leo to the University of Missouri and I to the University of Michigan.  Here is what I have written in my books:  My memoir (The Life of a Pharmacognosist…) and my combined book (Memoir + my Newsletter) titled, “My Life & Rollercoaster Career…” 

The following is from my memoir.

Chapter 4.  Adulthood in America

IGNORANCE IS BLISS!

San Diego was the last and southernmost California city Leo and I visited. While there, we decided to make a side trip across the border to see a bullfight in Tijuana, Mexico. We must have seen ads or something during our trip and decided to see a bullfight. I don’t remember whether or not the Greyhound bus went to the border at that time and if not, I think we might have ridden a taxi to the Customs & Immigrations checkpoint and walked across the border to Mexico. Once on the Mexican side, taxis were everywhere. We got on one taking us to the bull fight. We each had all our money and valuable belongings in our small bag. I had 200 dollars cash that was supposed to be for my living expenses until my first paycheck from my teaching assistantship. Leo was from a better-off family and had more cash than I. Since we had no idea where we were going or knew anything about Tijuana, what if the taxi driver took us someplace and robbed us? For a while I panicked. I had watched too many American cowboy movies with banditos in them! But then, we got to the bullfight arena soon enough. We paid the driver and got into the arena and watched the bullfight. It was not as spectacular as I had thought. Still, the event that followed was so etched in my memory which made whatever happened after the bull fight and the little tourist stroll in downtown Tijuana become non-events.

How we got back to the border checkpoint is a blank. All I remember is we were immediately detained by U.S. Immigration/Customs. An officer took us into a room and explained we didn’t have the proper documents to enter the United States, because our visas were for a single entry only. We used that up when we landed at the airport or the pier when we first arrived in the States. After maybe 30 or 45 minutes, or maybe an hour, of questioning and reviewing our papers, including university contacts such as correspondences and my teaching assistant appointment, among other papers, the officer was satisfied that we were legitimate students. He released us after giving us a stern lecture about immigration rules. He didn’t even call our school contacts, as far as I know. I was 24 years old and Leo perhaps a year older, obviously both naïve and innocent. Young people at this age now can be high-level executives in government or industry. And we were just starting graduate school and traveling like greenhorns. I shudder at the thought of this episode fast forwarded to now. What could have happened?

When I was a teenager in Hong Kong, there was a widely known case of a homeless European living on the Hong Kong – Macau ferry. I don’t remember the details, but he somehow got himself onto one such ferry without immigration documents. Neither the Hong Kong nor the Macau immigration let him land. For a long time he was living on that ferry as a homeless person without a country. This was the same ferry line I used to take to visit Uncle Siu and Aunt Pauline in my high-school and college days. It usually took three hours. Now the Hong Kong – Macau hydrofoil takes only one hour. I have never found out how the story with the homeless European ended. Regardless, I am grateful for the compassion of that U.S. immigration officer to let us back in.

Having been brought up in an environment encompassing some of the world’s most profound religions and philosophies (Taoism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Catholicism), I believe in fate and luck. I have been certainly lucky on more than one such occasion.

In present-day America, I wonder anyone dumb and naïve enough as Leo and me to have crossed into Mexico and got back in the States without a visa.  Was I lucky!!

 #ThanksAmerica #ADHD #absentminded #flunkedoutofschool #TCM #viciouscycle #toxicdrugs #herbalsupplements #herbalmedicine #ThanksUSA #grandchildren #teachers #BigPharma

In my newest books, scattered in appropriate places, I have already thanked my family, my friends from childhood to college, and at work, without whom I would not have become what I am today.  Now I want to specifically thank my adopted country, the USA, for welcoming me 57 years ago.   I was born into an erudite family on both my paternal and maternal sides.  As far as I can remember, as a child up to perhaps 8 or 9 years old, I was absentminded and daydreaming a lot.   I flunked out of elementary school and then later in my sophomore year of high school.  My anchor at home was my maternal grandmother, my amah (nanny), and my older sister who was my protector against bullies when I was younger.  My father was not around during most of those years and my mother was mostly our disciplinarian.  I feel very blessed and lucky I were not born now or a generation or two earlier.  Under the premise for children to have better attention to learn, they are given drugs to take so that they could pay attention.  With my condition (ADHD?), in any other family, I would probably have been given drugs to take to make me focus and easier for the teachers, and of course heavily promoted by Big Pharma & associates to line their own pockets.  I would have been deep in the vicious cycle forever.  Please help me break it so that our grandchildren and theirs would not inherit it!

