To promote the discovery and development of new medications and to provide ways for people in underserved areas to have access to health when medications are not available, the Floating Doctors will be participating in an ethnomedical study with Dr. Allison Adonizio in Belize. 

It is estimated by the World Health Organization that approximately 75-80% of the world’s population uses plant medicines either in part or entirely. For many communities this is out of necessity, since many cannot afford the high costs of pharmaceutical drugs or live in areas where medications are not available. 

 As habitat destruction and deforestation occur and traditional healing practices die out as cultures merge, much knowledge and many plants with potential for medical applications can be lost.  In addition, as bacterial resistance increases and new pathogens threaten humanity, new treatments must be explored. 

.  There are many plant preparations around the world that have been used for hundreds or thousands of years, and some have already been long-used by the medical field and consumers in a pharmaceutical preparation:

 ·        Aspirin (from willow tree bark)

·        Digoxin (a cardiac medication from the familiar foxglove flower)

·        Quinine (a cinchona tree extract that remained the only effective treatment for malaria for over 300 years, and is still used in certain circumstances today)

 These are 3 examples of pharmaceutical preparations that are derived from early herbal remedies—usually infusions of the plants in water to make a tea.  In areas where pharmaceutical preparations are not available, these and other herbal remedies can be powerful and effective tools for maintaining health and fighting disease.

Dr. Adonizio is currently collecting local plants that are used for medicinal purposes and testing their efficacy against human pathogens under controlled laboratory conditions.  Floating Doctors will document the preparation and medicinal use of the plants used in the areas we visit throughout Central America and provide samples of medicinal plants and collection data to Dr. Adonizio for later analysis. 

 Some plants that already have a long history of medicinal use in Central America include:

·        Petiveria alliacea:  Known by many names throughout Central and South America and West Africa, an infusion of this shrub in water has been shown to reduce blood sugar (and has been used in Cuba for a supplementary treatment for diabetes for years), to retard the proliferation of certain cancers, and to have pain-relieving and anti-inflammatory properties.

·        Momordica charantia:  This bitter melon is used in Panama to improve insulin sensitivity and has been shown to have anti-malarial activity

·        Citrus paradise:  The familiar grapefruit has long been used as the core of cholesterol lowering diets and can help significantly lower blood cholesterol when

The benefit of pharmaceutical preparations is that you can make the dosage exact—and as the pioneer 15th century physician Paracelcus noted, “The only difference between a poison and medicine is the dose.”  You also can guarantee the purity of the preparation at a level that is impossible with herbal preparations.

 That being said, when pharmaceutical medication simply is not available, there is still a job to do.  We may not be able to control the blood sugar levels of a diabetic in a remote Guatemalan village with an extract of Guinea Hen Leaf quite as well as if we gave him insulin to inject, but when there is no insulin, we have to become resourceful.  We have to look at everything that is locally available to help.  Because there is no insulin, that is not an excuse to leave our hypothetical diabetic to suffer the ravages of untreated diabetes. 

 Part of practicing green medicine is getting the most benefit out of whatever resources are available, both in the developed and the developing world.  This ethnomedicine collaboration and the Floating Doctors Health Survey Project make the 2009-2010 a voyage of discovery as well as medical relief.