Chronicles the search for new medicines in Amazonian jungles and ocean depths, exploring the properties and applications of bark, leaves, coral, frogs, snake venom, and fungi. Plotkin transports readers from freezing Arctic wastes to twilit ocean depths to burning jungles, where the race is on to find new medicines for intractable diseases like AIDS, cancer, & diabetes. It is a quest powered by the desperation of the ill & the compassion of those who would cure them. Plotkin highlights discoveries that are already producing stunning leads in the laboratory: painkillers from the skin of rainforest frogs, anticoagulants from leech saliva, & antitumor agents from snake venom. This entertaining weave of medicine, ecology, ethnobotany, history, exploration, & adventure will thrill scientists, naturalists, adventurers, & the exploding number of Americans who spend $10 billion a year on medicine in their thirst for nature's healing secrets. -- Publisher description.
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