The integrity of medicinal plants

I had the great pleasure this week to spend time with a gifted herbalist who gave me a very interesting insight. He said that when choosing plants his top criteria is that they must have integrity. He explained that, for example, some species of potato have to be sprayed every week to prevent disease. That in his view is a plant without integrity. Why? Because if the plant cannot take care of its own health, how can we expect it to offer any benefit to us. So he will only use plants that grow naturally, have not been cultivated or interfered with by human hands and which are naturally resistant to disease. The God given plants he calls them, healthy in their natural state as nature intended. Then he learns from the plants and from the animals that eat them. He watches to see how they use the various plants to heal themselves, the order in which they choose the various plants and then he listens to the plants themselves and really hears what they offer. He has very high success rates with many difficult physical conditions so in my view his approach is spot on.

His biggest concern is with GM crops. These crops have been stripped of their integrity. They have been twisted into mutant and highly destructive broken creatures. The problem is what can happen to the healthy populations if they become infected by GM strains. It is vital that we do not lose the amazing medicine bank that nature offers us. GM crops are truly a blight on our natural landscape and to let them loose is playing russian roulette with the future of our planet.