- Biological evaluation is often the only method of evaluation in the case of herbals which have been evaluated based on certain physicochemical parameters only. Either the active ingredient is not known or is too unstable to be used as a marker.
- Evaluating traditional remedies biologically by modern standards is beset with a number of difficulties. Apart from the wide variation in the quantity of pharmacologically active substances in plants, many findings of therapeutic efficacy are more subjective than objective.
- The modern scientist has difficulty recognizing subjective experiences because no reliable methodology has been developed to measure and reproduce such experiences. Subjective experience is limited as senses vary in ability and reality for one is unreality for another. For example patients with osteoarthritis experienced substantial and highly significant improvement in pain and disability with no significant side effects with a certain herbal drug treatment. However since the radiological findings did not improve, there was no way for its efficacy to be scientifically recorded.
- Several herbs of proven therapeutic efficacy in traditional medicine wait to be understood, identified and introduced into mainstream modern herbal medicine, because of the inability to prove their therapeutic efficacy by modern methods of activity assessment.
- In the context of measurement of subjective aspects, using tools of quantitative, technical science to describe biologic and living systems’ phenomenon one soon encounters limits. Usually artificial distinctions are imposed to reduce variables and to interpret non-linear events.
- There is therefore an urgent need to arrive at newer methods of bioactivity measurement, especially subjective phenomenon. This calls for lateral methods of devising with fresh approaches by collaborative efforts of specialists from modern medicine, traditional medicine, phytochemists, analytical chemists, biomedical engineers, etc.
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