Cheer Patent Expirations. Tax-Funded Public Sector Research to Replace.

FDA is Cordially Invited 
to this Public Sector Research Opportunity.
Sorely needed.

All We Are Saying: is

Give Plants a Chance.

Here:  Tax funded public research.  An update. Private Sector cannot look after our health without skinning us alive.  The private sector wants profits.  So it limits its research to areas where profit can be made.  That leave other healing routes unexplored -- like your own backyard. Or elsewhere, where healing things grow, in areas yet unbuilt.

Jon goes exploring with his brothers

What if the best healing is in areas where there is little profit -- plants, things in your own backyard -- like sassafras.  Of course, with money to be made,  private sector people will oppose, and try to duplicate in the blinkin' lab whatever the sassafras does in the wild, yes, in a big expensive lab, then patent and charge for it.  But what if the plant itself is better, on its own;  and what if the lab tests on it in itself distort what the plant can do if it is not under stress. Exclude plant defenses in analysis.

Time to get the private sector out of controlling research.   Government: the Public Sector.  Support and fund research into our own backard sassafras so we can leave the private sector alone, at least more of the time. Both have a place.  Time to get the private sector and the lobbies out of the driver's seat on our health.

The American People

Cordially Invite

The FDA and Its Mindful Minions 

(Excluding the Non-Mindful Ones)

To Reconsider Past Flawed Testing

That Led to 

Flawed Conclusions

That Plant Healing

Particularly Sassafras

Is Not Helpful to Humans.

Speaker:  NYT 

RSVP this post.

This is an invitation, very formal since informal proposals get nowhere, for the FDA under an enlighted administration to look again at sassafras as a possible healing agent, despite past testing that was (we think) flawed.   Is that too much to ask? Sassafras is all over the place.  Just tell people how to use it and they don't need doctors, sometimes, in some cases;  or they just enjoy their root beer more.

New information and supporting information is coming in all the time that our forms of lab testing are just plain wrong. They are geared to the profit market, have no incentive to research for health in other ways, and sell us ailments undreamed of.

Does this make sense to you? 

Listen to and experience the side effects of the drugs the salespeople are selling.  Is it worth it if you are not in extremis? Faced with that, are you sure of the research that set the lab ahead of what is out there in your own back yard for your affliction du jour.  The topic is this:  in research, lab folks use the same plants over and over in the lab (they don't use them once, then dump them and harvest some more in nature).  Of course, ask your doctor; but if you get a blank look back, you are on your own.  So go to the FDA.

Basics for the FDA: 

Ask.  Please.

Does that overuse of the same plants and their progeny create -- in the plant itself, as a defense against its leaves or stems or roots constantly being hacked off -- a defense in the form of heightened toxins, or whatever, to keep those inhuman humans away. And that in turn distinguishes those over-harvested plants from natural ones with milder toxins in the wild, toxins that could be used by the plant if needed and increased, but dormant otherwise.

Could the sassafras' ability to defend result in its demonization by the FDA -- for that very ability to defend itself. Should we allow second looks, using unharried plants?  Yes.

Interesting article affirming how plants under siege (as in labs) increase the very toxins that the lab then condemns:  Is that so?

The New York Times says that heightening of defenses is a normal plant response, see NYT Tuesday, March 15, 2011 at D4.  See No Face, but Plants Like Life Too.

What is in extremis anyway.  That means that you are so bad off you have no choice. Fine. Take the drug.  Otherwise you die.  Hair loss, muscle weakness, nerve damage, spasms, dizzies, listen to the ads, hands to head.  If you are not in extremis, Stop! 

If you are not in extremis, can you take some more time to get educated, trust your body, and try milder, less intrusive, forms of healing? 

Stakes if you stop.  

