Artemisia annua—the whole story
This is one of the older pieces in our archive. I am leaving the video above unchanged because it shows how I was thinking and talking about Artemisia annua at the time—curious, enthusiastic, and sometimes more combative than I would phrase things today.
Artemisia annua belongs to a large botanical family and has a long history in Chinese herbal traditions, where it is known as Qinghao.
Its modern scientific importance is closely linked to artemisinin. During the Chinese Project 523 research programme, Tu Youyou and her colleagues returned to traditional sources and developed an extraction method that led to artemisinin. She received half of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discoveries concerning a novel therapy against malaria.
Over the following decades, artemisinin and pharmaceutical derivatives became important components of modern malaria treatment.
What fascinated me then—and still does—is another question: what is the difference between research on an isolated pharmaceutical compound and the traditional use of a whole plant?
A controversial international debate grew around precisely that question. Various projects became interested in cultivating Artemisia annua locally, while the WHO and medical bodies warned against using the plant material itself as an uncontrolled treatment for malaria.
Back in 2016, I described this conflict much more sharply. Today, I would distinguish the levels more clearly: Artemisia annua is the plant, artemisinin is one of its constituents, and regulated medicines based on artemisinin derivatives are something else entirely.
Artemisinin derivatives have also been studied in other research areas, including oncology. That research is scientifically interesting. It does not mean that the whole plant or a supplement made from it has the same medical effect.
Precisely this tension between traditional plant knowledge, modern pharmacology, and the question of how a plant becomes the starting point for a medicine fascinated me then and continues to fascinate me today.
→ Discover the history and research surrounding Artemisia annua in our Adaptopedia.
2 comments
Hi, Loved your video on Artemisia annua. I would like to buy some seed. Do you sell it? I heard it also helps with ulcerative colitis!
Many Thanks Mark
I and my Zambian friends in Eastern Province have been using your Artemesia extract very successfully when the first symptoms of Malaria appear. They are very familiar with such symptoms as they get Malaria at least once every year. My question is, will you post directly to Zambia please?