[Jacob-list] just to rattle some chains out there.....

[Hobsickle at aol.com]

I'm with you in that a lot of folks think "natural good, synthetic bad" in 
spite of the fact that many natural compounds can range from useless to fatal 
and many synthetic compounds can be marvelously effective.  In the case of "Tea 
Tree Oil" (a.k.a. Melaleuca and Cajuput oil) there is pretty strong scientific 
evidence to substantiate at least some of its advocate's claims.  It's active 
ingredient is 1,8-cineole does seem to be a potent insecticide, if nothing 
else.  You might want to look at the American Chemical Society web site: 
http://www.chemistry.org/portal/a/c/s/1/acsdisplay.html?DOC=HomeMolecule%5Carchive%5Cm
otw_1_8_cineole_arch.html.

As someone has already alluded to, many of our major pharmecuticals had their 
origin in biological sources--the obvious example being penicillin (and other 
antibiotics) from mold.

By the way, 1,8-cineole is not 100% harmless to mammals 
http://physchem.ox.ac.uk/MSDS/CI/1,8-cineole.html.

-Dan
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