Does DNA Testing for Herbal Medicines Make Sense?

"To herb is human," says Steve Mister, founder and chief executive officer of the Center for Responsible Nutrition, harking back to the adage that to err is human. Most if not all experts who take herbal medicine seriously and promote its use ethically are opposed the new law in the state of New York that requires herb products to pass DNA testing.

What could possibly be wrong with testing for DNA?

To the Attorney General of New York in 2014, DNA "barcode" testing seemed like the answer for numerous complaints that herb products didn't contain the herbs they claimed. Actually, the attorney general didn't discover this problem. As long ago as 1996, the American Botanical Council and similar groups were testing male potency formulas for yohimbe, and finding most did not contain the expensive herb. The American Botanical Council also ran a series of tests for the actual herb ginseng in ginseng tonics and concluded the even-more expensive Asian medicinal was often left out.

However, with rise of testing organizations like Consumer Labs and watchdog groups like Consumer Reports, fewer and fewer fake herbal preparations survive in the North American market. The Attorney General was not satisfied.

The State of New York ordered DNA testing of herbal products from four national retailers. Half of them contained the herbs claimed on the label. Half did not. "Fraud!" the Attorney General exclaimed. But really no fraud was involved. Why?

• The products that passed DNA testing were all whole herbs.
• The products that did not pass DNA testing were herb extracts.

What's an herb extract? Through hundreds of thousands of scientific tests, the medical profession (yes, medical profession) has identified thousands of naturally occurring compounds that have specific pharmacological effects in the human body. Most of these compounds are not as comprehensively tested as, say, the latest vaccine or cancer therapy, but they are verified as nontoxic by testing on bacteria, first, and then laboratory animals, although more and more companies are moving humanely away from animal testing, or more often by having been used safely for hundreds of years. In the United States, if an herb was known to be safe before 1994, it's assumed to still be safe now. Long before there was DNA testing, herb manufacturers learned how to identify plant parts under a microscope to make sure they were using the right herb and only the right herb. Long experience teaches what to look for to make sure a batch of raw herb is pure.

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An herb may be more effective, however, if certain chemical compounds in it are extracted and concentrated. There are some very straightforward ways this is done.

• The most ancient method of making an herb concentrate was to brew it as a tea and then to dehydrate the liquid into granules. This gives you more of the important chemicals in a smaller dose.
• A nineteenth-century approach was to remove water-soluble compounds with hot water or alcohol, and then also to let the liquid evaporate, or to remove fat-soluble compounds with solvents like toluene, and bubble the toxic toluene out of the mixture. This is still done, but for obvious reasons chemical solvents are not popular in herbal medicine.

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A twenty-first century approach is to concentrate healing compounds with liquid carbon dioxide. At high pressure but room temperature, carbon dioxide turns into a liquid. The liquid can be used to soak an herb and remove its chemical constituents. The liquid carbon dioxide is pumped into another chamber, the pressure is released, and voilà, the healing chemicals are left behind. There is no need to use toxic chemicals, the CO2 itself is completely natural, and essential oils are not lost by heating the herb.

There is an argument in the herbal medicine over the relative uses of whole-herb preparations and herbal extracts. The proponents of whole herb preparations argue that plants contain thousands and thousands of natural chemicals in tiny amounts, and all of them working together are what assist healing processes. The proponents of herbal extracts argue that plants, after all, are living things. Just like there are short people and tall people and thin people and stocky people, there are plants that have different levels of the compounds associated with healing. Extraction ensures that the needed amounts of essential healing chemicals are provided in every dose of the herb.

Supercritical carbon dioxide extraction accommodates both the whole herb and the herb extract concerns, because it’s always possible to add back the plant matter from which the important chemicals were extracted. However, the technique is still only slowly catching on.

The Attorney General (AG) of New York would have none of this. Rather than simply admit that his office got the science wrong and made a mistake in interpreting the lab results their consultants sent them, the AG announced that herb extracts are “so highly processed that they remove DNA.” Actually, some DNA manages to go through the extraction process, but the AG argues that highly refined, standardized extracts deprive consumers of the ingredients that heal them. But it isn’t the DNA in an herb that does the healing. Our digestive tracts break down DNA in the food we eat, and in the herbs we take. Their DNA only reaches our bloodstreams by a phenomenon called leaky guy syndrome, which the American politician seems to favor.

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The AG further opines that consumers are too stupid to know the difference between a whole herb and an extract, because he himself was uninformed. Extracts must be banned because they are not identified. But they are. The label on an herb extract clearly says “extract,” the same way labels in the spice and flavorings aisle at the supermarket read “extract” on lemon extract and vanilla extract. Consumers don’t expect to find whole vanilla beans in vanilla extract. They don’t expect to find whole almonds (unshelled, maybe?) in almond extract. But the attorney general believes that consumers expect to find whole herbs in herb extracts. After all, sometimes there’s a picture of the herb.

If you live in New York or you shop in New York, you can still get the product you want, whether it’s whole herb or an extract. You may just have to buy it in a nearby state or get it online. As for the Attorney General, as Steve Mister points out, to err is human, to forgive divine. Forgive the inconvenience and use herbs the way you already know is best; shop locally whenever you can.