EO Research in The Third World and Emerging Market Countries

[Guest guest]

Hi y'all,

 

Last one afore I go back to work .. or to sleep .. or maybe a combo of

the two .. ;-p The other day, the owner of an essential oils company

made a rather incredible (ridiculous?) statement on Idma .. saying she

had heard that the folks in the Third World were producing Hydrosols

using water not fit to drink .. ;-( Meaning .. lets talk about the EO

too folks .. and lets disregard that the damn hydrosols exit the still

as sterile oil-laden H20. Anyway .. I wanted to point out that not

only are the majority of the oils and hydrosols we know of produced in

the Emerging Market and Third World countries, but also the majority of

the useful research on EOs is conducted there .. so I wrote this post.

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An afterthought. Most of the useful research on aromatic plants is

conducted in Third World and Emerging Market Countries. There are a

number of reasons why this is the case.

 

First .. availability of resources .. both plant and labor types. I'm

going to use Turkey (an Emerging Market country) as an example but there

are many other countries that this would apply to.

 

We have a facility called the Medicinal and Aromatic Plant and Drug

Research Center .. directed by Dr. Professor K. Husnu Can Baser. He is

also Dean of the Pharmacy Faculty of Anadolu University. When Martin

Watt visited me here, I took him to meet Professor Baser - Martin was

impressed with the facility and said it was as good as the best he had

seen in Europe and better than most.

 

Professor Baser is free to research as he pleases and he and his staff,

as well as he and other professors operating as teams, have conducted

some mind-boggling research on diseases using a number of essential

oils. You are NOT going to read about ANY of this research in ANY of

the aromatherapy books. That is .. unless someone decides to write one

with new information in it .. one that doesn't just parrot or paraphrase

the old information we find in these books.

 

Professor Baser, for example, has published hundreds of papers on these

subjects .. he is known throughout the scientific world for his many

accomplishments and his expertise .. he is the author of a number of

plants, to include to Origanums. Professor Baser is not the only one

here who has a long line of accomplishments. You will find many such

folks in the international community.

 

If you wanna hear some of these folks speak .. go to the international

seminars. In my opinion, the next one of note that is worth attending

is the Thirty-Third International Symposium on Essential Oils, which

will be held 4-7 September 2002 .. in Lisbon, Portugal. I am going.

 

Check it out at URL http://biologia.fc.ul.pt/ISEO2002.htm

 

Of course, that date is the same period as the NAHA shindig in Seattle -

but I didn't see that as a real conflict or a problem that required any

tough decisions on my part .. ;-p

 

If folks wanna take time to research, they can find lots of good info on

EO and the many experiments .. generally invivo or invitro .. but not

always .. that have been conducted in the Third World and Emerging

Market countries.

 

Another reason why there is more research in the universities and other

facilities in the Third World and Emerging Market countries is because

they have not YET been compromised by the multi-national pharmaceutical

companies!!! Let some American unversity make it known they are working

on an essential oils project and you can bet your booty that the project

will be checked out by the megabuck multi-nationals and if it appears to

be too good, they know how to stop that underfunded facility from moving

forward with that work .. give'em a million or two (a drop in the bucket

for them) and put them on one of their own projects.

 

There are many other reasons .. but I'll just touch lightly on one. That

is human volunteers. Teachers .. from elementary through university,

are held in great esteem in these countries. A student will address the

teacher here as " Hocam " .. meaning, " My Teacher. " That student will

continue to address that teacher as Hocam all their life .. if they see

the teacher 30 years later and the student is now CEO of a corporation

or a 4-Star General, that teacher will still be Hocam and that word is

spoken in a most loving and respectful manner.

 

When a teacher asks for volunteers for a project, they are going to be

swamped with them .. ;-p And though we have some fine-line liability

issues for lawsuits here, conducting research on volunteers where there

is no grievious bodily harm is not a risky area. In fact, I am trying

to arrange for some dermal testing now .. might make it happen.

 

Y'all keep smiling, Butch http://www.AV-AT.com