Yet, in a similar search of the PubMed database of biomedical publications, merely 163 papers were fetched; 76% of them were published in the last decade (Figure (Figure1).1). A similar search through Google Scholar produced about 1250 articles; the vast majority of these were in scientific journals not indexed in PubMed, and a good number in non-peer-reviewed book chapters, patents, citations, or other documents. By comparison, green tea, another plant claimed to be medicinal for a range of illnesses (Schneider and Segre, 2009), 1972 and 7240 publications were retrieved in a similar search in PubMed and Google Scholar, respectively. Clearly, in spite of the widely held “belief” in the health benefits of M. oleifera, the interest of the international biomedical community in the medicinal potential of this plant has been rather tepid.