Starting in the 1960s, Duke was an ecologist with the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), joining Battelle Columbus Laboratories (1965-71) for ecological and ethnobotanical studies in Panama and Colombia. During this formative period, Duke lived with various ethnic groups, pursuing what became a lifelong passion for learning from peoples whose traditions are rich with knowledge of the healing properties of plants. Eventually, Duke became chief of the USDA Medicinal Plant Resources Laboratory.

Duke’s book, The Green Pharmacy (St. Martin’s, 1997), is the standard setter in its field, having sold over one million copies in English. It is now translated into eight languages. Duke has also authored or co-authored 40 other books on herbs, spices and foods, along with 400 articles (half in peer-reviewed journals). He remains a popular lecturer on the subjects of ethnobotany, herbs, medicinal plants, and new crops and their ecology.

In 1995, Duke retired after 30 years with the USDA. Before retiring, he brought his Father Nature’s Farmacy database online at USDA. It is now one of the most frequently consulted databases with the Plant Genome Project at USDA. Duke’s database is especially useful for determining biological activities and healing potentials of food ands herbs.

For further information: www.greenpharmacy.com.

Please tell us how you first fell in love with plants.

There was an old man across the street from me in the Birmingham, Alabama suburbs that had his rabbits to talk to, and every now and then he would walk me through the nearby woods in the foothills. He taught me about chestnuts when we had chestnuts, and watercress. That was when I was about age five, and I think he was about as old and gangly as I am now. We both profited from these mutual walks through the woods. And I have been in love with botany ever since.

All of us learned in grade school that many of the first European explorers set sail across the ocean in search of spices. I personally love spices but I can’t really see risking life and limb to procure them. What’s your take on this?

I have a bad poem on that. It only takes four or five lines. I recited this in ’92 when it was the 500th anniversary of Columbus setting sail. The poem goes like this: “Columbus set sail/looking for black Indians and black pepper/and he took the wrong ocean/and he found red Indians and red pepper/and he changed the cuisine of the world.” As of today, capsicum (red pepper) is one of my ten favorite medicinal spices, and one that is recommended for certain maladies that I have.

What are some of your other favorite spices?

Two years ago, I would have said that garlic is the most important in my garden. Garlic is in more than 20 plots of the 80 plots in my garden. It’s also good for some of my ailments. It’s a constant battle in my mind over which is most important to me. But garlic is so good to eat and so easy to grow, that I can find it in one condition or another in my garden year-round.

Turmeric is another plant which I have in my garden but I’ll need to move it into my greenhouse any day now. Ginger, and cinnamon (which is a shrub), I’ll move them into the greenhouse, too. Those are good medicines. I have a database of 2500 plants, of which I would call 200 of them spices. I understand that my database is one of the most frequently visited at the USDA.

Considering the amount of data on handled by the USDA, that’s quite impressive. Prior to your developing these databases that the USDA now keeps, did such databases exist? Did they have other herb or spice databases that you built on? Or are you the one who started this project?

They had none at the USDA. This started in 1977 or 1978, when the USDA accepted my assignment to a major anticancer program of the National Cancer Institute. At that time, I was sent to lead a small group to look for plants that might have anticancer activity, funded by the National Cancer Institute. So that means that way back in 1978, I started this database. It was primitive but we’ve improved it.

When I’m long gone, that will still be there. [In my own personal database] I’ve got almost three times as much data on some of these same questions as you could ask the USDA database tonight. I can take it proprietary, but if I can’t find a buyer for it, I will dump it all into the USDA database and improve it probably five- or six-fold.

Either way, that’s a wonderful legacy to have created and to pass on to others. You mentioned that, starting in the late 1970s, you were part of a project looking for potentially anticancer herbs. Where did that take you in your travels?

My whole lab traveled a lot. I had at least three trips to China, one trip to Panama (my old stomping grounds), one to Ecuador and one to Syria. And though not all of these were necessarily due to the anticancer program, in my USDA career I’ve been to over 50 countries.

I’ve had a charmed career! My God, I feel sorry for those people who spend their 30 years studying wheat or corn. I’ve landed from helicopters in ganja fields in Jamaica, in opium fields in Laos, and driven into coca fields back in the 1970s, when it wasn’t dangerous. I was involved with the USDA alternative crops program where we would try to convince farmers that if they would phase out the narcotics, they would give them some interesting alternatives that might be remuneratively competitive.

How did that work out?

You may have noticed I used the words, “might be” … Because if we came up with a product that was more competitive, the narcs would just pay more. It was a non-winnable situation. I don’t think the USDA would say that, though. Frankly, I think ganja is a great medicinal plant, much better than the synthetic copycats, which cost much more.

You’ve authored or co-authored many books on herbs, spices and foods. Some are academic treatises and others, like the classic bestseller, The Green Pharmacy, are for general audiences. Looking back on your publishing life, what work or works do you recall as the most satisfying, either because you loved writing them or because of the influence they had on readers?

