Vew Perspectives in Ethnopharmacology for the Next Decade 
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Ethics, Regulations and Development: 
New Perspectives in Ethnopharmacology for the Next Decade* 
JACQUES FLEURENTIN 
Summary: Ethnopharmacology as discipline has built up its emancipation by improving new methodologies. 
Ethnopharmacology has found his originality and his strength in the pluridisciplinarity involving systematicaly the 
°ooperation between specialists of arts and sciences, social and cultural scientists as anthropologists, historians, 
inguistics ... and of the natural sciences botanists, toxico-pharmacologists, clinicians, chemists ... Its legitimity 
1as been founded in the respect for traditional therapeutical knowledge and in the valorisation of natural resources, 
The first stage, fieldwork methodology, calls for studies to achieve a better understanding of health system and to 
reate an inventory of the traditional pharmacopoea. The laboratory investigation, as the second stage, focusses on 
he research of therapeutical activity of crude plant extracts on isolated cells or on animal in vivo. 
The third stage, returning back to scape of the fieldwork, is also marked by a strong increase of phytodrugs devel- 
öpment project all over the world. 
However ethnopharmacology has improved in this last decade important modifications due to recent develop- 
ments: 
- The Washington Convention on endangered species 
The Rio Earth Summit on the biodiversity 
.ntellectual property rights and patent strategy 
development of robots to operate high throughput screening 
development of transgenic techniques 
These recent developments modify the objectives that ethnopharmacology has set for itself and lead to new po- 
jitions, redifining goals and aims within the process of “returning to the fieldwork” by projects leaded by partner- 
ship and common call for development: 
‘'istorians should be more sollicited to compare fielworks data with writing knowledge sources i.e. traditional 
harmacopoea. 
a micro-regional industrial development using natural resources should be presented as complementary to in- 
‚ernational pharmaceutical drug development and not as a competitor. 
ı new approach calls for an active cooperation with lawyers who should be involved in projects, giving statutes 
:o national medicinal plants and to traditional healers. 
ıgronomy should also integrate teams for development of medicinal plant culture in ethnopharmacological 
orojects. (red) 
Ethik, Internationale Regelwerke und Entwicklung: 
Neue Perspektiven der nächsten Dekade für die Ethnopharmakologie 
Zusammenfassung: Die Ethnopharmakologie hat sich in dem Moment zu einer eigenständigen Disziplin ent- 
wickelt, als sie begann, sich mit neuen Fragestellungen und Methodologien auszurüsten. Ethnopharmakologie hat 
nittlerweile seine Identität als Fach und seine Möglichkeiten im pluridisziplinärem Ansatz und dessen Arbeitswei- 
;e gefunden, indem systematisch die Zusammenarbeit zwischen Spezialisten der Geisteswissenschaften, Ethnolo- 
zen, Soziologen, Linguisten, Historikern ... und der Naturwissenschaften, den Botanikern, Pharmakologen, 
Toxikologen, Klinikern, Chemikern, Veterninärmedizinern ... praktiziert wird. Die Legitimierung zum Forschen 
wird aus dem Respekt vor dem traditionalen therapeutischen Wissen und in der anerkennenden Wertschätzung na- 
Ürlicher Ressourcen bezogen. Dies wurde im Verlaufe der 90er Jahre systematisch ausgebaut. 
Erster Schritt: In der Methodik der Feldarbeit werden Studien durchgeführt, die es ermöglichen, das vorliegende 
Gesundheitssystem besser zu verstehen und eine Bestandsaufnahme der traditionellen Pharmakopöe anstreben. 
Zweiter Schritt: Die Untersuchung im Labor richtet sich auf die Herausarbeitung der therapeutischer Wirkprin- 
First published in JOSE L. FRESQUET-FEBRER & CARLA PILAR AGUIRRE-MARCO (Eds) 2005. Cultural interbreeding in ethno- 
pharmacology: from indigenous to scientific knowledges/El mestizaje cultural en etnofarmacologfa: de los saberes indigenas a 
0s cientificos. Proceedings of the 5th European Colloquium on Ethnopharmacology. International congress. Valencia, 8, 9 and 
LO may 2003. Revista de Fitoterapia 5, special issue. 2005 
/urare 26(200333: 201-211