Interview by Joseph Roberts

Chris Kilham presents the keynote seminar at the Canadian Health Food Association show, where he will talk about his experiences in the Amazon, especially his work with acai, a purple fruit found in the rainforest. Admission is free, however donations to the Amazon International Rainforest Reserve are greatly appreciated. April 21, 7pm, Parkview Terrace, Vancouver Convention and Exhibition Centre.
Chris has a threefold message. Firstly, he wants to educate people on the number one category of medicine on Earth: plant medicines. Secondly, all this has a strong environmental tie-in to the ways the plant medicine trade can help protect the natural environment. As indigenous Native people in traditional cultures have neither the access to markets, nor adequate resources, people like Chris Kilham provide invaluable assistance.
Joseph Roberts: Plant medicine has a major competitor out there called synthetic pharmaceuticals.
Chris Kilham: Well, at least in terms of the history of the world, synthetic pharmaceuticals are a very brief flirtation. They got rolling in the early 1900s and picked up after World War II, but, fundamentally, synthetic pharmaceutical medicine is largely unproven, experimental and very dangerous. Three hundred thousand Americans die every year from the "proper" use of over-the-counter and prescription drugs. Those are bad odds, and those numbers come from compiled reports in medical journals. It's very sobering.
Herbs are just plain safer. They're far less expensive. They've been used as medicines by humans and protohumans for 60,000 years that we know of. They have a demonstrated track record in medicine. They form the basis of modern pharmacy -- many life-saving drugs come directly from plants. It's the largest sector of medicine on Earth.
The pharmaceutical industry has more money, but more people in the world are using plants for all the right reasons. So, I'm really advocating a sensible, proven, safe, effective approach to personal health care, rather than this new, strange, unproven, very lethal medicine that has cropped up extremely recently in history.
JR: Which also has an incredible marketing campaign behind it, like the current scare about the avian flu.
CK: There's real and legitimate concern about this H5-N1 virus, because human flu outbreaks across the board come from animals, and the majority of human flu outbreaks do come from birds, notably ducks. The migratory pathways of birds cover the planet and these birds intersect at different places, like northern Alaska.
If, in fact, it's enough of the world bird population, and if the particular flu virus they're carrying mutates -- as flu always does -- there's a real possibility of a lethal, horrific pandemic. That's not to say it will happen, but I think there's something to be concerned about. It could either be something we go, "Whew, that was close," or it could be something that takes out hundreds of millions of people worldwide.
Flu viruses are moving targets. They mutate, change, become different things. We're dealing with a tremendous number of very onerous unknowns with the flu virus.
But, we do have over one million people dying every year from malaria -- a huge awful thing. The problem is that most of the people in malaria countries aren't really economically very well-off, so that's a poor bet for pharmaceutical development. So, even though the World Health Organization has urgently called for humanitarian assistance from the pharmaceutical sector, it's like they don't really care. It's like, you know, who cares about AIDS in Africa, those are just black people, so it's not significant to most of the people in power. That's an awful, awful thing, but the social economic power brokers in the world write off whole sectors of the human population.
JR: Did you see The Constant Gardener?
CK: That was a wonderful movie. Right now, you have a huge scandal in the whole drug-testing world. The drug companies have migrated en masse to India for all of their testing. If you give Indian people a couple of rupees and say it's a medical test, hey, they just plain go along with it. That's a terrible thing. So, that movie is prescient and unfortunately entirely too true.
JR: Given that vaccine immunizations are a roll of the dice, improving the quality of the immune system seems like a better bet.
CK: I think that's always warranted, and increasingly now, because people are immune-compromised due to pollutants in the environment, poor nutrition, lack of exercise, stress, high cortisol levels -- you name it. It's just prudent to do things that can boost your immune system. That's definitely the right approach.
That doesn't mean, though, that if you encounter a virulent flu that things are going to work out well. You just don't know. Even with a good immune system, if you get hit hard enough by a lethal flu you can die, no question about it.
JR: How do plants help improve our immune system? Maybe mom was right about eating our vegetables.
CK: Fruits and vegetables enhance immune function overall because they contain a plethora of compounds, many of which are antioxidants that also have immune-enhancing power. Whether you're talking about the purple pigments in purple berries or the reds and yellows that you find in many vegetables and fruits, they have other functions besides being antioxidant. My favourite herb right now is Rhodiola rosea from Siberia. It has a tremendous track record of safety, and probably as much science as any herb. There's also the Chinese herb, Andrographis, and cat's claw from the Amazon, all just superb immune enhancing agents. We have those and literally thousands more. I mean, green tea and chocolate enhance immunity.