Every time someone comes to a tour of the garden here, we show them a few of the books that I have on hand. And when they ask, “Which one would you buy if you were only going to buy one?” I always say The Green Pharmacy. It sold over a million copies in English and is now translated into eight languages. It was a turning point for me and I actually retired from the USDA a year early so I could work on that. I think it was one of the best decisions I ever made. That’s why I have the Green Pharmacy Garden, with 300 species of plants, mostly built like the chapters of that book. We have a stone in the middle of a plot, say the Alzheimer’s Plot. There, we’ll see rosemary, sage, periwinkle and some of the plants that are still arguably better than the pharmaceuticals like Aricept.

Tell us more about the Green Pharmacy Garden.

It’s a south-facing slope on my home property here. It will revert, upon my death and my wife’s death, to the Tai Sophia Institute, which is an acupuncture and healing institute at the moment, but it’s liable to become part of a laureate university system all over the world.

The garden on the south slope has four long rows that are sort of like sloped terraces, and in each we have about 20 plots. In each plot, we’ve gathered the best medicinal plants for different ailments. For example, we have a Prostate Plot. We have the best sources of lycopene there – the saw palmetto (which we have to bring in before frost arrives), the stinging nettle, and the African pygeum, proven to help the prostate. That’s just one of the 80 plots in the garden. I can send to those who wish a map of the garden, listing all the species in each plot. It’s sort of like a catalog.

Science marches on and we keep learning new things that might be promising. And frankly, I’m really eager, as is my head gardener, Helen Metzman, to get the latest into them. She is being paid by Tai Sophia. She is hardworking, an artist. She builds beautiful structures out of bamboo and vines to keep the garden a place of beauty as well as a place of education.

What role do you have in the herbal masters program at Tai Sophia? Are you teaching there? Guest lecturing?

I’m glad you asked. My garden is where I teach. We like to call it “Tai South Campus.” It’s roughly one and a half miles, as the crow flies, from the Tai Sophia main campus. The students love to come down here for classes. Instead of my giving them a bunch of slides, we squeeze and tug and defoliate. We have one specimen plant, the jewel weed, that ejaculates its seed into the student’s hand. It’s a hands-on experience.

I recall going on an herb walk a long time ago in Iowa and being told that jewel weed was very helpful for poison ivy.

A long-deceased researcher friend of mine discovered that there is an antihistaminic compound in the jewel weed which explains some of the folklore. But it turns out, wildly and surprisingly to almost anyone, that the active ingredient in jewel weed is lawsone, which is also the active ingredient in the dye called henna. Just two weeks ago in class, one of the students rubbed into one side of my goatee, the reddish roots, or prop roots, of the jewel weed. We didn’t wash it for a few days, and it gave me a light yellow tint to my goatee. It doesn’t really work well on gray hair; henna and lawsone work better on darker hair.

A century or so ago, there was a massive shift in the practice of medicine from plants as the primary healing agents (which had been true since the dawn of humanity) to synthetic pharmaceuticals. What would you say was lost and gained in that shift?

Synthetic pharmaceuticals, your genes have never known. And that’s why these FDA approved synthetic chemicals kill over 100,000 people a year. People have no genetic experience with them. We’ve lost the synergies of the mixtures of the 5000 chemicals in each herb, which your genes have known for thousands of years (if you’re Biblically oriented) or millions of years (if you’re evolutionarily oriented).

Each herb, from turmeric to hot pepper, contains about 5000 biological chemicals, or phytochemicals. All are biologically active. I mean, that’s incredible! It’s chaotic. Your genes know these things that your ancestors ate, and your genes will mine them like menus of active chemicals, and pull out the ones it wants and piss out the ones it doesn’t want. [See the Multiple Activities Menu at http://www.ars-grin.gov/duke/dev/all.html]. That’s what homeostasis is. You and I and most alternative practitioners know about that, but few of the allopaths think about the fact that the synthetics are unknown to your genes. When you take them, it’s going to throw you out of balance. It might help you in some ways, but it might throw you out of balance in other ways. And then you’ll return to the physician to find out what to do for the problems the synthetic caused.

In some other countries, medical physicians prescribe herbs far more than American doctors. For example, German MDs prescribe St. John’s wort for depression more often than prescription medications like Prozac and Paxil. Why is there such a difference?

America is run on a faulty premise, “Better living through chemistry.” And we have been convinced (though I’ve never been convinced) that herbs are dangerous and that synthetic chemistry is the answer to all our problems, when literally it is the genesis of most of our problems.

Tell us about your travels to the rainforests of Central and South America.

Believe it or not, although I’ve been interested in botany and edible plants since the age of five, I didn’t have a major conversion in my life until I moved to Panama in 1965 with my wife and my very young children. And while there, I worked with the Choco Indians and the Kuna Indians in the eastern part of Panama, which is very sparsely populated.

While I was living with these wonderful people, I saw that their children were just as happy and healthy as my children back in the Panama Canal Zone, with the best of American allopathic medicine. And I said to myself, “These Indians are on the right track, if not the righter track.” That was my mid-life conversion to the belief that herbal medicine is better than what we’ve been getting. I truly believe that we are being killed by our medicine. Medicine is the number four killer in the U.S. these days and none of these herbs are doing this killing.

