Frank Fish Memorial Lecture 2024 (in-person)

Wednesday 21 February 2024, 17:00-18:00, followed by a drinks reception.

Venue: John Hanbury Lecture Theatre, UCL School of Pharmacy, 29 - 39 Brunswick Sq., London WC1N 1AX, UK.

In his presentation, Dr Willcox will reflect on his experiences in research and practice on herbal medicines. Are they just placebos? A core challenge today is antibiotic resistance. Can herbal medicines help in reducing the risk of resistance spreading further and what is needed to achieve this? Similarly, can herbal medicines help in the prevention or treatment of chronic life-style related diseases? What roles should medical doctors, pharmacists and nurses play? More general, this presentation will focus on the potential of herbal medicines and on the bottlenecks for a more systematic use of these complex mixtures.

Herbal medicines continue to be widely used by many from the seriously ill to the ‘’worried well’’ and it is therefore essential that these products, like all medicines, are a focus of research within the UK and that health care professionals can provide informed evidence-based advice on their use.