The following is the last paragraph of “Chapter 1.  Growing Up in Asia” of “My Life & Rollercoaster Career…” published last year in August. 

Looking back at my childhood-to-college years in Asia, I feel very lucky under those circumstances. I somehow ended up finishing high school and college and was going to start a new life in America. First, being admitted to the graduate school of the University of Michigan was not easy with academic records of barely a B-average like mine. And then, being offered a teaching assistantship sight unseen was to me like a miracle. I didn’t realize how lucky I was at the time, but I do now. Without the financial support of Uncle Siu and Auntie Pauline, I would not have gone to college, period, let alone finished it with a Bachelor of Science degree in Pharmacy. And without the teaching assistantship from Michigan, I would not have become a pharmacognosist, specializing in herbal medicine, writing to you today, trying to tell you and the world about what is wrong with our drugs and ‘herbal’ supplements. They can be made much better if we start doing something about them, especially by resetting our priorities towards the less fortunate by forgoing at least part of the excessive profits.

Modern drug therapy is not working! We need to break its vicious cycle by reintroducing time-tested natural therapeutics.  Join me if you agree.

It’s all about our Body & Time with Herbs & Chemical Drugs, plus Greed!

This is my final post on this paper.  Since I uploaded it on April 2, 2019, I have written 10 posts explaining why I think modern drug therapy is not working.  It is stuck in a vicious cycle after 80 long years of trying, which now benefits only drug makers.

It is due to two inherent factors that are out of our control, our body and too little time given for it to interact with drugs to show whether or not they work.   Our body is not a mechanical machine in which every component piece is accounted for.  We have knowledge on only some tiny bits and pieces of it.  Also, each of us has an invisible, untouchable soul.  And we are all different, body and soul, from one another.  Even identical twins are not totally alike.  Yet, when traditional herbal therapy was transitioned into modern drug therapy in Europe some 200 plus years ago, most of our scientist forebears were unaware of the fact that the new chemical drugs might have to go through what herbs had gone through when herbal therapy started ages ago by trial and error before some being shown to be safe and effective.  Hence, new chemical drugs are only in the infant stage of time-testing in humans.  Already, we are in a downward spiral, controlled by a few greedy people who are perpetually raking in undeserved billions, with all the incentives to keep it as is, without any lasting benefits whatsoever for the rest of humanity.  This is modern drug therapy.  

With herbal therapy, the body and time factors don’t matter as much (described in the paper), since the body has known them and they have been time tested.  However, before any work performed involving herbs such as herb therapy or drug therapy, it is essential to first recognize and understand the differences between an herb and a chemical in order to achieve the expected results we seek.  In the case of pure drug therapy, some of the expected results may not come for some of us in our lifetime, due to the 2 inherent factors of drug therapy.

The above concepts are obviously not an easy combination for one to grasp, because during my 56 years of working with drugs and herbs, I realized these problems only 16 years ago – 40 years into my career!  Since then, I have been trying to get these across to my scientist colleagues.  Yet some of them still don’t seem to have gotten them.  

Because of this, most of the data on herbs in world databases is only relevant for the chemical part of herbs; the traditional part relating to history, properties, and benefits is often rendered irrelevant by mistreating herbs as mere chemicals, discarding the rest.  Hence, most research to-date on traditional herbs has not been conducted properly, resulting repeatedly in wrong or irrelevant data.  That, in turn, has led to herbs being denigrated by our conventional medical colleagues as not scientific and of no therapeutic value, because it was based on drug technologies taught us by Big Pharma, misapplied to herbs! 

