Episode 115: Antibiotic Resistant Diseases and Nature's Next Medicines with Cassandra Quave
"No matter where you go in the world, there has been a system of medicine that has been primarily based on plants. Billions rely on such a system still today."
Ethnobotanist (we discover what that is!) Dr. Cassandra Quave joins the podcast. She is out with a book called The Plant Hunter: A Scientist's Quest for Nature's Next Medicines. The book explores many issues people often think about-- what is happening in the vast, dizzying world of plants, and can plants help us more-- maybe a lot more-- than they already are? Plants are the basis for an array of lifesaving and health-improving medicines we all now take for granted. Ever taken an aspirin? Thank a willow tree for that. What about life-saving medicines for malaria? Some of those are derived from cinchona and wormwood. In today's world of synthetic pharmaceuticals, scientists and laypeople alike have lost this connection to the natural world. But by ignoring the potential of medicinal plants, we are losing out on the opportunity to discover new life-saving medicines needed in the fight against the greatest medical challenge of this century: the rise of the post-antibiotic era. Antibiotic-resistant microbes plague us all. Each year, 700,000 people die due to these untreatable infections; by 2050, 10 million annual deaths are expected unless we act now.
Dr. Cassandra L. Quave is a medical ethnobotanist whose work is focused on the documentation and analysis of botanical remedies used in the treatment of infectious disease. Her expertise and interests include the traditional medical practices of the Mediterranean, and the botanical sources of anti-infectives and natural products for skin care.