When you take an herb, you get a menu with those 5000 chemicals, which can often help things you weren’t even seeking help for. You take the synthetic medicine and it can help, especially if the diagnosis is correct (and about 50 percent of diagnoses aren’t). But taking any pharmaceutical will upset your body more than if you took an herb. So we’ve gone the wrong direction. And I think those Europeans, who at least tolerate prescribing the herbs, are way ahead of us.

You mentioned something about people visiting your garden and spoke about the Tai Sophia students coming there to learn about the plants. Do you encourage visits by others who are interested?

I like to have groups of between 20 and 30, for a couple of hours. I show them, among my 300 plants in the garden, those that are currently of greatest interest to me. This week, cinnamon is of interest to me, because Avandia [a prescription diabetes medication] is close to being taken off the market, and cinnamon is infinitely better than Avandia. Vioxx has been taken off the market, and I would show them that capsaicin, from the hot pepper, is a better Cox-2 inhibitor than Vioxx was. Vioxx killed 90,000 people within ten years. We’ve gone in the wrong direction. I’ve even had the FDA out here four times, but they were lower echelon people who think more like I do. It’s almost as if the upper echelons are on the payroll of Big Pharma.

It’s nice to know that there is at least someone within the bowels of the bureaucracy with some creative thinking.

The upper echelons of the bureaucracy would not even let us say that prunes are a laxative because it hasn’t been proven to their satisfaction. Let them eat prunes!

That says it all, doesn’t it? Is there anything else you’d like to tell our readers?

Well, I’ve been thinking all day about lycopene, from tomato and an herb that I have in the garden which has a lot more lycopene than tomato.

Lycopene is connected with red color in plants, correct?

Yes. The best source I have here among the plants that have been analyzed is an invasive weed called Russian olive or autumn olive. It’s richer in lycopene than tomato, watermelon, guava and the flower pot marigold. Lycopene could probably help prevent every cancer that’s on the books. Turmeric is probably even better. I would recommend those to anyone with any hormone-related cancer. I would also tell them not to listen to their allopath if they tell them, “Don’t you dare take the antioxidants while we’re shooting you with chemotherapeutics.” That’s controversial, I know, but I certainly think that turmeric could be proven better than any chemotherapeutic out there.

But because the turmeric plant can’t be easily patented like a drug, there’s no financial incentive for a drug company to make the necessary investment to test that hypothesis. In theory, government could fund the studies, but they haven’t. Also, I’m guessing that a study in which a group of cancer patients does not receive chemotherapy probably could not be approved, as things stand now.

It costs $1.7 billion now to prove a single chemical according to FDA specifications. And turmeric, provably, has 5000 chemicals. How much would that cost? And what company, or what country, has that kind of money? FDA and FTC are costing many American lives, making it impossible to attain this simple check. The way they could check it out would be to set up a clinical trial. Is turmeric better? Prove us wrong. Instead, the drug companies compare their drug to another drug, or with a placebo.

Daniel Redwood, DC, the interviewer, is a Professor at Cleveland Chiropractic College-Kansas City, and Editor-in-Chief of Health Insights Today and The Daily HIT.

PETA’s campaigns to save animals are legendary and in some cases quite controversial. Aside from ongoing activities like providing vegetarian starter kits, producing programs that give students alternatives to animal dissection, and lobbying government agencies in support of animal-friendly policies, PETA has also run dramatic advertising campaigns including one in which famous actresses appeared clad only in vegetables as part of the “I’d Rather Go Naked Than Wear Fur” campaign, and another in an anti-dairy campaign where former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani, who had prostate cancer, was pictured on a billboard with a milk moustache, under the headline, “Got Prostate Cancer?”

Newkirk is someone with revolutionary ideas who recognizes that small changes are better than none, and that these small changes gradually accumulate. Her new book, Making Kind Choices: Everyday Ways to Enhance Your Life Through Earth- and Animal-Friendly Living, consists of several dozen short chapters, each of which highlights a particular animal-related issue (such as how to recognize animal ingredients in packaged foods, how to find cosmetics not tested on animals, how to travel safely with animals, how to bake a vegan cake, and why some people choose not to wear wool or silk). Each chapter offers resources (books, websites, and more) for those who wish to further educate themselves.

In this interview with Daniel Redwood, Newkirk tells how she went from being a meat eater to a vegan who neither eats nor wears any animal products. It’s a fascinating story of a woman with a mission, one who does not shy away from controversy or confrontation and who has been able to reach millions with her message. The number of animals whose lives have been saved or improved through her efforts is incalculable.

For further information:
Website: http://www.peta.org
Phone: 757-622-PETA

DANIEL REDWOOD: Your new book, Making Kind Choices, is at its heart a book about consciousness, about being aware of what we are doing rather than living unconsciously. It’s clear that the awareness of how our actions affect animals is of the utmost importance to you. What core beliefs led you to dedicate your life to protecting animals?

