The challenge of non-experimental validation of mac plants: towards a multivariate model of transcultural utilization of medicinal, aromatic and cosmetic plants

Abstract

Following a short review of the role traditional knowledge, beliefs and practices concerning medicinal plants and herbs from the newly discovered worlds have played in the past, in the formative period of botany and pharmacology in the West, the implications are indicated of the emergence of Cartesian rationalism in science, in particular in the medical social sciences. Then, the recent reassessment of the human dimension in human–plant relations is described in terms of the ‘rediscovery’ of herbal medicine, the integration of traditional medicine in primary health care, and the growing interest in many Western countries in complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). Despite the rather solid position of biomedicine, based on advanced drugs, infrastructures and technologies, the emerging limitations in finding adequate responses to some ‘new’ diseases, chronic complaints and mental disorders – characteristic for the more affluent countries – are shown to have recently not only strengthened the popular reorientation towards natural products and traditional herbal medicines, but also given an impetus to the recognition and validation of phytopharmaceutical products for health promotion and the treatment of some specific diseases. Thereafter, the long and difficult road to the scientific, experimental validation of traditional medicinal, aromatic and cosmetic (MAC) plants is indicated, highlighting the major obstacles of increased risk, extremely high costs, and prolonged times involved in the entire process. Whereas a number of utilitarian studies have been involved in experimental ethnobotanical research of these MAC plants for ‘new’ drug development, yet little emphasis has been given to the human dimension of the underlying people–plant relations and interactions. However, the progress made in the development of the promising ‘ethno-directed approach’ to drug development is presented against the background of the interdisciplinary input from medical-ethnobotanical and ethnomedical research, in which a growing recognition is presently evolving of the role of ‘soft’ socio-cultural factors in the overall healing process, such as indigenous knowledge, perceptions and beliefs, too long ignored in the quest for providing adequate health care. While most of these studies on indigenous plant knowledge tend to examine the role of medicinal plants in one culture, only a few compare plant use among different traditional cultures in which special attention is placed on the efficacy of transcultural plant utilization among and between traditional and modern medical systems. In this context, the need for further analysis and understanding of both ‘hard’ and ‘soft’ factors involved in the interactive process of MAC plant utilisation is underscored, pertaining to the contribution which recent advances in quantitative ethnobotany have provided to the development of a more humanoriented method of validation of MAC plants in developing countries. Embarking on the newly developing field of ethnobotanical knowledge systems (EKS), a specific contribution to the methodology of non-experimental validation (NEV) is presented on the basis of a multivariate model of MAC plant utilization behaviour, capable to analyse, explain and predict the interaction among various categories of factors related to the local people’s knowledge, belief and use of plant-based medicines. Indeed, by application of such multivariate model, a much wider range of factors are included in the analysis, yielding relevant information not only on the local priority plant species list, but also on outcome criteria on both the individual and the system levels. These include the people’s considerations for using particular plant-based medicines in a special mode for specific disorders, their perception, experience and satisfaction, as such providing a promising complementary contribution to the multiple validation process of MAC plants for improved health care for peoples and communities around the globe. Linking up with the basic, quantitative and experimental research phases of future medical ethnobotany, envisaged by Lewis and Elvin-Lewis (1994), this chapter not only attempts to combine the latter two research strategies in order to extend multiple research methods in validation, but also to further substantiate the cultural dimension of human–plant relations, so far largely neglected in medical ethnobotanical drug research and development