| > What they do is figure out what about the plant actually works, simulate it with other chemicals, and then sell that That sort of presupposes that what 'works' about the plant is a single, potent 'active ingredient' that can be identified/refined/purified/synthesized; in other words, this requires you to assume that what is convenient for an industrialized pharmaceutical industry is also an accurate reflection of how human health and nature work. But what if it were the case that the whole plant extract that is actually the most effective, and depends on some synergistic spectrum of phytochemical compounds? Note that I'm not saying this is necessarily true, but the way the system up we have a chicken and egg scenario here: 1. If it were true that whole plant extracts were more effective for some conditions, you'd need to do a lot of research to prove it, but the research funding presupposes the potential for profit 2. There's no incentive to change the profit incentives currently (where 'find, extract, patent, synthesize is the default assumption), since we don't have much evidence that we should change those incentives This is a self-reinforcing set of norms, and changing them would require 'extraordinary evidence', except the norms themselves discourage looking for that evidence. Just look at the state of marijuana research over the last 4 decades as one particularly egregious example. > if tea tree oil really did cure cancer, they’d refine it and patent that shit in a heartbeat Not if the pharmacologically active ingredient is present in sufficient quantities in the raw plant as well. You can certainly patent it, but you won't be able to make a profit since people can just go buy/grow the raw plant. And if backwards induct from that fact, you find that under under very few scenarios would it be rational to dump research money into it since the people paying for it would never (directly) see a return, even if society as a whole benefits. |