Chris Kilman, Feb. 15, 2004

LEVERETT, Massachusetts (AP) (excerpted)

Chris Kilham is a medicine hunter—a sort of Indiana Jones of the plant world. Hired by companies that market herbal remedies… Kilham has spent the past decade roaming remote areas of the globe in search of the next best botanical.

Along with promoting medicinal plants, Kilham is on a mission to preserve and protect natural environments while helping the indigenous people who live there…. Part of the sales that come from the herbal supplements he helps produce are funneled back to the communities that grow and harvest the plants…. He insists the plants he brings to the marketplace are as safe and effective as synthetic products.

“He’s been a leader of herbal exploration for a decade,” said Tom Newmark, president of the Brattleboro, Vermont-based New Chapter, which markets Chris Kilham’s True Tamanu, an oil that is an extract from the nut of tamanu trees that grow in the South Pacific.

The oil, which can be blended into an ointment, is used as a balm for cuts, sunburn, insect bites, sore muscles and acne. Kilham wasn’t too impressed with it at first, but after a bad fall that injured his sciatic nerve, he treated it with tamanu.

The pain, he said, vanished.

© Copyright 2004, The Associated Press