Natural medicines

[Doctor_Why_Bother]

I have a friend (well, a facebook friend) who is a real “drippy-hippie” type and is always posting crap about big pharma conspiracies and how you can cure absolutely everything with echinacea oil, essence of Rosewood, and the healing power of Jesus.

Now, my thinking on alternative medicine can be summed up by this great little Tim Minchin quote:

“An Alternative treatment is, by definition, something that’s either (a) not been proven to work, or (b) something that’s been proven not to work. Do you know what they call alternative medicine that has been proven to work? MEDICINE!”

I thought my “friend” would be interested to know how many natural medicines have actually been embraced by the pharmaceutical industry becaue they, y’know, work! So far, I’ve got:

Aspirin.
Senokot (laxative made from extracts of the Senna plant).
Lactulose syrup (another laxative, basically sugar).
Glycerine (multipurpose, derived from alcohol)
Valerian Root (insomnia)

These are all medicines which have been prescribed to me personally at one time or another. They do require synthesis to be produced on a commercial scale but the point is that they are all derived from natural ingredients. Are there any other such medicines I might tell my friend about? Thanks.

[Colibri]

Depends on what you mean exactly by “derived from natural ingredients.” There are a fair number of medicines that include an unaltered natural product, but there are many more that were developed based on compounds found in nature.

Around 70 percent of all new drugs introduced in the United States in the past 25 years have been derived from natural products, reports a study published in the March 23 issue of the Journal of Natural Products.

Today, natural products (and their derivatives and analogs) still represent over 50% of all drugs in clinical use, with higher plant-derived natural products representing ca. 25% of the total.1
…
In the United States plant-derived drugs represent about 25% of the prescription drugs market, and in 1991 this equated to a retail value of approximately $15.5 billion.3 From 1983 to 1994 39% of the New Approved Drugs were of natural origin, including original natural products, products derived semisynthetically from natural products, and synthetic products based on natural product models.4

Natural products as sources of new drugs over the 30 years from 1981 to 2010.

Now, I doubt that your friend will be impressed by these figures, because most of these compounds have been modified in some way, and they have been developed by Big Pharma. But natural products are not alternative medicine, they are the backbone of the pharmaceutical industry.

[DataX]

Foxglove/digitalis/digoxin
Fish Oil

[Ambivalid]

Capsaicin.

[Colibri]

List from Wiki:

A number of drugs have been derived from biological a source in nature these include:.[1]
Amrubicin[9]
Anidulafungin[9]
Apomorphine[9]
Artemotil[9]
Aztreonam[9]
Biapenem[9]
Bivalirudin[9]
Bleomycin[10]
Capsaicin[9]
Caspofungin[9]
Cefditoren[9]
Cocaine
Codinaeopsin[11]
Colchicine[12]
Daptomycin[9]
Dimethyltryptamine[13]
Doripenem[9]
Dronabinol[9]
Ergotamine[14]
Ertapenem[9]
Everolimus[9]
Exenatide[9]
Fumagillin[9]
Galantamine[9]
Ixabepilone[9]
Lisdexamfetamine[9]
Mescaline[15]
Methylnaltrexone[9]
Micafungin[9]
Miglustat[9]
Morphine
Mycophenolate[9]
Nitisinone[9]
Orlistat[16]
Paclitaxel[17]
Phenethylamine[18]
Pimecrolimus[9]
Retapamulin[9]
Romidepsin[9]
Rosuvastatin[9]
Spiruchostatins[19]
Telavancin[9]
Telithromycin[9]
Temsirolimus[9]
Tigecycline[9]
Tiotropium[9]
Trabectedin[9]
Ziconotide[9]
Zotarolimus[9]

I’m sure this is a very minimal list. It leaves off some of the best known ones, like taxol, vincristine, and vinblastine.

[psychobunny]

Just to name a few plant-derived medications:

Aspirin
Colchicine
Taxol
Vincristine
Vinblastine
galantamine
pilocarpine
scopolamine
Hyoscyamine
Theophylline
Quinine
Morphine
Codeine

[Isilder]

Penicillin is excellent, launching from there you can discover the history of anti-biotics… inluding how testing for effectiveness was in fact art of its ‘discovery’, and the process of making new anti-biotics… small modifications, large modifications, and totally artificial molecules… why would a plant or microbe just happen to grow a molecule that is more effective than a molecule designed by smart humans ??

And there were even anti-biotics that were recalled… I had some I was going to use. I wanted to know the dose… looked it up, “Note: this antibiotic has been de-listed.”.I read further and found out it made 1 in 10,000 people very very sick by causing a serious form of anaemia. Well I think talking about it shows how safe the others are, if only one in 10,000 had a problem gets it totally scrapped…

[thicksantorum]

It’s probably easier to list the drugs that aren’t derived from a natural source.

[Jackmannii]

I have always been intrigued by alties who on the one hand say that 70% (or 80%, or 95%) of all pharma drugs derive from “natural substances”, then turn around and tell us that natural remedies are ignored by Big Pharma because they can’t be patented. :dubious: