My Life & Rollercoaster Career:<\/em><\/strong>\u00a0 The Life of a Pharmacognosist + Are Drugs Better Than Herbs<\/em><\/strong> [550 pages:\navailable from Amazon; $25.95, paperback; $5.49, e-version] <\/p>\n\n\n\n There\nare two main reasons why I wrote this book that actually consists of 2 books in\none \u2013 my Memoir (The Life of a Pharmacognosist<\/strong>) and my republished\nNewsletter (Are Drugs Better Than Herbs?<\/strong>). My memoir covers at least 3 or 4 generations\nof my family history for our daughters and granddaughter, among other things. The second book is basically my lifetime\u2019s\nthoughts and work that I want to leave behind, not just for my family, but mainly\nto alert millennials so that they may be aware of the vicious cycle that can be\nbroken or bypassed by natural medicines by not using the inappropriate chemical\ntechnologies we all learn in college. This\nvicious cycle has been created by us older folks and is passed on to our future\ngenerations through no fault of their own, just as we have done the same with our\ndamaged environment. <\/p>\n\n\n\n When I first published my Encyclopedia\nof Common Natural Ingredients Used in Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics<\/em><\/strong>\n(Wiley, 1980), I had sent my book proposal to only 2 publishers, a trade publisher\nand Wiley. Wiley responded quickly and\nwithin weeks I was offered a book contract with 15% royalties and an advance of\n$15,000. That book became one of Wiley\u2019s\nbest sellers in the natural product field. \nSince then, it has gone through the 2nd<\/sup> Edition (1996, with\nSteven Foster as my co-author) and is now in its 3rd<\/sup> Edition (2010)\nretitled Leung\u2019s Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients<\/em>\u2026,<\/strong>authored\nby I.A. Khan and E.A. Abourashed. I did\nnot participate in its revision for 2 main reasons. First, because of the confusion in the\nnatural-product field among scientists between traditional herbs and pure chemicals,\nmuch of the data on \u2018natural products\u2019 were not credible, and I simply couldn\u2019t\nhave time to evaluate them and find enough data worthwhile to use for the purpose\nof my book which had to be relevant to traditional herbal medicines (THM). Second, I finally realized that my book could\nbe useful for drug discovery because of the chemicals reported in plants from\nthe literature were relevant to the research and development of chemical drugs,\nthough they were often useless when being applied to THM. Not only that, they would further continue to\nmuddy the research and production of genuine herbal products and formulas; and\nI didn\u2019t want to continue to contribute my part to this confusion.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After my positive experience\nwith Wiley, I thought publishing lay books would also be at least as easy. However, my first such book, Chinese\nHerbal Remedies<\/em><\/strong>,was accepted and subsequently published successfully\nby Universe Books in 1984, only after a dozen book proposals had been rejected\nby other publishers. Regardless, that\nwas also published in England by Wildwood House, and was shortly translated\ninto German and published in Germany by Diederichs Gelbe Reihe in 1985 as Chinesische\nHeilkrauter<\/em><\/strong>. Since 1993, it is\nunder the new title, Chinese Healing Foods and Herbs<\/em><\/strong>, published\nby AYSL Corp, now out of print. I have\nconsidered republishing it, especially as an e-book. <\/p>\n\n\n\n One major thing I have learned\nfrom all this is that lay publishers, including major ones, are mostly fed\nmaterials by book agents along with their reviewers who often are THM- or fact-challenged. Hence some of their books published are\negregious. I have critically reviewed at\nleast two of them in my Newsletter between 1996 and 2004. One was downright plagiarism on a dozen\nremedies (at least from my herbal book) and the other outrageously ignorant on THM,\ncompiled by 2 Pharm D\u2019s. They were also illogical\nor fuzzy-headed in their thinking, which the late Dr. Varro E. Tyler (Dean of\nPharmacy at Purdue), well known for his popular book The Honest Herbal<\/em><\/strong>,\nagreed with me. These are all reprinted in\nmy book. My question is, \u201cHow could such\nbooks have been published by these well-known publishers?\u201d My thinking is that the old-boy network is\nstill alive and active in the lay publishing business. It\u2019s not what you know, but whom you\nknow. Obviously, I am at a disadvantage,\nbecause my slight mental handicaps never allowed me to initiate making friends\nor schmooze with others with ease, especially after coming to the United States. The few close friends I have, or used to\nhave, are from high school, though most of them are gone. The other few good friends were made while\nraising our girls here. Because of my\nhonest and sometimes tactless nature in my work, my direct and frank interactions\nwith colleagues in my field sometimes offend them. They seem to openly tolerate incompetence and\nunethical conduct, hence don\u2019t like anyone who criticizes them. Although I have mellowed quite a bit during\nthe past 10 to 15 years, seeing poor performance or unethical conduct in my\ncolleagues still bothers me. So I can\u2019t\nhelp but speak out. My rationale is that\nif we see something sloppy in research and cheating in manufacturing products\nwithout speaking out, we are just condoning mediocre research and substandard\nproducts. This, in fact, has happened\nfor decades. Earlier on in my\nrollercoaster career, I had spoken out and lost the only 2 jobs when I worked for\nsomeone else. But since then, I have made it on my own as an\nentrepreneur and successful herbal scientist, without compromising my principle\nand family values.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Consequently, being outside of the old-boy network, I decided to get my new book self-published without having to go through a middleman. \u00a0After 3 years, the book is now available from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. \u00a0I am not sure how much support my colleagues would give me in this project or how many books they would buy, so I count on the younger generation to notice my sincerity of doing this for them, and start supporting me.\u00a0 I recommend buying the e-version because the paperback does not have an index anywhere as comprehensive as searching on line with the e-book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n [TO BE CONTINUED…]<\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My Life & Rollercoaster Career:\u00a0 The Life of a Pharmacognosist + Are Drugs Better Than Herbs [550 pages: available from Amazon; $25.95, paperback; $5.49, e-version] There are two main reasons why I wrote this book that actually consists of 2 books in one \u2013 my Memoir (The Life of a Pharmacognosist) and my republished Newsletter … <\/p>\n