Botanical Drugs-Back to the Future?

The phenomenon of “drug resistance” is recognized as a major challenge to the continued health of humankind. We are rapidly exhausting our options for antibiotic therapy of infectious diseases. We have only a single class of anti-parasitics (the artemisinin derivatives) to treat drug resistant malaria. Other infectious parasitic diseases are largely untreatable with today's therapies. Cancer chemotherapy has not led to permanent remissions (cures) due to development of drug resistance. Does the careful and systematic evaluation and development of natural mixtures (Botanical Drugs) have promise to provide effective therapies? There are suggestions the answer is yes, maybe an emphatic yes, when one examines the evidence given us from ecological interactions.