Despite the conventional wisdom among pharmaceutical, medical, and related industries that drug therapy is scientific and traditional herbal therapy is nonscientific but rather, backward and full of mumbo jumbo; neither is scientific. The drug development part may be highly scientific, but once a drug (a synthetic chemical) enters our body that is infinitely complex, composed of billions of moving chemicals, living cells, tissues, and other entities, there is no science to direct it to go past all these to reach its supposed target(s), such as a receptor or enzyme, to accomplish its mission. Only divine guidance and sheer luck can get it past all these potential moving targets to its presumed one(s). Hence, drug therapy or herbal therapy (that happens inside our complex body) is not scientific. It is simply gambling and trial and error, along with time and prior experience. Does it sound shocking to you? The author himself only realized this fifteen years ago after having been professionally involved in both the drug and herbal fields for forty years. He speaks out about this to the general public only now, and for the first time.
About the Author: Dr. Leung was born and raised in Hong Kong. He received his BS in Pharmacy from the National Taiwan University and MS & PhD in Pharmacognosy from the University of Michigan. He is the original author of the classic Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients Used in Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics (Wiley-Interscience) published in 1980, now in its Third Edition, renamed Leung's Encyclopedia of Common Natural Ingredients Used in Food, Drugs, and Cosmetics, published in 2010. He is also the creator of PHYTOMED, a prototype computer database on Chinese herbal medicine developed under contract with the National Cancer Institute. Between 1996 and 2004, he published the Leung's (Chinese) Herb News that is renamed Are Drugs Better than Herbs? An Insider's Scientific Look at Drugs and Herbal Supplements, simultaneously republished together with his Memoir. It takes a man with a unique combination of talents, experience, and handicaps, over decades, both as an insider and an outsider, to discover what is wrong with drugs and herbal supplements and to propose appropriate ways to resolve this decades-old controversy. This is the story of Albert Y. Leung, PhD, a graduate in Pharmacognosy of the University of Michigan. Experienced in both herbs and drugs, Dr. Leung tells us how he has arrived at his conclusions, highlighting some of his major scientific achievements that qualify him to tell the story. In his memoir, he also proposes ways to afford consumers some true alternatives to toxic synthetic drugs. He also hopes his story can offer some encouragement to parents of children with mental handicaps like his, to hang in there. Things would turn out fine.