INGRID NEWKIRK: I was always drawn to animals in trouble, partially because I grew up in India where the suffering of animals is very apparent. There are starving dogs on the street, and there are overloaded beasts of burden everywhere you look. And there are animals being pulled out of baskets who are emaciated and who are made to perform so that people can earn a few rupees. So it was in front of me. A second part is probably because my mother had always worked for human charities as a volunteer, and so our home was always full of people in need and she always opened our house, too, to animals in need. She used to say it doesn’t matter who suffers, but how. So I grew up in that kind of atmosphere, of worrying about those who had little or nothing. It was just part of her world. So we were always packing pills for the lepers and rolling bandages for them, stuffing toys for orphans, and feeding strays.

REDWOOD: When and why did you decide to become a vegan?

NEWKIRK: It was a very slow process. I was a slow learner. I grew up eating meat, had my first fur coat when I was 19. I’m 56 now, and there were no animal rights activists then to hand me a card, admonish me in some way, and say, “What are you thinking? If you care about animals, why are you wearing them and eating them?” But I had a few events in my life which opened my eyes gradually to the difference you can make if you think of all animals, not just dogs and cats and horses and certain birds, as being important. But [to think of] all of them as having feelings.

I was a law enforcement officer in Maryland and I went on a case of abandonment of animals on a farm. The people had moved away and left all the animals. And they had all starved to death except one little pig. And I found this little pig in very bad shape, pulled him out of the barn, and took him outside. He was so weak that I actually had to hold his head up and help him drink some water. My job was to prosecute those people for leaving the animals to starve, and I was to find them. Driving home that evening, I was wondering what I could have for dinner, and I remembered that I had defrosted some pork chops. And suddenly, I realized that even though I had never been inside a slaughterhouse (I can’t say that now), that of course they are not very pleasant places and must be very frightening for the animals. And I realized I was prosecuting somebody for being cruel to one pig while I was paying someone I didn’t know to be cruel to another pig. There were lots of little incidents like that where I thought, “Oh dear, I shouldn’t do that. I need to find something different to eat or wear.”

REDWOOD: Could you tell us about the beginnings of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals?

NEWKIRK: I worked for the Department of Human Resources in Washington, and one of my jobs was oversight of the animal shelter and inspection of all animal facilities in the District of Columbia. One day, this young man walked into my office to volunteer for the city and he told me about certain things I had no idea about. I knew about laboratories because I had inspected them, but he knew about dairy farming, and he made fun of me for caring about animals and still using milk in my tea. I had never thought about it before.

REDWOOD: What did he tell you about dairy farms? And what do you know now about them?

NEWKIRK: I had stopped eating veal when I was seven because my mother refused to serve it in the house when she found out how veal calves are kept, in these little crates. He said to me, “Well, you realize that the reason the veal calves are taken away from the mother is so that the milk can be marketed for us. And there’s no reason that, as a grown adult, you should be drinking milk anyway. And there’s no reason you should drink the milk meant for a baby calf. So why support the veal industry?” And I thought, well, I’ve never connected those dots before. He also taught me about whaling. He had come off a whaling ship in the Atlantic, and he told me the horrors of whaling and what is done to dolphins caught in tuna nets.

REDWOOD: What is done to them?

NEWKIRK: They drown because they can’t back up, so they get tangled in these massive, football-field sized nets that are cast for tuna. The dolphins follow the tuna fishes. And then they are ground up on board or they just drown and die in the nets. So he was filling in some gaps for me. I thought, it’s funny, I’ve cared about animals my whole life and I didn’t know that. So I thought maybe I could start a little group, and if people who care about animals want to know where they could get an alternative to a shampoo tested in rabbits’ eyes, I could say, here are the (at that point) three companies you can buy from. And maybe I could open their eyes to some things, too. But it hit a nerve and it grew very quickly.

REDWOOD: What do you think have been PETA’s greatest successes?

NEWKIRK: Changing hearts and minds, truly. Not very tangible or sexy. Well, it is tangible in that you can see how many people order the vegetarian starter kits from us, how many call and ask if there is an alternative to this, because I don’t want to hurt the animals. For example, pests in the home or dissection in the school. But tangible victories? Of course, one of my favorites is that we got all the car companies (the last one being General Motors) to stop using pigs and baboons in crash tests; they now all use mannequins.

REDWOOD: How did you go about organizing that?

NEWKIRK: We always start the same way. We write politely, we research the alternatives, we showed that Mercedes and some foreign car companies were no longer using animals in these tests, that there were superior methods at their disposal. We try to meet with the executives of the company that we wish to reform. And when the door is slammed, and sometimes it is slammed (often it works that way, especially if the company is big), then we start enlisting public support, asking consumers to write in, and it escalates from there. In the end, when GM acquiesced, we had reached a stage where we were protesting every auto show, and people had donated old GM cars to us, which we were breaking up in front of the auto shows to make a point about crash tests on animals. And they finally agreed to stop. And now no car company uses animals in crash tests.

