Customer Reviews

Earthly Goods: Medicine-Hunting in the Rainforest

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Most of the problem with this book is not the fault of the author but of the passage of time. While Earthly Goods was most likely right on target for 1994, when it was published, ten years later it is outdated but does not, unfortunately, read like a history. (Shaman Pharmaceuticals, for example, seems like a promising enterprise in this book. I thought I might check out their stock. They are bankrupt and have regrouped as Shaman Botanicals with only one product in their line, as far as I can tell. Stock is OTCBB at $0.002 as of today.)

Joyce's writing is dry and often times fairly technical leaving a layman reader like myself in the dark and, more importantly, skipping to the next paragraph. Readers with a specific interest in botany and pharmaceutical derivatives in plants may still find some of the information of value but it does not qualify as a good introduction for those without prior knowledge of the field.

Although I had high-hopes for this book, a revised edition where these stories are anthologized and recent findings and updates are discussed would have been much more useful.

In a book where rum is described as "bottles of sugar cane alcohol and "a shirtless, glossy black man" provides a typical description of the non-descript, I had a hard time staying awake to slog through 200 odd pages of extraneous verbal diarrhea to get to 10 pages of fascinating stories.

There were a few interesting tid bits in here--especially regarding the early research done in the rainforests but Joyce wastes so many words describing peoples' hair or the pointless politics of company board meetings at MERCK. The rainforest is left looking like a snake ridden mud-hole that adventurous, sweaty westerners have to hack through in order to acheive various goals.

The overriding message is that the people who do this are real "characters." A few of them are, but that is beside the point. Much of the time, it feels like you're reading a glossed over, shallow news article without any depth and that these "characters'" resumes and educational backgrounds are more familiar than their stories.

There are better written, more interesting books about both plants and people.

I have read this book a couple of times and I've sent copied to several people in my family. I think it has a broad range of information, both historical and present day. I am always interested by how our world gives us the things we need and it's heart rending and anxiety producing to realize that places are being destroyed before we even explore what they might offer to science.

I would recommend this book to anyone interested in how flora and fauna provide powerful medicines. The lowly Vinca, for example, has given us 2 very powerful anti cancer drugs.

Imc