The fact that I have received awards (a contract & a grant) the only two times I have ever responded to requests for proposals (RFP) from National Institutes of Health during my 56 years of my research career (including my MS and PhD research) is probably due to my scientific insight into both herbs and drugs in therapy and other matters. 

The first was back in 1985 and 1986 (33-34 yrs ago) when we won both Phases I and II of a database contract awarded by the National Cancer Institute to build a database of antitumor herbs.  My competitor was the group that had developed the world-famous database called NAPRALERT. 

Details of that contract is described in Chapter 8 of my memoir titled “David vs. Goliath: NCI SBIR Phase II Database Contract, What if?…”  Out of 13 proposals, we both won the Phase I contracts.  Then, after months of initial research as proof of concept, we were invited to submit Phase II proposals for further research and for commercializing the database.  The Phase I contract was $50,000.  But the Phase II contract was for $1,000,000.  Further details are in the chapter mentioned above.

It seems obvious the technical reviewers at that time (33 years ago) already recognized the value of my new ideas to not just looking blindly at chemicals but also at the true value of traditional medicines.  The current situation is not that much different, as the benefits of time-tested remedies have never been properly evaluated even up to now.  Regardless, after witnessing this kind of nepotism politics that I detest, I have avoided socializing with people in industry, academia, and government who are known to be a part of this.  And which is also why I didn’t apply to any government agencies for any grants for over 13 years until in 2000 when a friend and colleague alerted me to an RFP for an SBIR grant from NCCAM for feverfew research.  I took that as a chance to prove my correct approach to research on complex herbs.   We applied and won the grant for both Phases I & II.   Some of the research results were used in the development of our Phyto-True System.  [A.Y. Leung, Tradition- and science-based quality control of traditional Chinese medicine – introducing the Phyto-True system, J. AOAC International 93 (5): 1355-1366 (2010)]

The Phyto-True System we have developed has taken all above subtleties into consideration.  For the first time in herb research, traditional medicines (herbs & formulas) can now be properly evaluated.   Instead of testing them with only one or two of their arbitrarily selected chemicals in mind, without success and tossed aside, the true long-documented values and benefits of traditional medicines can now be truly and scientifically evaluated.  So far, the decades-long efforts to test herbal medicines for their value by scientists trained by Big-Pharma technologies (including myself pre year 2000) have not produced any useful results.  Up to this date, among the estimated 130,000 formulas recorded in the Chinese literature over the past few thousand years, not a single formula has been proven ‘scientific’ and effective by my scientist colleagues using drug technologies that are specifically developed for only chemical drugs

In the meantime, research scientists continue to pursue drug therapy with new drugs, ignoring or wishing the two inherent elements of drug therapy would disappear or magically vanish, but all such efforts still end up in the vicious cycle that has become  a perpetual money machine for Big Pharm, but continuing ill health and often financial ruin for many Americans.  Unless broken, this vicious cycle within the drug-therapy establishment continues to enrich the drug industry and its interdependent associates that include the medical profession, insurance companies, crooked politicians and government officials, among others.  Just check out the new drug, Ingrezza, for treating a disease called Tardive Dyskinesia suffered by half-a-million Americans after taking common psychotic, epileptic, and gastrointestinal drugs over the years.  Do you still wonder why the beneficiaries of the vicious cycle want to defend and maintain the status quo?

On my part, I can’t do much about drug therapy for now or in the near-term future, except to continue blogging to publicize its vicious cycle and to draw attention to its potentially wide-ranging human health destruction.   Hopefully the word would spread to the general public who has not yet heard of it, and get enough people to support my work towards breaking the vicious cycle and afford the general public, especially our grandchildren’s generation and theirs, truly modernized natural therapeutics. 