We here may drop dead tomorrow because we quit the drugs because the side effects of the statin medications were awful and I would rather walk than see the satisfaction of numbers come down, but don't let that deter you.  Muscle pain, weak, nerves going amok in the legs, heck -- give me my mobility.  Right now, off the medication, I feel fine -- after months and months, that is -- but don't let my demise from high cholesterol (if I do demise from it) deter you.  Vet everything for yourself.

America needs tax-funded public sector medical research

Sassafras under stress.  Why used stressed plants as a measure of their healing capacity?

Sassafras under stress is not the same as sassafras without stress.  Are you? People:  different under stress, then when relaxed.

Reconsider health properties of plants.  This is an enlightened administration opposed by science-hating profiteers.  Is that extreme?  Who will research backyard healing, in an era of patents. No-one but the government will do that.  Private industry uninterested.  No profit? Private industry not interested.

What to think about in food choices.  

We do have to eat; but read the article and at least get a little sensitized.  Here's an odd thing for the modern objective age:  What if, despite no facial expression, a plant withdraws, "feels" pain, etc.  The living's desire to save itself is enormous. Chemicals get released to lure in third parties to fight you off;  internally, cellular troops are rallied - and the genome musters  "defense-related proteins".  Plants even move to get away, or nearer.  It may even matter if the plant is in the vicinity of a relative (!) See article.

Your choice, your risk.

Profit World.  

The profit world will never allow the FDA to show how natural backyard plants and trees can heal us.

Profit driving healthcare? Profits mean propaganda, sales.  Inapp.  Inappropriate, Inapplicable, Inapproximate.

Go back to the NYT -- we (or our enemies, etc.) justify slavery and genocide on grounds that these beings are not fully human, they don't "behave just as we do."  They don't feel the same pain, so it goes, not the same love, etc., as real humans so -- in the old days -- operate on the infant without anesthetic because after all he can't feel pain.  Can human love be found in same gender relationships?  No?  Get rid of them!  How to admit new members into our tribe, especially if they differ. 

So, to the Sassafras.  Lab tests, over time, toxicity in rats already allergic in their way.  Will the FDA in this enlightened adminstration reconsider?  What healing is there in this ancient plant we discard.

Want out app. 

Ailment? Appointment.
Test. Prescription. Insurance?
Goodbye. Thank you. Next?

Side effects? Grisly?
Ailment. Appointment. Prescribe.
New test. Same old. App. *

...............................................................


*  Our own GP does take time to talk, But who is selling even our doc on the drug to prescribe? Who trusts the sellers who do their own testing. Side effects in our household have been frightening to us. So we are on a body self-reset.  None of their stuff. Who are we when we are not on drugs?  Can our bodies recalibrate? Seek quieter, less forceful approaches. Stay tuned.

Drug company patents are expiring.  Few new drugs from them in the pipeline.  Costs of research skyrocketing.  Could this mean a sensible return to balance in health care:  see ://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/07/business/07drug.html?partner=rss&emc=rss/.

Again.  Root beer. Real root beer. Review the bans.

Needed:  Multi-modal approach.  Acu? Chiro? Nutri? Explore. 

Furnishings by Sassafras. Solve Bedbugs. Learn from History.

Learn from History.  Sassafras.

Sassafras Repels Bedbugs  

Bedbug Infestation Begone!

Dear President Obama and Mayor Bloomberg and Residents Anywhere,

Use sassafras wood for beds and cupboards.  Itch and economy problems solved at one swat. Sassafras repels bedbugs. See ://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-sassafras.htm/; and ://www.discoverlife.org/nh/tx/Plantae/Dicotyledoneae/Lauraceae/Sassafras/albidum/

Young sassafras grove

We hear that bedbugs are a problem in New York City, and elsewhere.

How medieval! See their history at ://www.bed-bug.org/

See the fuss, ://www.webmd.com/skin-problems-and-treatments/news/20100729/bed-bugs-biting-all-over-united-states/; ://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/28/in-the-war-on-bedbugs-a-new-attack-strategy/ ; and ://www.cnn.com/2010/HEALTH/07/30/mattress.bedbugs.dust.mites/?hpt=C2/

We hear (know first hand!) that the economy is in a hissy fit and Governments balk at doing anything anyone else can get credit for.