JR: What are your favourite antioxidants now?
CK: There's no question that some antioxidant compounds are more powerful than others. The purple berries like blueberry, chokeberry and elderberry give you very powerful antioxidant activity. The purple pigments are the most powerful dietary antioxidants we know, but the ones you get in red wine and chocolate, and many fresh fruits and vegetables -- red and yellow peppers and squash -- and green tea, all perform the function of protecting the body from premature cellular destruction.
They also do other things, so I don't have a favourite like lutein, or something like that, because I don't go for isolation of compounds. If you're smart in terms of body protection, you eat a rich variety of fresh foods that naturally are high in antioxidant compounds.
JR: I was concerned when I was driving along the coast of Costa Rica and saw mile after mile of old palm oil plantations that had totally changed the ecosystem.
CK: Right. We're faced with making choices now where the best we can do is make choices that are less harmful than others. We've got a population of six billion plus, which is way too many, so we can do things like grow crops organically, and if we're smart many crops can be grown in woodland situations so we can preserve some forest. It's that or logging, cattle grazing and other kinds of development.
The days of leaving pristine environment alone, I'm sad to say, are largely over. So in facing decisions, what choices will be less harmful than others? I think organic agriculture is a less destructive choice than clearcutting, cattle grazing and developing strip malls.
JR: I was thinking about the concept of wilderness. We need the experience of just being in a pristine area.
CK: Yes, exactly. The problem is people go to pristine areas and they say, " Wow, this place is so beautiful and unspoiled. I'll build here." And it doesn't matter whether it's the South Pacific or Patagonia or wherever. People flock to those places and build there and they become less pristine.
Last spring I was in a region of Peru that even 20 years ago was, for the most part, undeveloped. Now, it's mostly developed, and instead of virgin Amazon rainforest, it's citrus plantations and pineapple. It's a mess. Some things I'll share with you. India has just devastating, horrific deforestation. When you see people out collecting firewood and destroying the natural landscape, you realize they're extremely poor; they've got to find a way to keep their families warm and they're going to do just what you'd expect. They're going to cut down some wood because they need to cook, to keep their families warm, to actually survive.
When you look at devastation in the Amazon, a lot of extremely poor, disenfranchised people work on logging crews simply and only because it will, in some meager way, help them feed their families. It's sad and pathetic, but that's the reality of the situation.
I burn so much jet fuel I'd better do something good for people. One of the positive ways all of this can come together is if Native people, who understand plants well, can either cultivate, or in some cases, sustainably wild-harvest medicinal plants. They help preserve the natural environment in which they live; they earn a living and gain some social and economic power while keeping a robust and healthy medicinal plant harvest going worldwide. People could get valuable medicines instead of the flakey, untested pharmaceutical alternatives.
If there's a group of people who work with a particular herb that's beneficial, how do you shorten the chain of trade so that they make more money or good money and the environment gets protected and communities get help the way they need it? There are many other people out there working on the same equation, but we need lots and lots of people to just green-up and do this kind of thing.
JR: You need to have the consumers willing to support and invest in it.
CK: Consumers have shown time and again that if you make it easy for them, they'll buy green products. They'll buy organic milk; they'll buy cosmetics made with rainforest ingredients. I think we can create a robust, sustainable market for plant medicine with fair trade and environmental protections and make it easy for people to participate and vote with their dollars.
JR: Do you have something you use?
CK: I take a lot of herbs. I take Rhodiola rosea. I take maca from Peru. I take a lot of ginseng. I drink green tea. I eat lots of fresh ginger, garlic and hot chilies, all of which are powerfully medicinal. I eat acai in various forms on a regular basis. I consume a lot of antioxidant-rich fresh fruits and vegetables.
I think people can help to fuel the sustainable herbal movement the same way that consumers helped to fuel the organic food movement: by walking into stores and asking for fair trade organic herbs, and asking over and over and over again and voting with their dollars for those brands that they find are high quality.
That's really how you get a movement up and running. Unfortunately, it won't happen just because it's the right thing to do, but it will happen if consumers drive the trend. In Vancouver, I'll be focusing on the Amazon because it's a real fascination for people and it's a place that I love to do work.