![Biodiversity: Shamans, Guides for Research?](https://img.passeportsante.net/1000x526/2015-11-09/i37462-biodiversite-les-chamans-des-guides-pour-la-recherche.gif)
October 29, 2003 – Many researchers say that the relationship of trust that exists between a healer and his patient is essential to healing.
Without it, the remedies offered by the healer might not work … especially since it takes from the start a good dose of confidence to accept that a moss collected on a wet rock can really cure this diarrhea and these headaches that assail us.
However, it should not be deduced from this that the “power” of healers is only a variant of the placebo effect. Pharmaceutical companies have already derived dozens of medicines from herbal remedies identified by shamans.
“Traditional knowledge can be a useful guide for scientific research,” said Valerie Assinewe, a Native American who teaches at McGill University, at the Ottawa Biodiversity and Health Symposium.
Examples of this abound. Thus, recently, researchers1.2 looked at 14 medicinal plants used by Indonesian healers in the fight against malaria. They found that eight of them did indeed have antimalarial properties (one of them would even be as effective as quinine) and that two others had other properties.
Another researcher has meanwhile tested in the laboratory3 the antifungal properties of plants used by certain Native American peoples in eastern Canada. He found that the more potent the properties of a plant, the more it was used by shamans, which would provide scientific justification for the traditional use of certain plants.
Jean-Benoit Legault – PasseportSanté.net
1. Leaman DJ, Arnason JT, Yusuf R, Sangat-Roemantyo H, Soedjito H, Angerhofer CK, Pezzuto JM. Malaria remedies of the Kenyah of the Apo Kayan, East Kalimantan, Indonesian Borneo: a quantitative assessment of local consensus as an indicator of biological efficacy. J Ethnopharmacol 1995 Nov 17; 49 (1): 1-16.
2. Omar S, Zhang J, MacKinnon S, Leaman D, Durst T, Philogene BJ, Arnason JT, Sanchez-Vindas PE, Poveda L, Tamez PA, Pezzuto JM. Traditionally-used antimalarials from the Meliaceae. Curr Top Med Chem 2003; 3 (2): 133-9.
3. Jones NP, Arnason JT, Abou-Zaid M, Akpagana K, Sanchez-Vindas P, Smith ML. Antifungal activity of extracts from medicinal plants used by First Nations Peoples of eastern Canada. J Ethnopharmacol 2000 Nov; 73 (1-2): 191-8.