REDWOOD: PETA is widely known for some of its most dramatic tactics, particularly on advertising campaigns. Could you mention a couple of the more controversial tactics that PETA has used and also mention some of the more quiet, ongoing approaches pursued by the organization?

NEWKIRK: Most of our work is work you won’t read about in the press because it’s not flamboyant or provocative, it’s just solid work, a lot of it behind the scenes with corporations, seeking reforms step-by-step. But we have such a serious message, and society these days makes you jump through a lot of hoops to get attention for a serious issue. You can’t blame people, in a way, or the press, because there’s the war, there was the tsunami, there’s violence in the streets, and there are all sorts of extraordinary things happening every day. And people are busy, so competing for their attention is a little difficult. So one of the ways that we get people’s attention, even if it means that they’re going to argue with us or dislike us for it, is to be provocative.

One of the most provocative billboards we ever ran was a picture of Rudolph Giuliani with a milk moustache, that said, “Got prostate cancer?” and gave a website, because he had come out to say that he had prostate cancer, he was battling it. We had written to him because he was constantly drinking milk at his news conferences—there was some promotion he was involved in—and explaining to him that milk is actually linked to prostate cancer. I had just lost my father to a number of things, one of which was prostate cancer. His heart and his prostate were battling as to who was going to take him first, and I initially thought I would run a picture of my father. But I thought no, nobody will know who that is or care, so I had written to Rudy Giuliani and said that we’re thinking of running a billboard with your image on it, and please will you think about this issue and stop promoting milk. He didn’t respond, so we ran it. And immediately we got tons of press, most people shouting at us, but thousands upon thousands of people actually going to the website and learning of the link between prostate cancer and dairy, which was our goal.

REDWOOD: So from your point of view, the goal was not to attack Giuliani but to help those who, by being informed, might not get the disease?

NEWKIRK: Exactly. If I had found some clever way to reach my father about his diet years earlier, I would have been grateful.

REDWOOD: What else can you say about the health aspects of a vegetarian or vegan diet?

NEWKIRK: I have a cold now, because I travel so much and the air circulation on the plane was appalling, but I used to have chronic bronchitis and haven’t had bronchitis in 30 years, which is when I gave up drinking milk. I drink soy and other nog now, like Silk. But it clearly was messing up my bronchial tubes. And for babies, for kids, their own mother’s milk is clearly what nature intended for them. Putting them on cow’s milk when they’re young can lead to juvenile onset diabetes. It can give them gastrointestinal problems because many kids’ digestive systems are just not geared to digest cow’s milk.

REDWOOD: I was one of those kids myself, quite allergic to milk. However, this is a controversial point of view. Where would you encourage people to go to inform themselves more fully about whatever research exists on this topic.

NEWKIRK: It’s becoming a lot less controversial because the dairy industry is coming under a lot of fire for its claims over the years. One site is Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine at pcrm.org. They have a lot about milk. John MacDougall, the physician, has a website with a lot about the deleterious effects of milk. And of course, unless you’ve lived in a cave, everyone knows about hardening of the arteries, with both meat and dairy. So I don’t think it’s hard to find information about the good health effects of a vegan diet or the deleterious effects of meat and dairy, unless you’re just on the industry websites for those products.

REDWOOD: Why aren’t more people aware of where their food comes from, and how it’s grown or manufactured?

NEWKIRK: Because you have to stop and think, and we’re busy. I believe that everything is geared to stop you from thinking. It’s all about pretty recipes. There’s a tremendous amount of money from all these industries that goes into making meat and dairy look attractive, easy to cook and good for you. And the meat and dairy industries sponsor so much on television that you cannot run opposing ads. For example, at Thanksgiving, we have wonderful ads with celebrities, that are very positive, upbeat ads suggesting Tofurkey or Unturkey instead of the bird. We can’t run them for any amount of money on any network, because the networks receive so much money from Butterball [a brand of turkey], and they’ll admit it. And all the other purveyors of flesh foods. It’s simply politics. It’s not good for their business, and they know that we can’t compete in the end.

REDWOOD: So you’ve literally attempted to buy ads, put up the money, and been refused?

NEWKIRK: Oh, yes. Over and over again. And I used to think that there must be something you could do with the FCC [Federal Communications Commission] about this, and there isn’t. Our lawyers have looked at it very carefully. You cannot. It’s up to them.

REDWOOD: Why do you think compassion is not more widespread in our culture?

NEWKIRK: We say the right things, we say that kindness is a virtue. We say apply the Golden Rule. We say that we’re kind to animals. But I think what you just said, too, is telling. Most people have never been inside a factory farm. And if they had, and they saw pigs castrated without anesthesia, chickens living in such filth that you have to actually wear a facemask to enter the barn because the stench will overpower you, animals dehorned and debeaked, having their legs and their wings crushed when they’re shackled on the slaughter lines. People would lose their lunch!

