since the 1970s for academic research on biologically active marine--derived compounds; government agencies include the National Institutes of Health (NIH)--the National Cancer Institute (NCI) and the National Institute of Allergic and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), as well as the National Sea Grant College Program/National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ([@bib201], [@bib202], [@bib203]). Increased interest by the U.S. government in biologically active marine and terrestrial natural products has recently led, for example, to the formation by NIH of National Cooperative Natural Product Drug Discovery Groups, which include most of the prominent academic labs engaged in marine and terrestrial natural products research, several of the major pharmaceutical companies, and representatives from NIH for the purpose of discovering new structural leads with activity against cancers, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), and opportunistic infectionsThroughout the 5000 years of recorded history of medicines, which includes records from China ([@bib129]), the Middle East, South America, Europe, and Mexico, until the 1800s, the primary source of medicines consisted of terrestrial plants (in the form of herb preparations; "Galenic" medicine) ([@bib29]). Indeed, the development of modern therapeutics is reported to have begun with digitalis, a mixture of steroid (cardiac) glycosides from several plants, including purple foxglove, *Digitalis purpurea,* which was used in 1785 by a British physician to treat "dropsy," a condition caused by congestive heart failure and characterized by an accumulation of fluid ([@bib29]). Since the 1800s, numerous naturally occurring compounds have been purified and used for medicinal and health purposes, including plant metabolites, steroid hormones (androgens, estrogens, progestins), glucocorticoids (cortisone), pituitary hormones (antidiuretic