Reporting from Indian Country

As climate change shrinks rainforests, coral reefs, and other natural areas worldwide, the global medicine chest is vanishing as well. It is precisely biodiversity that has given rise to the many healing substances in the world around us, scientists say. In the last 25 years, just one drug out of 800-plus approved by the Food and Drug Administration was discovered by chemists working purely in a lab, says the former director  of the National Cancer Institute . Here’s how to prevent the losses that imperil our own health, as well as that of the planet. [This information was correct in 2010, when this article was written for Prevention magazine.] I n the fall of 1973, a strapping 25-year-old was working at a job he enjoyed in a California sawmill, transforming trees into boards and training other workers. Until a fellow worker missed his hand signal to hold back the next log headed for the debarking machine. “The floor was covered with a thick layer of bark, so when the log rolled o

Published by  Prevention magazine in 2010.   For more on topics like this, see my book,  American Apartheid: The Native American Struggle.... O ver the past century, Americans have embraced modern pharmaceutical science and the life-saving medicines it has produced. In the process, many have come to think that the cures our grandparents relied on are mere “folklore.” As it turns out, that trove of old-time remedies is rich with effective treatments.                In fact, plants still occupy a central position in modern medicine, says Catherine Ulbricht, PharmD, senior attending pharmacist at Massachusetts General Hospital and chief editor of Natural Standard Research Collaboration, which evaluates scientific data on herbs. “Practically all of the most widely used drugs have an herbal origin,” Ulbricht says. “The number-one over-the-counter medication, aspirin, is a synthetic derivative of a plant compound. Opiates are derived from the poppy, many statins are bas