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Preaching To The Choir
A response to the article Miikkali sent in (thank you for that, by the way!):
It's not just fear of herbal medicines - I've run into fear of wild foods, too, though less frequently since it's not a mainstream topic. One of my teachers at NYBG included wild foods as one of her topics, including legnthy identification information, but when I asked her which were her favorites she looked shocked and replied that she would never actually try any of them (I must mention that most of the NYBG professors are not like that - Susan Dunleavy-Johnston and E.Barrie Kavasch are both teachers who brought wild foods into their classes for us to share for lunch).
My own instinct says that there are two hidden factors in "phytophobia". One has to do with our society's dependence on "experts". Herbs and wild foods are available to everyone, as is information on them. Even if they became illegal in the stores one would be hard pressed to tell dandelions not to grow in my yard. But that leaves open the possibility of self-diagnosis, a potentially dangerous thing, and the possibility that individual's should be allowed to make their own choices and trust their own experience and judgement (including the judgement call of when to seek out expert advice).
The other hidden factor I intuit has to do with money. How do you make money off of plants that grow everywhere, available to everyone? Many of our best herbal medicines and wild foods are the ones that grow all around us. I notice the trend towards exotic herbs that have to be collected in other countries, wherever "other" may be (in the US, we import many S. American medicinals. In Europe, the native american plants Echinacea and Goldenseal have an even bigger market than they do here, etc.). There is also the trend toward extracting, studying and synthesizing just the known active principals of herbs, which can then be patented and marketed.
Sorry this is so long, but it is a subject that touches a nerve in me. As George Bernard Shaw said, "An expert is someone who knows more and more about less and less, until finally he knows everything about nothing at all." With that said, there are no doubt many who would disagree with my opinions on this subject, as is their right.
Leda Meredith