Manufacturing Risk: Problematizing the WHO guidelines for safety of plant-based medicines

The rapid global commodification of plant-based medicines has resulted in the development of regulatory guidelines by the World Health Organization to ensure the safety of these products. However, the primary focus for proving the safety of the intrinsic factors of plant-based medicines may result in less attention paid to the often more problematic extrinsic factors of mass production. This qualitative research was conducted in the Traditional Medicine Unit of the Western Pacific Regional Office of the World Health Organization (WHO) and in field work in the rural Philippines. Data was collected through archival research, analysis of WHO datasets, semi-structured and structured interviews and surveys, participant observation concerning local plant-based medicine use in the Philippines and participant observation in WHO meetings regarding future strategies for traditional Asian medicines. Informants reported concerns of safety for every aspect of the production, marketing and sales of plant-based medicines. The rapid global commodification of plant-based medicines has affected both their potency and safety. Local understandings of potency and proper use have usually been disregarded. The WHO discourse of the need for safety in the use of plant-based medicines has justified the need for biomedical oversight via processes of commodification. Yet, it is often through these very processes of commodification and mass production that safety may be compromised. This research suggests that the discourse concerning the safety of plant-based medicines needs to be reframed from a primary focus on the intrinsic factors of plant-based medicines to a greater focus on the extrinsic factors of global commodification.