But it’s not in front of them. What is in front of them is a pretty ad. And it’s very, very hard to break through the veneer of advertising for bad products—especially if you have acquired the taste for them over many years—and say, hang on a minute, I need to take you behind the scenes and now show you a more compassionate way to behave. So, it’s like with any cause, you have to jar people’s idea of reality and show them that it’s a façade, that they’re not being kind when they buy these products, to themselves or to the Earth either.

REDWOOD: What are your thoughts on animal research?

NEWKIRK: I think it’s a hideous business. Every day without fail, we have complaints from laboratories here. Every single day. Sometimes we deal with veterinarians, technicians, janitors, guards, that indicate that the animals are treated like widgets. They are not even counting the kind of experiments they’re used for, which is another matter. That they are left in metal cages as if they have no behavioral or social needs, as if they’re not intelligent, and yet studies come out all the time showing that even the little rat in the laboratory, his heart rate soars, his adrenalin level goes up, his pulse rate increases when someone simply opens the lab door. They don’t even have to put a hand on him. So these animals, before they’re even touched, are living in fear and in completely unnatural and uncomfortable conditions. As for the science, I think we’ve learned by now that sometimes old habits die hard and that when there isn’t enough oversight of what is done for animals in labs, that someone can actually continue to use animals in a particular experiment, say executive stress experiments, where they actually swim animals to their deaths. There was a case in which this experiment was done every year for 14 years, by one experimenter alone. And no one says, “Hey, John, this really needs to stop,” or “You’re not doing this in the most intelligent way, there are other ways to study executive stress.”

REDWOOD: Are you convinced that eliminating all animal research would have no adverse effect on finding cures for human illnesses? For many people, that’s a key issue.

NEWKIRK: I think most people just believe that blindly, just as when you get into the elevator, you don’t believe it’s going to crash. I mean, you just trust that it must be the case or they wouldn’t use them. But when you show most people, look at AIDS or cancer, for example, and animal experiments haven’t done anything for us. In fact, all they’ve done is waste money and waste time. In fact, the state of cancer research is so much more sophisticated than it ever was. Because of microscopy, we are able to see precancerous tumors. Not because of animal experiments. And the way we test drugs these days. While the law still says that we have to go through these batteries and batteries of animal tests, from mice to monkeys, wasting time, we have high-speed computers now that we can program with human data. We can break down the properties of chemical components, see how they interact with each other. You know, we’ve got cloned human skin now. We’ve got whole human DNA on the web. Everything we’ve learned about AIDS has come from human epidemiology and studying the mutation of the virus in human blood and human beings. But we’ve still got chimpanzees infected with HIV banging their heads against the side of their steel cages and being there for two decades now.

REDWOOD: Could you share your thoughts about the euthanasia of animals in pet shelters? I was surprised by the complexity of this issue when there was a recent controversy here in Virginia, where PETA is headquartered, about shelters that “put animals to sleep” and those that do not.

NEWKIRK: Yes. I think it’s unfair to blame the shelters, because we see this ourselves. I mean, we will take in and euthanize animals that have no other chance. We won’t take in so-called “adoptable,” fluffy animals, we’ll only take in the dregs, which means those that aren’t housebroken, who’ve been on a chain their whole lives, who are diseased, pregnant, elderly, sick. There are so many people who take in animals frivolously and then throw them away. I mean, tens of thousands of dogs and cats, all wonderful, are thrown away in Hampton Roads every year. There simply aren’t enough good homes to put them in. It would be marvelous if there were. It would be marvelous if you could save a quarter of that number, but you cannot. People are not spaying and neutering, so there’s this constant flow of new animals coming into the population. People move away and abandon their animals. They dump them on the shelters as if they are turning them in to a recycling plant.

People should not buy from pet stores. That would help. If they’re going to take an animal, only take them from a shelter, because the shelters are desperate to find good homes. And people should not breed their animals as long as there are so many dogs and cats that are already born, waiting for homes, and have no homes to go to. And we really need higher license fees so people have to think twice before they casually acquire an animal, because that may stop many people from getting one and then tossing them out later. But I can’t condemn anyone who loves animals, cares for them, and performs the heartbreaking job of euthanasia, because it’s simply saying that, “There isn’t a place for you, my love, you need to go to sleep forever.”

REDWOOD: What about circuses?

NEWKIRK: [Laughter]. It’s all so cheery, isn’t it? Well, the animal circuses’ days are numbered. The Detroit Zoo, for example, just closed its elephant exhibit, for ethical reasons. The director of the Detroit Zoo made the decision that elephants do not belong on exhibit. And we now are seeing more non-animal circuses, like the magnificent Cirque d’Soleil, cropping up, where all the performers are paid, all the performers are there willingly, and all of the performers get to go home at night. Ringling, unfortunately, has a massive advertising budget but a terrible reputation, and three baby elephants have died of negligence in the past several years. One drowned, one fell off a training pedestal, and one was ill yet forced to go back three times into the ring and died without veterinary care. They’ve been fined by the government, they’ve been in terrible trouble over the deaths of lions, of horses, the shooting death of two tigers, you name it. The manner in which the animals are trained is by brute force. You cannot make an elephant perform what to them is a repetitious, unnatural trick, for a cookie. And chaining them up, separating the babies from the mothers when they would live their whole lives together in nature, is just plain barbaric. I am hopeful that more people will turn their backs on the circus.