Solve both.

Leave them, the nonlegislating legislators at state and fed, and start a new industry:

Furnishings by Sassafras. Cupboards, beds, bureaus, etc.

Sassafras understory, at dusk

The wood is a natural repellent to insects and rodents, see other posts around here, and making a economy crop out of all the sassafras we have in this country makes sense.

Thank you. We have natural resources, resourceful people who want to work, a need for new kinds of jobs. Go. Employment and a good night's sleep. What's not to like.

Sassafras enthusiasts.

Deer And Sassafras In Their Diet. Is the Plant Smarter Than We Think.

 Who eats sassafras, what parts, and what does the sassafras do in return.
Does enhanced toxicity result in labs using the same test plants over and over?


Anthropo-plantism

Here, look at deer and rodents who eat part of the sassafras (for some leaves are toxic, for others, roots are toxic, for others bark is toxic, etc.  What does the plant do to defend itself against being totally consumed. This research suggests that some plants become more toxic to the eater, the more it is eaten.

Apply that to the lab setting. Suppose somebody brought in a sassafras shrub, to use as food to test for tumors. Same shrub, over and over, strip off parts to feed to the poor critters in the cages.  What does the sassafras do to protect itself? Become even more toxic?  And what does that do to the lab results.  More tumors than would ordinarily occur.  Question Asked But Un-Answered. Yet.  Also note in the New York Times, Tuesday October 27, 2009, at D2, article by Nicholas Wade"

"Mice are very prone to cancer; in some strains, 90 percent of them die of tumors.  People have stronger defenses against cancer, as is necessary for a long-lived animal; the disease accounts for 23 percent of human mortality.  But the mole rat has taken its anticancer defenses even further: it seems not to get the disease at all."

What if they were fed sassafras? The mole rats seem to have a double immune system, says the article.  We should study that, instead of why the lab test mice get the tumors so fast.

I. DEER

.

A.  What do deer eat, and why do they eat what they do. 

Deer do eat sassafras. If safrole in sassafras is so toxic to mammals, why don't deer get sick.

Sassafras, summer low grove

.

Herbivores. Deer are classified as Cervidae, which means that they eat vegetation, and, incidentally, also shed their antlers each year. As herbivores, they have "compound stomachs" - see://www.oswego.edu/wscp/DEER.htm/- as do moose, and elk.

The compound stomachs enable the deer to eat woody things - like sassafras in the winter, spring, summer (not fall, when they have to fatten up), for those who do eat it -  that other creatures would find indigestible. See http://www.agfc.com/pdfs/free/whatdeereat_bro.pdf/. The stomachs have great scrabble names: learn them. "rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum." See ://www.oswego.edu/wscp/DEER.htm/

The rumen breaks down the browse first. The microflora there start a fermentation process. So, its food cannot exude something that will inhibit the fermentation - act like an antibacterial agent. Is that an issue with some woody things? Yes. Woody things or needles from some evergreens have high essential oil content, and essential oils are difficult to digest (Douglas fir, Juniper). So, deer don't pig out on those, but eat lots of things lightly, when they can.
 .

Moose Crossing, Quebec

.
B.  Their stomachs can break the plant components down.  

 The chemical "building blocks" of the browse:  These also are important to the diet. More names here: lignin and cellulose (both hard to digest), hemicellulose, carbohydrates and proteins (easier). Some of those are unfamiliar, but too much of the lignin in the diet, for example, can cause weight loss and death. Some tolerated well, lots not.

So, an animal's diet also reflects what it is able to digest. Go far afield from that, and the animal is in trouble.  Nature doesn't need labs to tell us what to eat, necessarily. Would we not limit ourselves to so much root beer a day?

