Question: Some medicines come from nature, do chemicals come from nature to?

Hey @mida, thats a great question. Thanks for the chat the other day.

The 1st thing to say is that when scientists think of these things, all medicines are types of chemicals, and everything in nature is also made up of millions of chemicals. So when you think of ‘chemicals’ it doesn’t only just mean what I make and use in my labratory. The best word for chemicals that make medicines is ‘drugs’.

The whole idea of medicine came from nature. Before new science people all around the world would look to their natural area for help. Many modern ‘drugs’ have come straight from nature. Penicillin comes from a type of fungus and Aspirin from the bark of some trees. The idea for some medicines come from nature and scientists try and copy or improve how they work with chemicals from the laboratory.

We don’t always use things straight from nature when we sell medicines for a couple of reasons. The 1st is that its really hard to grow enough fungii or trees to make enough medicine for everyone who needs it. The 2nd reason is that medicines from nature come with many other chemicals that we dont always want.

Most chemicals I use in my experiments live in nature, but I don’t always collect them from nature. Some chemicals haven’t been found in nature and are are only made by humans.

So, yes! medicines are chemicals, chemicals come from nature, nature is made up of millions of different chemicals.