January 7, 2006	Saturday	Zilhaj 6, 1426

KARACHI, Jan 6: Speakers at an international symposium on natural product chemistry on Friday underlined the importance of medicinal plants and their bioactive molecules in alleviation of fatal diseases.

The five-day 10th International Symposium on Natural Product Chemistry (10th-ISNPC) is being organised by International Centre for Chemical Sciences, KU, at a local hotel here. Over 600 delegates, including 197 foreign scientists from 42 countries, are participating in the chemistry moot.

They said plant medicines had been used exclusively for healing of curable and fatal diseases till half of 20th century.

“Since then chemotherapeutic agents and antibiotics started replacing plant medicines due to slow acting. Synthetic drugs and antibiotics are fast acting, but toxic, causing adverse side effect and damaging human health; but plant medicines are less toxic”, the speakers pointed out.

Research on plant medicines to determine exact potency and efficacy might help regain its lost reputation and use, they observed.

Discussing agriculture, they said chemical fertilisers and pesticides were used to increase production of food grains causing serious environmental pollution.

Plant pesticides are sometimes more persuasive and efficient to combat against insects and research shows they can help in growing healthy crops.—PPI