C.  They limit what they eat perhaps because of an anti-herbivore defense:

Some plants develop toxins, so that the preferred foods are not necessarily the most nutritious, but the least toxic. Here is the process:  http://www.tulane.edu/~ldyer/classes/406/koricheva.pdf/  See also ://www.oswego.edu/wscp/DEER.htm/ again,   Good site.  Browsing itself can cause the regrowth to be more toxic than the first growth. Deer like tips best. Browsing nips growth in the bud, literally, so helps keep the food supply coming - it the tree gets too high (over 10 feet, say) then the deer can't reach it.

Deer are not just "browsing herbivores", however; they also eat corn and soybeans and acorns and crabapples and other "grazer-browser" foods. They like variety. See ://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/sasalb/all.html/.  Animal wisdom.

Deer are like us. Look at the categories of foods they eat. There is a chart at the DEER site showing what they eat as to the following:

Food Categories

1. Preferred (roast chicken)
2. Staple (potatoes)
3. Emergency (tofu)
4. Stuffing (no, not Doritos. This category is what you stuff with when you are starving, so, say gruel and more gruel, like Oliver )
5. Pastime (peanut butter)

So:  Deer do eat sassafras. 

White-tailed New York State deer (as opposed to other areas, or the mule deer variety) prefer mountain sassafras. Massachusetts white-tails will eat it but do not prefer it. You can tell whether a deer ate a twig and not a rabbit, because the deer's stubby end will be left raggy, and the rabbit's stubby end will be clean-cut. See ://www.oswego.edu/wscp/DEER.htm

Does mere indigestibility explain why they do not eat more, or is it a search for balance in the enzymes, or is there a natural toxicity as well. Something can be indigestible without being poisonous or toxic.

See your living room in a new way. Plants do supposedly develop defenses against

• those who clip or threaten it, see ://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-001034.htm/ ; 
• or eat it, see Madagascar and its plants' anachronistic tactics against birds, that continue even though the birds are extinct, at ://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2275176/. 
• threats to come, by means of plant gossip (isn't this fun?), see ://www.sciencenetlinks.com/sci_update.php?DocID=168/ - passing on early warnings so the fellows downwind can rev up the chemical defenses for the future disaster
•   or at least reaction to "pain" - urban legend? A little too much anthropoplantism? See ://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum//thread318914/pg1.

You have to love it. Why be a "professional" when you could be a plantsperson.

But none who eat sassafras overdo it on their own, even when starving. It is not a "stuffer" browse.

Even in good times, some animals eat some parts of the sassafras - this one is a leaf guy, that one a twig guy, the other one a root kind of guy, some others, but nobody pigs out. For animals, none seem to eat sassafras so much as to be important. See ://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/sasalb/all.html/ Animal wisdom.

So:  The Safrole Connection.  We are branching out to deer, because safrole oil overdosed in rats brought on tumors, we are told. http://www.heart-disease-bypass-surgery.com/data/articles/104.htm/. Do animals just monitor their own intake of diet matter? Why can't we as well?

We wouldn't overdo root beer. Perhaps that is because it does develop a toxicity if it is overdone? Or the animal itself, like us, prefers variety and would never eat nothing but.

Why don't they eat more?  It is all around.

Is the deer diet a self-imposed limit because the plant itself has put up more defenses than we realize.  Some plants defend against being eaten by becoming more toxic under siege.

We did find that the deer eat evergreens - rhododendron, kinds of needley things.  And this idea came up. Scientists know that some plants that are being eaten up, like the needley things in winter when the deer are going at them, will increase in toxicity.  The stuff that is not good for the deer gets stronger when the plant is being repeatedly nibbled. They tested by also doing snipping on their own - the woodsmen.  Then testing the result.  Sure enough.  The toxicity increased - a kind of defense against being eaten to death.

See ://www.oswego.edu/wscp/DEER.htm/:

Heavy continuous browsing on plant twigs can retard vegetative growth or even kill the plants.  Browsing may also cause subsequent re-growth to contain higher levels of toxic compounds.