REDWOOD: If a person is considering giving up some animal-based product like meat, dairy, leather or wool, where would you advise them to start? What are some resources that a person thinking about this could consult?

NEWKIRK: It’s a very exciting world. It doesn’t restrict you, really, it just opens up a new world of options. We have a website called petaeats.com, which is chock full of recipes which are all downloadable. And on peta.org there is a free vegetarian starter kit that you can have, or you can just call us up (757-622-PETA), and we’ll send you one. It has tips, resources and recipes. Questions about what to do if you’re pregnant, what your nutritional needs are if you’re an athlete, all written by people with expertise in those fields, and references to other books, pamphlets, and websites. I hope my book is a good resource. It should be in the library, too.

For anything that you’re worried about, there is invariably a compassionate alternative. So if there are children in school who don’t want to take a scalpel to that frog or that cat, we have resources on our educational website, teachkind.com, for example, of fabulous, modern, sophisticated alternatives, like computer program software.

REDWOOD: My daughter used one of those when she was in high school.

NEWKIRK: Oh, good.

REDWOOD: Is there anything else that you would want our readers to know?

NEWKIRK: This may be too general, but I always think people shouldn’t be overwhelmed. They don’t have to agree with everything initially, or ever, to know that no act of kindness, no matter how small, is wasted. That if they really believe that kindness is important, it’s simply a matter of learning as much as you can and then trying to use your consumer power. Because we really are important as consumers, we really do move the marketplace, and our voices do count. And what we buy, and how we entertain ourselves, really counts for something. And not to think that we have to be robotic consumers, but to seize control and to live our lives according to our principles. If enough people do that, it makes a huge difference. But if one person does it, it’s still terrific.

Daniel Redwood, a writer for the past 25 years, practices chiropractic and acupuncture in Virginia Beach, Virginia. Dr. Redwood is the author of the textbook, Fundamentals of Chiropractic (Mosby, 2003), and Associate Editor of The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine. A collection of his writing is available at http://www.drredwood.com. He can be reached by email at danredwood@aol.com.

©2005 Daniel Redwood

Gordon has written several books on holistic medicine, including the landmark Manifesto for a New Medicine (Addison Wesley, 1996), and developed at Georgetown one of the first medical school curricula on complementary and alternative medicine. He is, in short, a pioneer in the field.

Since 1998, Gordon’s Center for Mind-Body Medicine has sponsored annual Comprehensive Cancer Care (CCC) conferences, bringing together the world’s leading alternative and conventional cancer researchers and practitioners, policy makers, and patients in an unprecedented meeting of the minds, to explore the full range of cancer treatments and midwife the creation of a truly integrative approach to this most challenging illness. Now co-sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and the NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), CCC is among the foremost models for breaking down barriers between conventional and alternative therapies. (Transcripts and summaries of the CCC conferences can be accessed at http://www.cmbm.org). Gordon’s most recent book, Comprehensive Cancer Care (Perseus, 2000), co-authored with Sharon Curtin, draws on the presentations at CCC I and II as well as Gordon’s work with cancer patients in his practice.

In this wide-ranging interview with Dr. Daniel Redwood, Dr. Gordon describes the goals of the White House Commission, the key areas it will address, and the commission’s desire to elicit the broadest possible input from both the alternative health and conventional health communities. He also discusses the current status of CAM research for cancer and recent steps toward greater integration of CAM in medical education.

The Commission will release an interim report in July 2001 and a final report in March 2002. As part of their information gathering process, members of the Commission will hold a series of regional town hall meetings around the country. The first two are scheduled for San Francisco on September 8, 2000 and Seattle on October 30, 2000. Dr. Gordon expects one of the town meetings to be held in Washington, DC.

For further information:
White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy
6701 Rockledge Drive
Room 1010
Bethesda, MD 20817
301-435-6199

Center for Mind-Body Medicine
5225 Connecticut Avenue, N.W.
Suite 414
Washington, DC 20015
202-966-7338
http://www.cmbm.org

DANIEL REDWOOD: According to the law passed by Congress calling for the appointment of a White House Commission on Complementary and Alternative Medicine Policy, what is the commission’s job?

JAMES GORDON: The commission’s job is to take a look at a variety of different aspects of CAM [complementary and alternative medicine] and to try to understand the overall significance of CAM, and in particular, how we should enlarge or rethink four different areas: research, public information, training of health professionals, and delivery of services. The commission will make recommendations to the President through the Secretary of Health and Human Services, and also to Congress, about what kind of legislation is needed to make sure that whatever kinds of perspectives, practices, and approaches we think are important are included in health care for everybody.

REDWOOD: Over the years, there have been blue-ribbon government commissions on many topics whose recommendations were never implemented. Are you hopeful that your commission? recommendations will result in actual policy changes?

