Right now, as you read this, ethnobotanists are racing around the globe to find new cures to antibiotic-resistant microbes. Each year 700,000 people die from untreatable infections and that number is expected to hit 10 million by 2050.
These 'plant hunters' are scouring the most remote corners of the world in a desperate quest to find vegetation with medicinal powers, and it's not snake oil.
Have you ever taken an aspirin? That's a willow tree. Morphine is well known to come from opium. Malaria pills? Chemotherapy? Alzheimer's drugs? Plants, plants, plants.
But there's another side to the story. These plant hunters work for pharmaceutical companies. Some of which are known for astronomical price hiking or the ones behind the opioid epidemic.
I hope you come along with me to this world where ancient medicinal remedies collides with cutting edge science and billion dollar capitalism in some of the most remote places on our planet.
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The Devil's Snare
AdventureSent to search for a legendary plant known to locals as 'the devil's snare' after the stories of it's vines entangling wayward travelers and sucking their blood dry, an ethnobotanist finds herself trapped in the Amazon Rainforest racing against riva...