Sassafras has another attraction for deer over rodents. The teeth of deer do not keep growing, as do rodent teeth, requiring constant gnawing.  No wonder deer are less "fended off" than rodents, if that is so.  Deer can eat the softer plants without dental problems. See  ://www.americazoo.com/goto/index/mammals/rodentia.htm/ Note the comments on the love-hate relationship between people and rodents. Damage done, but so cute.

So, if the sassafras also defends against being eaten, by becoming "more bad" for the animal that eats it, wouldn't that also be true in the lab.

Has anyone looked into that?  Deer like the end shoots, but the more they browse on them, and the plant gets threatened with death by ingestion, the more toxic and indigestible become the shoots. So the deer back off, and the plant can continue up, until it is taller than the browse line. Plant saved.

If plants respond to being nipped back time and again by becoming more toxic, does that happen in the lab where gnome technicians somewhere use the same sassafras plants over and over to get at the safrole oil from which they then overdose the rats? Do they do that? Go back to the same plants? If so, please check the toxicity of the oil. Does it get worse. If so, that would affect lab results. Their safrole is worse than the field safrole. Is that so? Perhaps. Nice theory.

Interesting. I recall some article about attaching electrodes to philodendron, measuring the mellow happy plant leaves, then loudly approaching with shears, clack clack and snip whack! The plant waves went nuts. Philodendron reacts to threat with fear. Is that so?

Would that plant under siege time and again react as did the evergreen - put up an additional defense to being eaten by becoming more toxic than ordinary nature. And wouldn't that skew the test results.  The animals were being given a far stronger dose than even a natural strong dose.

If so, that is another reason to toss the testing.

So, of course, noone will look into it.  Finding that the plant has outsmarted the FDA may cast doubt on the FDA.  It may help establish that we not only give substances that are not in the lab animal's diet, making it sick just because of that:  particularly rodents who need to keep gnawing and whose digestion surely reflects its need to gnaw and the juices thereof.  We also use plants that defend up.

And our stomachs may not rebel at all.  Someone needs to test whether sassafras in the field is the same degree of safrole strength as sassafras in the lab yard.  Shouldn't be hard.

Shall we use other than rats? 

Shall we test other animals for safrole?  That is also silly. No animal eats all of the sassafras. The species we looked up are selective. Even other rodents eat some parts of it, and know better than to eat what doesn't suit it.  No animal we find aims for the safrole and eats only that.

Try deer.  Deer eat parts of sassafras, some more, some less, but they also have compound stomachs for processing the woodsy things, the forage and the graze.  Wide variety.  Keep the variety, and the deer is healthy.  Overdose on something, provide too much with too little else, and it gets sick and even dies.  Surprise.  Same as the mice, same as us.

The main event is whether the sassafras itself, in addition to being allelopathic and discouraging other plants from growing around it, is also defensive in getting more toxic the more it is nibbled, or browsed.  That is the reaction of some evergreen species - the shoots and needles may well become more toxic the more the plant is under attack.  See below.  So, the plant defends itself against being eaten to death by becoming more bad for the animal.  Have some madeira, m'dear?

So:  what follows is the detail from looking this up.  Interesting to us, but the point is that we need to test the plants own capabilities and qualities and its own defenses; before we just feed stuff to animals willy nilly.
.

Sassafras. At dusk.

Stress and other living things.

If plants like evergreen varieties and deciduous react to stressors in measurable ways, by becoming more toxic in the case of the shoots being eaten; or the waves from the philodendron under attack; why do we test animals in the worst stress conditions known to man - torture, overcrowding, solitary confinement, rotten diet, and then act surprised when we concoct illness and pathology. We know anxiety and fear bring on illness in us as well as stressed out, tortured lab animals - so does that environment also skew the results.

DETAILS:

1.  Natural diets.  Pay attention. A natural diet produces a healthy animal. Animals get sick on bad diets, like we do.  So should we be surprised when test animals get sick.  

