It took Rosita Arvigo, Chicago-born naprapath-herbalist-activist, to create the model of how to use the rainforest to save the rainforest.
As developers in pursuit of profits threatened the ultimate destruction of the Belize rainforest, Dr. Rosita Arvigo resolved to fight fire with fire. Intent on saving what she views as nature's pharmacy, she set out to prove the rainforest was more valuable standing than destroyed.
"I created Rainforest Remedies™ with the goal of generating profits that would impress the financial community," says Dr. Arvigo of the herbal remedy company she launched in 1992 to develop and manufacture herbal remedies made from salvaged medicinal plants from areas of the rainforest about to be destroyed.
In June of 1997, Dr. Arvigo and exclusive importer Rose Botanicals of Lake Zurich, Illinois, introduced Rainforest Remedies in the United States. Initially, nine select herbal products are being made available through alternative practitioners and at health food stores across the country including Whole Foods, Sherwyn's, Golden Grocer and Mother's Markets. The product line — including Belly Be Good for upset stomachs; Clearing Support, which Mayans use for internal cleansing and blood purification; Cold Season; Female Tonic; Flex-Free for joint function; Male Tonic; Nerve Support; Back Support and Strong Resistance; and others — comes from Dr. Arvigo's ten-year study of traditional healing with one of the world's oldest Mayan healers, Don Elijio Panti. "50% of all sales will go to help save the rainforest in Belize," Dr. Arvigo tells us.
"Unlike other herbal products on the market, Rainforest Remedies are unique because they are developed by people who live in the rainforest; people who were trained by authentic Mayan healers," notes distributor of the line Santosh Krinsky, president of Lotus Brands. "It's a line with a knowledge base grounded in an oral and experiential tradition that goes back thousands of years." Indeed, many mainstream medicines are derived from plants indigenous to rainforests of Central America, including cortisone and birth control pills, not to mention alkaloids exhibiting cytotoxicity against some forms of cancer, leukemia, the flu, Hodgkin's disease, polio virus II, etc.
Dr. Arvigo is not content with influencing only the financial community in her quest to save the rainforest. She is searching the plant world for leads that can influence the pharmaceutical industry in the fight against diseases. In this search, she is working with Dr. Michael Balick, ethnobotanist at the New York Botanical Gardens, and with the National Cancer Institute to find remedies for cancer and AIDS. Shaman Pharmaceuticals (SHMN - NASDAQ) has contracted with her to collect rainforest herbs for anti-diabetes, anti-fungal and anti-retro-viral research.
As if influencing the financial and pharmaceutical industries weren't enough, Dr. Arvigo is intent on proving that farming these healing herbs organically is more lucrative than leveling the forest to make room for crops and livestock. To make the point, she contacted a local farmer who was about to clear 50 acres of rainforest. Arvigo convinced him to cultivate four medicinal plants instead. Today, the farmer's land abounds with the four healing plants which are drought-resistant annuals requiring no pesticides. Rainforest Remedies funded the farmer, supplied the plants and arranged for Austin, Texas-based ARUM — manufacturer of professional hair care products — to buy the farmer's yearly output for $10,400 (the average annual income in Belize is $600).
Dr. Arvigo's persuasive powers also were successful in having the Belizean government set aside 6,000 acres of rainforest as the first and only bio-medicinal rainforest reserve. Initially funded by Shaman Pharmaceuticals, the reserve was named Terra Nova by Dr. Arvigo. There she educates everyone from pharmacists to children about the healing powers of plants.
More recently, Arvigo founded the Traditional Healers Foundation, which acts as a fund to help compensate Belizean healers for intellectual property rights on their participation in the National Cancer Institute search for healing plants. She also established the Ix Chel Tropical Research Foundation to promote organic cultivation as a substitute for rainforest destruction. As the bulldozers prepare to raze precious rainforest, Dr. Arvigo's farmers and Kids at Risk (some on loan from prisons) rescue baby plants for transplanting to nurseries and salvage mature plants for use in healing and the Rainforest Remedies product line. The intensive labor of this undertaking has proven to be a successful work program for at-risk youth sponsored by Shaman Pharmaceuticals. The next camp/work program will be funded by Matt Long, a partner with Paul Newman in Newman's Own.
Dr. Arvigo meshes science and spiritualism with the art of herbalism and the science of naprapathy. Don Elijio, who died in 1996 at the age of 103, told her, "If you say a prayer of thanksgiving and faith to the plant before you cut it, the spirit of the plant follows you home to help with the healing."
Rosita Arvigo co-authored Sastun, a book about Don Elijio's healing methods and her learning adventure in Belize.
To learn more about Rosita Arvigo and Rainforest Remedies, see website http://members.aol.com/RainfstRem).