Earthceuticals meaning medicine originating from naturally occurring ingredients found on earth.  In other words natural plants, botanicals, minerals, and other elements, etc… that occupy our planet and have not been adulterated or replicated by mankind. 

In the last few years there has been a major shift in the embracement of natural, alternative and complementary care. Earthceuticals believes that there is potential for discovery of new and remarkable treatments for almost every ailment confronted by mankind.  We have yet to explore a fraction of our planets resources.

Unfortunately, some of the world has loss site of what is truly important.  Remember the old saying, “If you don’t have your health, you don’t have anything.”  Think about that for a minute.  How happy could you really be if you had Millions of dollars but was in such poor health you were unable to do the things you loved. What about being in chronic pain to the point you were unable to focus and enjoy time with the people you love. There isn’t any amount of money in the world worth more than your health.

Our belief is that all forms of medicine and healing have a place and time.  That one can learn from and complement the other. So why is there such division between Natural, Western, Eastern and Holistic views?

One theory is that during the 19^th century and the early 20th century, there were so few remedies and cures for so many of the world's sicknesses and diseases that Unethical people would take advantage of the ill by selling fake medicine.  The very phrase snake oil salesman was originated from that era. Unscrupulous men conned the public into believing a useless potion would indeed cure cancer as well as almost any other ailment during that time.  Today the term snake oil is commonly used to describe something as useless and fake.

When the British Government decided after the Second World War to start the United Kingdom National Health Service, it was decided that a rule about what could be described as medicine needed to be adopted.  The decision that something could only be sold as a medicine if it had been tried, tested, approved and licensed. This seemed to be a wonderful idea, and hoped to put an end to the unethical snake oil salesmen and in addition set up a system to evaluate all medicines properly.

(Did you know that the only testing that was done before aspirin went on sale was that a chemist crushed up a tablet and sprinkled it in a goldfish bowl? The fish survived, so they sold the medicine!)

By 1947 the United Kingdom had become more and more controlling and strict in their laws.  There was little room for discovery to be made.  It was getting lost among all the regimented laws.  In the US, the Food and Drugs Administration had its own yet similar agency and legislation in place. In the UK the 1947 Medicines Act has been repeatedly beefed up, and is enforced by the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency (MHRA). Don't get on the wrong side of them! Now the power is being transferred to the EEC lawmakers who are even more strict and unimaginative. In the US, the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) had set up basically the same system enforcing similar legislation. These modern laws have (almost) eliminated the sale of fake remedies.  This seemed to be the perfect solution.  But this system would prove to bring on a new set of problems.

The error lies in the fact that these laws were drawn up 50 years ago. They simply stated that no-one should be able to claim therapeutic properties for anything they were selling for the treatment of "adverse medical conditions" unless it had been tested and licensed as a medicine; and that to be licensed as a medicine they should submit this substance for proper testing; and that they should pay for any testing that they requested. Sounds reasonable so far. In addition they could patent anything they had invented, so that they could be sure of getting some profits back to reimburse themselves for the hard work of discovering something new. Everything still sounds reasonable efforts.

However, there is one major problem; the difference between the words "invented” and “discovered”.

The definition of “invented” is to originate or create as a product of one's own ingenuity, experimentation, or contrivance. ”The definition of “discovered” is to see, get knowledge of, learn of, find, or find out; gain sight or knowledge of.  The two are not the same.  If clever biochemist invents something that has never existed before, then they can patent that new invention and protect their intellectual rights accordingly. Back in the 1940's, the inventions that came to mind - things that had changed the world - were things like aspirin and penicillin. Aspirin and penicillin had started off as "discoveries".  The natural occurring pain relieving compounds in white willow bark were isolated, synthesized and modified into what the world recognizes as Aspirin.   This process turned the natural discovery into an “invention”. This model of scientific progress was encouraged and rewarded by the lawmakers.

But science has changed. That's what science does best. It would be wonderful to say that as scientists have become smarter at discovering useful new medicines, that we have all benefited. But that hasn't always happened. Why not? Because scientists don't get rewarded for "discoveries", they only get rewarded for "inventions". The law says that if a new medicine is an "invention" then they can patent it and get some rewards for their efforts - but if the new medicine is a "discovery" then they can't. And naturally occurring herbs and botanicals are only described in law as "discoveries" and not as "inventions". This is why whole herbs are not studied for their synergistic applications. Only isolated compounds that can be isolated and synthetically duplicated are considered an invention, and thus able to be patented.

So, to summarize... There is little motivation for the research of natural whole herbs and botanicals in their natural form.  This totally dismisses the understanding and discovery of the plants complete synergistic possibilities and it’s implications for mankind. 

The madness of this situation is highlighted by the fact that modern biochemical techniques make it easy to screen huge numbers of naturally occurring compounds and make useful predictions about their therapeutic use. Natural scientists are immensely excited by the possibilities. But any useful new substance won't be immediately submitted for approval as a medicine. Instead, they will be handed over to chemists who will attempt to isolate just one component with useful therapeutic properties, and to invent some chemical modification of that, then to devise a way to artificially synthesize this new compound - then to patent the process. The result of all this is that it is increasingly unlikely that we will ever approve natural compounds as medicines.

Lets take for example Tea Tree Oil. Tea Tree Oil is a naturally occurring compound that cannot be synthesized; so it can never be patented.  Therefore no one will ever pay the enormous sum of money to have it tested as a medicine. And even though it has many valuable properties the large pharmaceutical companies will never promote it.

The crazy thing is that we have effectively blocked ourselves from discovering medicines that are already invented for us by nature.

This madness is even worse for those who believe something of the principles of complementary therapy. This philosophy includes the conviction that if plants make the effort to make oil that is a mixture of dozens of different components then they do this for a reason. (Evolutionary biologists who insist that any organism will only succeed if there is a reward for the actions that require some expenditure of effort support this logic.) Many complementary therapists believe that it is the complex balance of compounds in the whole oil, which is responsible for healing, not just one ingredient - every component is there for a reason. In this philosophy it is of particular significance to pay attention to the wholeness of the complex mixture given to us by the natural world.

But in the commercial world, the clever chemists are obsessed with disregarding the wonderful complexity of natural mixtures. They are paid only to isolate and test individual ingredients in the hope that one of them can be patented. That isn't what the lawmakers of the 1940 had envisioned. 

We need to change the laws. Not just the letter of the law, we need to change the spirit of these laws. We need to encourage the wonderful possibilities open to us now to discover useful new medicines that already exist in the natural world!

Back to Tea Tree... There is a great deal of evidence to suggest that this essential oil is extremely useful. Laboratory testing has indicated time and time again that Tea Tree Oil is very effective at killing off a vast range of bacteria and funguses that cause illness. It is effective at killing the staphylococcus bacteria that cause lots of infections in humans - including the methycillin resistant staphylococcus aureus or MRSA . It also seems to be effective at killing the funguses responsible for skin infections like athlete's foot. And maybe even the viruses that cause warts... So is anyone evaluating it as a medicine? No. Is anyone following up the fantastic possibility that it really has anti-viral properties? No. Why not? Because there is no profit in that. There is no money to be made in discoveries in the natural world, only in inventions of synthetic pharmaceuticals... How sad.

Laws control the way in which we use natural products like Tea Tree and other Essential Oils. All over the world, the ways that we describe their therapeutic properties, and the things that we are allowed to say when selling them, are heavily regulated.

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