1. When you say herb X treats disease Y, what you are saying is that herb X has some chemical agent or molecule that halts or suppresses the pathophysiology of the disease. Herbs are just not some obscure thing that magically transform into wonder therapy.

2. There are molecules that interact with your cells activating signalling pathways that modify how cells respond. We are making a lot of claims about things but not investigating the molecular basis of HOW it happens.

3. Why is this important? Plants think! Plants want to survive for a long time so they make chemicals that confer defense to their different parts. They will make bitter chemicals to protect themselves and other potent chemicals so that they are less attractive to animals.

4. In essence, in any herb there are good chemical molecules and not so good ones. This the reason why isolation of curative products from plants is important because of 2 reasons:
1. You want only the molecule that treats
2. You also want to prevent interactions w other drugs.

5. There are many ways to test these herbs for curative agents. Animal models(in-vivo) and cell culture (in-vitro). In vitro models are good as they offer high throughput analysis on extracts and are ethically easier to navigate.

6. Animal models are really powerful due the commonly preserved signalling pathways with human and these would offer higher quality data. The range of animal has greatly broadened over years. You can use worms,fish, mice, primates to study all this.

7. Sadly, in Zim the use of animal models in research is somewhat limited. The extent to which we can parse the more complex questions. Without an improvement in the level of scientific questions we can answer we will always have these wild claims on a lot of herbs.

8. To build biomedical research we need deliberate planning and investment. We can have funds for direct research that translates to treatments but also be explorative study matter as they can lay the foundation for further research.