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Watered Down Medicine: The Influence of Marine Organisms in Medicine

Ancient people worshipped, prayed, and sacrificed to the ocean for the powers of healing and power it possessed. While the mentality has changed, the influence over people and medicine today has not. With more and more focus on disease and sickness, the search for new and better medicines are an exponentially growing field. Over the past 20 years, around 10,000 known natural substances have been found from isolating marine organisms.

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Articles of Interest

A Brief History of the Human Use of Marine Medicines

Presently, research on marine ethnomedicine, while vibrant, is relatively small in numbers when compared with observations on terrestrial ethnobotanicals.

Do medicines come from the sea?

Yes; while most drugs derived from natural sources currently come from terrestrial (land-based) organisms, research suggests that the ocean, with its amazing biodiversity and large number of yet-undiscovered species, may be a rich source for new medicines.

Exploring the ocean for new drug developments: Marine pharmacology

Disease ailments are changing the patterns, and the new diseases are emerging due to changing environments. The enormous growth of world population has overburdened the existing resources for the drugs. And hence, the drug manufacturers are always on the lookout for new resources to develop effective and safe drugs for the increasing demands of the world population. Seventy-five percentage of earth's surface is covered by water but research into the pharmacology of marine organisms is limited, and most of it still remains unexplored.

Marine Species in Chinese Medicine

The ocean is a vast land of incredible volume and captivation. While there are certainly a number of plants and animals that serve both culinary and medicinal utility within, Chinese herbalism has gravitated towards several distinct specimens that have been found to provide very potent and profound actions.

Medicines From the Sea

When you’ve got a bacterial infection like pink eye or strep throat, your doctor will usually write a prescription for antibiotics to make you feel better. But have you ever wondered where these medicines come from?

Scientists fear impact of deep-sea mining on search for new medicines

Bacteria from the ocean floor can beat superbugs and cancer. But habitats are at risk from the hunger for marine minerals.

The marine biodiscovery pipeline and ocean medicines of tomorrow

Marine organisms possess the capacity to produce a variety of unique and biologically potent natural products for treating human diseases, many of which are currently commercially available or are in advanced clinical trials.

Resources

Intro to Marine Medicine

To expose students to the different careers in marine medicine, marine biology, medicine, and biology fields and inspire them to follow their passions.

Journal of Marine Medical Society

Journal of Marine Medical Society, a publication of Marine Medical Society of India, is a peer-reviewed online journal with Semiannual print on demand compilation of issues published. The journal’s full text is available online at http://www.marinemedicalsociety.in. The journal allows free access (Open Access) to its contents and permits authors to self-archive final accepted version of the articles on any OAI-compliant institutional / subject-based repository.

Marine Medicine UK

Marine Medicine UK deliver RYA First Aid Training, Kits and Equipment of the highest standard to the marine commercial and leisure sector...