I’m going to begin by summarizing work that’s being done related to herbal medicines. I mentioned our study with the National Institute of Mental Health of St. John’s Wort. Let me give you some background and some idea of what we’re trying to achieve here. This is a medicinal herb that’s incredibly popular with $6 billion of sales in a single year in Europe by this survey in 1998. It’s used primarily for treatment of depression, other mood disorders -- anxiety disorders, many other conditions.

Like all plants, it’s a complex mixture of many chemical constituents. We know that at least one of those constituents, hyperforin, contributes to its antidepressant action, and we have learned that St. John’s Wort, while it may be active in depression and other clinical conditions, also interacts with drugs: birth control pills, AIDS drugs, and drugs important for preserving the survival of transplanted organs.

Now, it’s the background suggesting that St. John’s Wort was effective for depression that led my colleagues in 1998 to begin to design a study that has been conducted and, as I said, completed. Let me give you a sense of the background data and how it evolves in this somewhat contentious field.