What I am proposing will not interfere with existing laws governing herbal supplements, nor will new ingredients be introduced.  Here are the two things I can do to facilitate the improvement of current herbal supplements and to afford such improved products to the general public as natural alternatives to expensive toxic drugs:

1. Improvement of current herbal supplements.   At present there are no requirements for testing finished herbal products, except maybe for some standardized marker chemicals.  There are also no uniform standards for herb derivatives, such as the types of extracts and chemicals.  From my experience, few manufacturers show evidence of what are in these products other than what are listed on their labels.  I know for a fact two herbal supplements with exactly the same herbal ingredients on their labels will have different fingerprints, some drastically so, unless they both are made with extracts from the same supplier.  [see Chapter 9:  Adulteration Continues to be a Major Problem of my Memoir]

My first task is to work with consumers and competent analytical labs as well as a few selected small manufacturers that I know produce good genuine products.  First is to test the commercial herbal supplements being taken by the selected consumers, comparing them to other commercial products, including those from the manufacturers we have selected, which have the exact or very similar ingredients on their labels.  We’d then compare their results and advise the consumers of them to let them decide which to take.

2. Providing consumers with genuine herbal products with identity and quality fingerprints at affordable prices.  Despite drug therapy being stuck in a vicious cycle, I can see an opening through which we can replace the synthetic chemical drugs with natural herbs, because the latter have already had prior interactions with our body since antiquity.  Thus, the body and time elements won’t apply to them in herbal therapy, because they have already done it, at least millennia longer than mere decades that our new modern drugs are still experiencing.

My main purpose is to break the drug vicious cycle and to afford future consumers genuine good-quality herbal supplements as natural alternatives to toxic drugs.  If you have been a conscientious manufacturer or herbalist who want to be part of this endeavor, please send a personal email to me describing your operation, and include your phone number so that I can call some of you in the next few months to discuss this potential joint project.  If you want to be a consumer and/or supporter, please send me an email expressing your wishes and I’ll let you know when we are ready.  I don’t intend to make money with this.  But if you want to be a consumer and supporter, all I ask is for you to buy at least one of my books published last year and either send me the date of your receipt or a photo of the order or receipt by email.   Your name and email address will be retained for updating you on our progress.  If you are a supplier or marketer looking for business, please don’t contact me, unless you are a rare breed who are willing and able to support a brand-new nonprofit with genuine herbal extracts, not something like ‘pure’ huzhang (Japanese knotweed) extract with 90% resveratrol or ‘pure’ Chinese ginseng extract with 95% ginsenosides; or products made with such so-called ‘extracts.’  In any case, any purchases of my books will contribute substantially to our cause in breaking the vicious cycle, and will be greatly appreciated.

There are already many Western herbal formulas being sold in America, so are dozens of Chinese tonic formulas.  Most of them are well known for their tonic benefits, meaning removing inflammation, modulating immunity, removing toxins, strengthening our body to help it resist or avoid being sick, etc.  I will try to interest reputable manufacturers and research institutions to get involved and start planning to work with our associated analytical labs on such products, so that they will all carry meaningful fingerprints.  The fingerprints won’t just show certain known chemicals, but also unknown constituents of the herbs.   Initially, the Western herbal supplements will be selected from manufacturers founded and run by honest and compassionate herbalists who would be willing to lower their prices for our nonprofit, consumer crowd-funded operation.  Our main customers would be the consumers who fund us.  These products, with their beneficial properties, will help break the vicious cycle to keep us healthy so that we won’t be dragged into it.  They can be drop-shipped from the manufacturers’ facilities.    

 I don’t know when I’ll be ready to set up the nonprofit because I have never done this before.  But in another few months to maybe a year, with your support and others who are helping me, I should be ready.  Then, our nonprofit and book accounts should have been set up, with 75% of their gross profits going to the nonprofit.  With your support (including my young millennial friends), we can practically start a new movement and a new herbal industry in healthcare, not based on greed, bypassing the drug-therapy establishment.  For your information, I am happy to notice that many of my fast-growing connections are already doing this with their different specialties in alternative medicine.  Keep up the good work, my fellow herbalists, healers, listeners, and like-minded colleagues!  Stay away from the vicious cycle!          

Finally, since I have no experience whatsoever with homoeopathy products and I don’t believe there is an easy way to have meaningful fingerprints for them, our supplements will not include them.