Etnobotanische Kennissystemen van Medicinale Planten in Ontwikkelingslanden: Een brug met vele pijlers en bogen

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SOME STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES OF TRADITIONAL ACADEMIC ANTHRO-SOCIOLOGICAL RESEARCH

ABSTRACTAnalysis of this monograph, and the research project from which it stems offers the basis for a discussion of some strengths and weaknesses of traditional academic anthro-sociological research. Such strengths are to be found in (small scale) studies of community value systems. The weaknesses arise when such studies are conducted either in isolation from wider national frame works or -as in this case -inserted into them almost at random. The volume contains many conceptual and technical errors. These fall, especially, in three categories: 1. ethnicity taken as a unique determinant of social consciousness; 2. conceptual and technical confusion over the nature of health service development and utilization; and, 3. failure to recognize (much less analyze) the fact of the Ethiopian revolution and its likely effects on the people and issues under discussion. Most of the specific recommendations of the research project are found to be ill conceived and often in gross error. Finally, the monograph demonstrates the difficulty of understanding the processes of social change through analyses based primary on small communities divorced from -or improperly located within -their wider social context. This difficulty is especially clearly demonstrated in this study as it was carried out at a special moment of dynamic revolutionary history, which moment the monograph's authors appear not to have noticed

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

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 developmen

Therapeutic application of contrast ultrasound in ST elevation myocardial infarction: Role in coronary thrombosis and microvascular obstruction

In the past few decades, cardiac ultrasound has become a widely available, easy-to-use diagnostic tool in many scenarios in acute cardiac care. The introduction of microbubbles extended its diagnostic value. Not long thereafter, several investigators explored the therapeutic potential of contrast ultrasound on thrombus dissolution. Despite large improvements in therapeutic options, acute ST elevation myocardial infarction remains one of the main causes of mortality and morbidity in the western world. The therapeutic effect of contrast ultrasound on thrombus dissolution might prove to be a new, effective treatment strategy in this group of patients. With the recent publication of human studies scrutinising the therapeutic options of ultrasound and microbubbles in ST elevation myocardial infarction, we have entered a new stage in this area of research. This therapeutic effect is based on biochemical effects both at macrovascular and microvascular levels, of which the exact working mechanisms remain to be elucidated in full. This review will give an up-to-date summary of our current knowledge of the therapeutic effects of contrast ultrasound and its potential application in the field of ST elevation myocardial infarction, along with its future developments