 One in four drugs on our pharmacy shelves and 65 percent of cancer drugs come from plants. Taxol, the most widely used cancer drug in the world, is made from the bark of the Pacific U. Here in Jordan, Bedow and Nomads have been using native plants for medicine for thousands of years. Today, scientists are racing to unlock the secrets of these ancient remedies. What you have is truly a treasure. What you have is not very available everywhere. When I started working on these medicinal plants, the first thing I thought of, how powerful are these plants? The question is made urgent by the ongoing destruction of the natural habitat for these native species. What did ancient practitioners of the healing arts know? And will we be able to use that knowledge to discover new plant-based cures in time? The answers lie in the extraordinary convergence of ancient roots' modern medicine. To the western eye, it looks like moonscape, harsh, barren, unforgiving. This is the body of the Middle East. To look at it in the dry season, which is most of the year, it's hard to believe this land can support life, much less produce plants that are beneficial for humans. But there are those who believe otherwise. For any person it is a dry, empty space, but for me it is a paradise. Jordanian botanist Dr. Salsan Oran is on a journey to catalog and preserve the wild plants of her homeland. She sees beauty in the more than 4,000 varieties of plants she's found to date. Beauty and possibility. I noticed that 40% of those plants are medicinal. Knowing that our ancestors used those plants for treating medicine, this has encouraged us as scientists or as researchers to look for the specific active compounds. Every time I go to the field, I feel that I am going to the field for the first time. Why? Because I'm hoping to find something new. Hoping to find medicinal plants with medicinal potential. While out in the field, Dr. Oran seeks out local people and traditional healers to find out how the various plants are used. This is gaysum. Do people in this area use this plant? Yes, they use it. They use it for stomach pain when you get a cold. Do they boil it and drink it? Yes, they boil it and drink it and some people use it with tea. Which part do they use? All the plant or just the flowers? Just the flowers. The medicinal uses of these plants have been tested and refined over thousands of years. For example, these Mediterranean gourds, colosinth or hansal in Arabic were used by the Greeks and Romans. Today, pharmacological research is confirming their effectiveness in treating diabetes. These Arabic texts are another important source of information for research on medicinal plants. Many westerners don't realize that while Europe was in the dark ages, Arab physicians of the 8th to the 11th centuries were laying the foundation of the institutions and science of modern medicine. Arab scholars studied and translated the Greek texts. They opened the first true hospitals at pharmacies and designed early clinical drug trials. They understood the importance of diet and produced medical texts that were used until well into the 19th century. What contributions might they make in the 21st century? Dr. Oran and her colleagues believe important clues might lie in Arabic folk medicine, still practiced by the Bedouins or Bedou as they call themselves. While nomads, the Bedou proudly traced their lineage back to Ishmael, son of Abraham. They are known for their distinctive tents, which squat low to the ground to withstand stiff desert winds. This is the Badiya, a largely undeveloped desert roughly the size of North Dakota. The Badiya makes up 80% of Jordan and reaches into Syria, Iraq and Saudi Arabia. To survive here, a plant needs deep roots and stamina. With an average annual rainfall of only 2 to 8 inches, seeds can lie dormant for months, even years, waiting for rain. When it comes, usually in spring, there is an explosion of bloom and new growth. The basalt plains cover much of the northern Badiya. These stones make it hard to drive or to walk, for humans and animals alike. The camels, able to travel long distances without water, were for centuries the only reliable transportation in the Badiya. But today, herdsmen drive trucks and camels are greatly outnumbered by sheep and goats who threaten to overgraze this Spartan land. Jordan has 2.5 million sheep, three times as many as the land would comfortably support. The damage occurs when people cut down or dig up woody shrubs for fuel, which worsens erosion and ultimately eliminates that species from the landscape. To raise more food, so-called deep ploughing is used to cultivate the edges of the desert, so that grain crops like wheat, barley and lentils can be planted. The ecology of the Badiya teeters on the brink as pressure to feed growing populations increases. The Badiya landscape may be inhospitable, but guests are always welcomed in the Bedou tent. No traveler is turned away. Bedou hospitality is legendary and is a matter of honor and pride. Today, guests are expected at the tent of Abu Shayan. The extended family is already making preparations. Food is being made on a curved metal pan propped up over a fire. Here on the private side of the tent, the women cook and tend the children. At night, the family sleeps here. On the other side of a fabric wall is the public space where guests are received, news exchanged and coffee served. According to tradition, a goat is slaughtered to prepare a feast for the guests. This marks the day as a special occasion, something that occurs only perhaps once a month. By mid-morning, the sun is already high enough that Abu Shayan and his wife raise the fabric walls to provide more shade and air circulation. Summer days in the Badiya can be as hot as 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Guests are much cooler. Winter temperatures get as low as 40 degrees. Snow is rare but not unheard of. Normally, Abu Shayan and his family would live four months a year in their cement