Recently I have been asked more often by colleagues why I think synthetic drugs are more toxic than natural ones.

Instead of telling you to look for it in my writings, I am quoting just one instance from my most recent book “My Life & Rollercoaster Career” (pp. 95-96), which was in connection with my extraction process for levodopa: “…During my 55 plus years of working with chemicals, the conventional wisdom among chemists is that the synthetic version and the natural version of a chemical are the same as long as they are both pure. But how pure? 98.0% or 99.9%? How about the remaining 2.0% or 0.1% containing a tiny amount of some highly toxic unknown chemical? The USP/NF specifies the purity of levodopa to be containing 98.0% to 102.0%, depending on the analytical methods used. It doesn’t specify 100.00% or even 99.99% (absolute purity or close to it) because the analytical techniques available are not that precise. So, a ‘pure’ chemical always has impurities in it. The impurities in natural chemicals are not brand new to our environment. But those present in synthetic chemicals are totally unknown to us and have absolutely no history of interacting with us. I think you should be aware of these facts.” hashtag#naturalhashtag#synthetichashtag#chemicalshashtag#toxichashtag#USPNFhashtag#levodopahashtag#impurities