2. Defenses, so the animal keeps its diet in balance.  Other plants have been found to increase in toxicity under siege, when being nibbled frequently:  Does it create in itself more toxicity, than there was before all the nibbling, as a kind of defense to being eaten to death. If so, and if the labs use the same sassafras all the time to snip snip and grind up and inject the oil, are the labs themselves creating more toxicity than out in the field over there.

3.  Is there a people connection necessarily.  Or is animal testing just another industry perpetuating itself regardless. We questioned whether that means the same bad stuff will result in people, who have different variety needs, digestive systems (that is, one stomach) and teeth (that is, do not keep growing so you don't have to gnaw all the time).

4.  We have no idea.  The FDA ban on safrole was based on its animal studies on the rats, and supposedly buttressed by human case "reports" - see ://www.answers.com/topic/sassafras/ -  in the culinary section there. Read "reports" as just that - Somebody said so.  He said that she said that he had halitosis. Gossip, that is; anecdotes, claims from Aunt Hessie who got it from Luke, or from Addie down the lane who never told what was so anyway.

5.  Stomachy ruminators. That brought us to how deer, white-tail and mule; and moose; use sassafras.  All of these have compound stomachs to break down and ferment forage and grazing products. The stomachs in multiple make it possible to ultimately digest the woodsy things, as well as eat graze, and stay healthy as long as the diet is varied, and not too much of one thing. See details about the deer, their multiple stomachs, which of them prefer sassafras shoots, which will just eat them if they are around, and more that do not seem to eat it at all.  FN 1

7.  Chewy rodents. And from there we went back to other types of rodents, and all seem to have have simple stomachs. But the rodent digestive makeup includes processing a diet consistent with gnawing - if they don't gnaw, some of their front teeth just keep growing down or down and around. Not pretty.  So their stomachs have to tolerate whatever gets in there from the gnawing process.   See details about them, this time including rabbits, groundhogs, beavers, squirrels, chipmunks etc. at FN 2.  Some eat leaves of sassafras, some cut the branches (beavers, for dams), some eat the fruit, but nobody aims directly for the safrole, apparently.
.

 8.  Either type - the stomachy ruminators; or the chewy rodents; have serious differences from human makeup, and what diets are good for them.  Why should testing on them, when they need to process weird enzymes  (is there a Bambi lab?); or saw down their incisors as they eat, be valid as to illness in us, when we don't eat the same things for the same reasons. This makes no sense.  The only thing that makes sense is that no wonder we cure so little, and only suppress symptoms.

OTHER ANIMALS, AND SASSAFRAS

Do deer eat more sassafras than rats because the rats, gnawing all the time, would be more of a threat to sassafras survival?  Rats would get at the littlest shoots, and nip them right off. That could be. See ://www.sfrc.ufl.edu/4h/Sassafras/sassafra.htm/.

Groundhogs: These eat sassafras, but  not the whole plant. See ://www.answers.com/topic/sassafras/ Add to our list of sassafras eaters these new ones: black bear, and marsh rabbits. There seems to be no toxicity, aversion.

Rabbit. Very still.

.

The groundhogs and marsh rabbits also have some teeth that keep on growing, see them at ://www.hoghaven.com/study.html/, but maybe the soft sassafras is not enough to keep the teeth in check, so they do not bother. Click on the topics there.

Groundhogs do not have compound stomachs, as do deer; so they are more made for the tender parts than the woodies.  But they hibernate, which makes their systems different from mice, we understand.  But they are diffecan but they hibernate. We don't. Rabbits in winter eat the bark, however, and beavers cut the stems.

Do these differences increase or decrease the likelihood that overdosing them reflects something about us.

 Is there any animal enough like us to warrant our using their lives for ourselves? Listen to one react to that at ://www.hoghaven.com/sounds/ghs1c.wav/ Shall we test on black bears?

Generalize. Skip what you see before your eyes.

Rats and beavers and rodents, oh, my.

