Text-mining for Medicinal Plants 15
Damien1972 writes "Researchers are exploring ancient texts for medicinal plant information using text-mining. From Shamans and Robots: Bridging the Past and Future of Ethnobotany and Bioprospecting: "A new procedure that is being explored by researchers to track and classify useful medicinal plant species may negate some of the issues surrounding the acquisition of knowledge ... This method involves a practice called "text-mining," in which old botanical works are scoured for references to medicinal plants.""
Wikipedia (Score:5, Insightful)
I see this as part of the problem, getting the information out, reporting plants drug use out of books into a format more people can use. Perfect use for Wikipedia.
Re:What?! (Score:2, Insightful)
The "negative" is that "westerners" (a laughable term when talking about, say, indigenous Brazilians vs US Drug companies, as this article begins with) ask native Shamen for information about useful plants, then take that powerful knowledge and make lucrative drugs without allowing compensation to flow back to the indigenous people.
OK, that is a negative, I concede. But. The article says that the issue is somewhat negated by not asking the shamen, but going to the written record.
Anyway, what ancient texts do the Yanomamo people have, anyway? Are there ancient medicinal texts of Madagascar? The cultures that tend to have these texts probably don't have the issues this article is talking about.
Seems like a case of an author with information to present, but no good idea for an angle.
Then comes the "Ooops." (Score:4, Insightful)
Ooops. We wiped out that plant's habitat to build a highway.
Ooops...Football stadium.
Ooops...McMansions.
Nothing left to see here. Move along and look for another miracle plant.