blockhouse in a town 40 miles away where the older children attend school. But since the drought of 1991, they've lived year-round in their tent so they can cover the distances necessary to find enough pasture for their sheep. Today, the herd is some 20 miles north near the Syrian border. Abu Shayan uses this ancient Mercedes truck to visit the herd. Pull water from a lake northeast of here and drive to a market an hour and a half away for fresh vegetables and other supplies. Fuel from propane tanks is supplemented by brush that has been collected from the Badiya, a process that can take several hours a day. Badiya collect wild plants and use nearly 170 plant species to treat everything from colds and skin disorders to bites and stings. Today, Abu Shayan is going out to collect Artemisia herbs, alba or wormwood as it is commonly called in English. Abu Shayan knows its many uses. We use it when we get a bad cold and when we have a bad stomach ache. It's good for the sheep too. When they have stomach worms, this plant kills the worms. It's a good medicine plant. Some people collect it and sell it to the herbalist. They also take it to the pharmacies and many medicines are made from these plants. Back at the tent, the food is ready to be served. Abu Shayan invites his guests to a feast featuring a goat and vegetables. Meanwhile, in the kitchen, the Artemisia is boiled with water to make a tea the bedu use as a general health tonic. Different parts of the plant can also be used to successfully treat diabetes. Just as they move their herds to take advantage of changing pasture conditions, the bedu shift between folk medicine to modern medicine, depending on the circumstances and the nature of the problem. For example, when Abu Shayam's young son Badi became ill with abdominal pain and a fever, his father took him to a pediatrician in a town 30 miles away, but after three weeks of medicine, the boy was no better. We took him to the doctor, but we got no results, so we took him to the healer and he is okay. The healer they visited lives in Safawi, a town an hour and a half away. More than 15,000 bedu have settled here. Omo Woyed is bedu, her face tattooed in the old fashion. She says that years ago her people kept camels. Her knowledge of healing has been passed down from her mother and her mother's mother before that. Today, she teaches her son. Much of Omo Woyed's inventory comes from an herbalist. She uses special non-toxic medicines to treat children. Her reputation is known throughout the Badiah. I treat children from one month old to five years old. I treat him for ecto and rami and if he gets a rash on his skin and starts crying, we apply this material to his skin and make him inhalesome and cover him. Then he will get well if God helps. Islam teaches that God has provided a remedy for every illness and man should search for them and use them with skill and compassion. Bedu healers offer their service free of charge, believing it is their duty to help anyone who needs it. But most patients, like Abu Shayyam and his son, return later with a gift for the healer if the cure is successful. Just as in modern medicine, there are many specialists, so too do the traditional bedu healers have specialties. My name, Menwar Al Fawaz, from Sardiya tribe. You're welcome to make an interview with my mother. You're welcome in my house. Patients visit this house where Om Menwar gives advice and treats eye problems. Menwar says his mother is between 80 and 90 years old. It's not unusual for older bedu to be unsure of their age. She learned about the medicinal plants from her mother. Yes, very wise woman. She has a big mind and she gives advice to Sardiya tribe. They respect my mother. Om Menwar, who collects her own plants and dries them, says many are getting more difficult to find. She says that 10 species grown only in her area have already been wiped out. Her healer, Om Salim, grows 10 different medicinal plants in a special garden. She harvests and dries them for use with patience. Another 10 varieties have to be collected from the wild or gotten from nomadic sheepherders. I have pain on my arm and I heard that you have something for it. Yes, I have medicine for that. I want you to treat it for me. This is Hawa Jawani and Habasamra, cooked in oil. How many times do I need to do this? Three days. Take this and use it in the morning and in the evening. This is work. This is Etrofan. What is the Etrofan for? It is good for diabetes. This plant for kidneys. For the one that has kidney problem? Yes. If a healer like Om Salim doesn't have the particular plant a patient needs, that patient is sent to buy it from an herbalist or a tar. Abdel Nasser al-Khalidi is a tar in a town called Mafran. Al-Khalidi has been in the business 15 years and stocks material for more than 200 kinds of plants. Where do you get all these things? Most of it from Jordan. Even from other countries but the majority from the Jordanian desert. Do you go by yourself and collect them? There are some specialized people who go and collect these plants and sometimes just regular individuals do. Some of these plants you cannot find them easily. You find them only in areas where not many people go. In the urbanized areas they have disappeared. The plants that atars and healers rely on for their medicines. The plants Dr. Salsan Oran is studying are increasingly threatened by environmental degradation. Most Jordanians live in the western part of the country. Aman, the capital city, is the largest with a population of 2 million. Despite the ready availability of modern medicine you can still find herbalist shops like this one downtown. Plants are underway to preserve the body as native plants and unlock their secrets. Mining age-old folk medicine with the tools of 21st century science. Knowing that our ancestors used those plants for treating medicine this has encouraged us as scientists or as researchers to look for the specific active compounds. Here at the University of Jordan