Introduction

The medicinal value of plants is often touted as a rationale for preserving biodiversity. One way in which plants contribute to the health of people and their domesticated animals is through the use of plants in the development of new pharmaceutical products. This chapter examines the contribution that plants, particularly those found in the tropics, can make to the drug development process through their use in plant screening programs.

In the first half of the chapter, the connection between health care, drug development and plants is explored. It is argued that comparison of alternative modes of providing health care on the basis of their respective cost-effectiveness should, and probably will be, the standard applied to health care expenditures. The use of cost-effectiveness measures makes explicit the trade-offs made in choosing between different modes of health care provision.

In examining the connections between plants and drug development, the existence of trade-offs points to the need to assess potential substitutes or competing modes of health care provision. Arguments about the relative merits of drug development by ‘rational’ design or by ‘trial and error’ screening and of screening based on ethnobotanical information or the random selection of plants are evaluated in this context.