In Memoriam

Michael McGuffin

1951-2025:  AHP says goodbye to a dear friend and long-term AHP Board Member

“Michael has a remarkable ability to completely digest and retain minute details about virtually every aspect of an issue that affects the natural products industry. This is most evident in his understanding of all aspects of supplement GMPs. He knows all-out every line and verse verbatim; knows where the ambiguities, deficiencies and key points of contention are; and can articulate each clearly and with a logical rationale.”

— Roy Upton, founder, president and executive director of American Herbal Pharmacopeia

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Dr. Xie Peishan

January 1934 – March 10, 2022

Professor Dr. Xie Peishan served as Director of the Second Department of traditional Chinese medicine for an amazing 47 years until he was 68 years old. There, he was responsible for the Quality Control and research of traditional Chinese medicine in the Guangzhou Institute for Drug Control. His chromatographic fingerprinting work was the model used for China’s drug inspection system and was meant to apply scientific methodologies that inherently reflected the richness of Chinese herbal drugs.

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Otto Sticher, Ph.D.

October 8, 1936 – March 11, 2022

Otto Sticher, professor emeritus of pharmacognosy and pharmaceutical biology emeritus at the ETH Zürich, Switzerland, was one of the most influential natural products researchers in all of Europe. AHP was introduced to Professor Sticher and his wife Miriam at an American Society of Pharmacognosy meeting at University of California-Santa Cruz, more than 20 years ago by Dr. Varro (Tip) Tyler. The Stichers and Dr. Tyler were very close friends for decades.

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Steven Foster

Botanist Extraordinaire
1957 – 2022

Steven was a long time friend who was one of the finest botanical photographers we knew. He was generous with his photographs, many of them gracing the pages of AHP Monographs and was ever gracious in providing sage botanical advice when we sought it. His loss leaves a hole in the American herbal community that is not easily filled.

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