Beavers, chipmunks, squirrels, gophers, porcupines, gerbils, jerboas, and, Alice's favorites, rabbits and dormice. See ://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Rodentia.html/  We know that sassafras developed a defense against rodents - is that because the rodents have to gnaw, so the rodents really endanger the plant year-round? Is that so? These are indeed more like us in that they have single stomachs. But they are hugely different in that they have to keep gnawing not just for food, but to wear their teeth down so the teeth don't keep going.

Which of these mammals is most like us so that animal testing on that animal is relevant? We are neither gnawers nor browsers except on Doritos. So, pick: The compound stomach type, or the dentition going on forever type? Is our testing purely convenience of the tester and the rapid reproduction capability in tiny cages? What if that fact of perpetual tooth growth makes a difference in the animal's reaction to substances fed it for testing.

Sassafras: Three leaf variations, same branch, lower story

.

How to conclude reasonably, that sassafras is bad for us in usual eating or drinking doses, because it is bad for rats for whom it is toxic anyway and in huge doses; and for deer (in those places where the deer eat it as preferred or tolerated food) but who react adversely any time only one food source is provided. Their diet needs variety, light browse here and graze there. That sounds more like us than the gnawers.

SASSAFRAS: A SURVIVAL POWERHOUSE

Sassafras can tolerate a great deal of encroachment by those eating it, and grows fast. It is useful as one of the first species to show up in abandoned fields, and refreshes depleted soil. Sassafras enriches it right up with its underground runners, lots of branching bushes in the understory, and big leaves.

Choctaw Indian Legend, Sassafras and the Flood. Lifesaver Raft.

The Flood: Choctaw Legend

How does sassafras attach to Native American creation legends? The picture here is not Mississippi, Choctaw country, but it sets an overall mood.

We know that sassafras was banned after inadequate testing and after thousands of years of use and reference in cultural lore in the Americas, including in religious legend.

Should we not take a second look at the discard pile.

Do go to www://choctawindian.com/, and read the tale aloud to yourself. It is sassafras that saves the life of the last human before the Flood. This is not the creation myth I was looking for from eastern countries, but this flood story may be even better.

The Choctaws are (were?) a matriarchal society, with roots in the Mississippi-Alabama areas, and seeing nature's bounty as symbolic of a mother's love. See www"//choctawindian.com/.

They lost out when the European Patriarchal and conquering cultures arrived.

Their Creation story is at that site. I found elsewhere their Great Flood story, with parallels to our Noah. The flood looks like a tsunami, rather than after a long rain. Read the www.tc.umn.edu/%7Emboucher/mikebouchweb/choctaw/flood1 for Ancient Choctaw Legend.

Sassafras - Seven Bedbugs In One Blow

Sassafras as Insect Repellent

Uses of Plants: A Matter of Dosage, Extraction, Information 

Give a bug enough aspirin and it, too, will expire.

Economic opportunity. Bedbug resurgencies are in the news.  See Just Try To Sleep Tight. The Bedbugs are Back at ://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/nyregion/27bugs.html?_r=1/  Our solution is at hand.  Put people back to work. Use sassafras wood to make your bed frame.  See ://www.woodmagazine.com/materials-guide/lumber/wood-species-3/sassafras/.  Here's more:  see://www.crabapplehillsfarm.com/chf2001/showrooms/ArkansasSassafras/ArkansasSassafras.shtml/

Sassafras in Summer: three leaf forms, on one branch in understory

Use it in the kitchen, for cupboards.  Insecticides have used sassafras oil for years, from early explorer and colonial times, see current use at ://www.diatect.com/kill-bed-bug-ppc.php/. Grow your own.  See ://www.kerrysgarden.us/2006/03/01/digging-sassafras-trees/

We already know it repels rodents. Use it for children's cribs.

A multi-purpose plant. How it is used, with what dosage, with what preparation, makes the difference between a good use and a malignant one.  Just as with aspirin.