Page 45 - EBOOK_Jamu: The Ancient Indonesian Art of Herbal Healing

promote good health and purify the blood. Even though some people question

their ability to cure, most have their favourite recipe.

Regulating the Industry
The fact that jamu has been empirically, not scientifically, proven has led

Indonesian doctors, pharmacists and government health officials to advocate a
more scientific approach to the manufacture and prescription of jamu. They
insist that claims for herbal medicine must be verified using clinical trials. They
also urge that tests must be based on sound pharmacological principles which
examine the type, effectiveness, kinetic absorption, metabolism, excretion and
the working mechanism of the product, as well as a medicine’s therapeutic use.
Exhaustive scientific studies are necessary because no matter how natural their
source, jamu medicines are still chemical substances which, doctors constantly
remind us, “influence the life process”.

In 1981, the government set up eight designated herbal medicine testing
centres for the development and application of traditional medicine in Java,
Sulawesi, Sumatra and Bali. Their brief was the scientific study of commercially
manufactured products, with a view to ascertaining whether their healing claims