Dr. Salsan Oran is part of a team of scientists working with native plants. The Jordan Badiya Research and Development Program is backed by Jordan's Higher Council for Science and Technology. We don't work behind dusts, we don't work behind fences. We are there with the people, for the people. We want to explore but we don't want to exploit. And that I think is the difference. There's great potential for economic development through the plants and plant cultivation. Don't forget, I think the important thing is here that we're not teaching anybody new or totally different something out of the culture, something that needs a lot of training or expensive training. When I started working on these medicinal plants, the first thing I thought of, the first thing, how these plants, how powerful are these plants? For more than two decades, Dr. Oran has been seeking out her country's native plants and bringing them back to her lab to be catalogued and studied. Named Salsan by her lawyer father for the national flower of Jordan, the black iris, Dr. Oran learned to love wildflowers as a child. Years ago, she chose botany over a more prestigious career in medicine. Ironically, the research she's doing today on plants could lay the groundwork for new medical treatments. Dr. Oran is excited about helping to discover the potential of what she calls Jordan's wild medical wealth. Very little has been done on these, which I consider very promising plants for everybody. She began by collecting and cataloging the wild plants of her homeland. The herbarium she started now has more than 4,000 different species, identified and labeled by their Latin botanical name. The plants, which are treated to protect them from damage and decay, are preserved for anyone who wants to learn about this rich resource. The herbarium also has a seed gene bank to ensure that this national heritage can be fully developed in the future. Some of the endangered species have the potential to become commercial crops that will help the economy. Others, like the plants the Bedouins, may have medical or pharmaceutical uses, but first they must be saved from extinction. In this sterile tissue culture room, Dr. Oran and her colleagues are finding ways to grow many new plants from tiny seeds, pieces of leaves or simple root tissue. The plant matter is grown in a nutrient medium in Petri dishes under laboratory conditions. When all goes well, the tissue mass called a callus develops. This is the product. When I get the callus, of course I feel happy because when I treat it later with a combination of hormones, this will differentiate in a further stage into the different parts of the plants. This is a small fragment of a whole bulb from a plant called Black Iris. So from this fragment I can get, as you see, three to four plantlets. Once the plants have reached a certain stage in the lab, they are ready to be acclimatized and planted outdoors. They are so beautiful. The plan is to re-establish them in the wild and save them from extinction due to over-collecting by people and over-grazing by livestock. This plant is just not only beautiful flower, showy flower, but it's well-known fact. It's been used by the old ancient people. If folk medicine has provided the clues that launched the search, it is science that dictates the process. We don't need the whole plant for our tests. Sometimes seeds, we take seeds sometimes, sometimes we take flower. So it depends on the uses of this plant, which active part of this plant has to be used for our tests. We grind the leaves, for example. We take the powder, put it simply in a little amount of cold water, shake it. Then we wait until the precipitate comes down to the bottom of the test tube. This liquid part, this is the important part of the plant because it's got the active ingredients. The chemical compound is sent to university chemists for identification and analysis. As a scientist and as a researcher, I have to know which is the compounds that are responsible for treating these diseases or these ailments. A series of tests have shown that many wild Jordanian plants can inhibit the growth of tumors. Dr. Oran is especially excited about a breakthrough with a plant called globularia from the south of the country. Tissue culture has helped re-establish it in the wild. Even more exciting, results from tests done with globularia extract shows it inhibits tumors on potatoes 85% of the time. That antilukimic result is so strong that further trials are now being done with animals. Dr. Oran dreams of helping to cure leukemia in humans. If they manage to apply what we started and find it very much applicable and successful, I feel that I managed to achieve a victory. I think that this is the most important thing, the most achievable thing that I have ever done in my life. And I feel great, really I feel great. Another day ends for Abu Shayam and his family. In the Badiya, modern forces are slowly changing. Slowly changing this lifestyle that had remained essentially unchanged for at least 5,000 years. Along with the lifestyle, cures used by ancient cultures may be disappearing. If the native medical plants become extinct, humankind may have lost powerful new drugs to fight some of our deadliest diseases. The plants in the Middle East, I can describe them as valuable treasure. We have responsibility, I mean, for the sake of saving our wild plants, our natural resources, and saving the earth as much as we can for our generation and for the generations to come. Next time on Ancient Roots, Modern Medicine. Along the U.S.-Mexico border, people have been using medicinal plants for thousands of years. Now, American scientists are tapping into that precious knowledge. From an innovative program at New Mexico State University to cancer tests at cutting-edge research labs, young scientists are discovering the power of nature's wonders, and perhaps the next breakthrough cure. Information on Ancient Roots, Modern Medicine. Log on to www.rootsandmedicine.com