GORDON: I’m very hopeful. I see the work of the commission as sharpening our national perspective, not only on specific CAM therapies but on how health care and health education as a whole, and health care research, can be enriched and transformed by the perspective in CAM, by a holistic perspective, by an emphasis on healing partnerships between patients and health care practitioners, and by a focus on education and not just on treating.

I see this as an opportunity to present a worldview about health care, and then also to present very concrete proposals. The reason I’m very hopeful about it is because there is tremendous bipartisan support. Many commissions come up with recommendations, and I think the reason they get stalled is because there is a great deal of division about specific issues. On the issue of integrating CAM therapies, there is tremendous bipartisan support for the idea that those therapies that are useful, those approaches that make sense, should be part of health care. So I’m very optimistic about much of what we recommend coming into legislation, and at least a significant part of that legislation being passed.

There may be more difficulty, of course, about who is going to pay for whatever is being recommended. But my hope is that what we can do is not only show that some of these approaches are effective, but to encourage major experiments in integrating some of these approaches into health care so that we can see if, on a large scale, they’re not only effective but also save money.

REDWOOD: What’s a good example of work like this that’s already been done?

GORDON: A good example of something that’s already been done is Dean Ornish’s work using an integrative approach to treat serious heart disease. [Ornish? program combines a very low-fat vegetarian diet, yoga, meditation, and sharing groups]. There’s been a kind of progression of initially looking at this as a totally outrageous approach to heart disease, to the point at which, after having done some fairly large scale experiments using this approach [published in Journal of the American Medical Association and Lancet], it’s now become a part of health care in many hospitals and is covered by many insurance companies. I’m hoping we can make recommendations that will move the whole field forward in that way. To say, here are some approaches that look very interesting, here are some data that suggest that they may be useful, so now let? see about doing a significant experiment or pilot program to see if this can make a difference to large numbers of people.

I would also expect the commission to recommend that certain kinds of education be included in the training of all health professionals. I obviously don’t know at this point what the commission’s recommendations are going to be, but I think it? reasonable to recommend that whatever we come up with should be mandated as part of the education of health professionals. I think that can have a significant effect.

For us, the final challenge is going to be to put all that into simple, direct language that can be part of legislation. I think we’ll be able to come up with some very significant things. Just the fact that the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) has begun to put out requests for applications for education on integrative medicine has stimulated major medical institutions to apply for those grants and to be more willing to integrate CAM approaches into their curriculum. For example, if we have legislation that says part of the work of a particular government agency is to foster education in these approaches and here is an appropriation of x number of dollars to do that, then I think that? going to happen. The time is right. What’s needed is guidance and financing.

REDWOOD: Does the commission’s membership reflect the diversity of CAM practice in the United States? Aside from holistic MDs like yourself, Dean Ornish, and Wayne Jonas [Wayne Jonas, MD, is the former head of the NIH Office of Alternative Medicine], are there non-MD alternative providers represented?

GORDON: Yes. Some have been named already, and more members going to be appointed. There are a number of MDs who are integrative care practitioners, that? true, but there are several more members who are alternative practitioners. There will be a chiropractor and there are two people who practice Chinese medicine. The fact that there are physicians who are holistic practitioners along with various alternative practitioners is a wonderful bonus for the commission. Many commissions are asked to address a certain area, and may only have one or two, if any, practitioners in that area. Also, the role of the commission is not just to rely on our own expertise. Our work is to go and find those people in the alternative community who will come in and tell us what they think.

REDWOOD: How will you do that?

GORDON: There will be plenty of time, both in the regular commission meetings and in town hall meetings around the country where we will be soliciting input. We’re having a town hall meeting in Seattle on October 30, and our major partner in that meeting is the naturopathic community. So whether or not there is a naturopath on the commission, there is going to be major input from the naturopaths. I think we’ll see the same pattern all over the country. In some areas there will be input from curanderos and Native American healers. The effort is to make sure that all voices in the alternative community are heard.

REDWOOD: Are you also reaching out to the medical establishment?

GORDON: Absolutely. We’ve just been planning our first research meeting for October 5th and 6th. This will be the first of two meetings on research issues. As part of this, we’re asking major medical centers what they are doing in this area and why they are doing it. And if they’re not doing research on CAM therapies, why not? We’re also going to be asking major government agencies. Our role is to bring in everybody who is already interested in this area, or who we think could or should be interested, and find out what they’re doing. And if they’re not doing much, or doing anything, to ask why not. Also, to ask them what would make it easier for them to do work in this area. These are the kinds of questions we would be asking the dean of a medical school which has not done anything in CAM, or the head of a hospital system which was not particularly interested in CAM therapies. So our goal is to find out what? going on and what’s in the way of moving ahead.

REDWOOD: Why do you think you were chosen to chair the commission?

GORDON: I think it’s partly because I was the first chair of the Advisory Council for the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) and, more generally, because a lot of my work has been bringing together people from different worlds and helping them have a dialogue about what kinds of approaches to health care we should be taking. Also, I suppose, because I am a physician who has used complementary and alternative therapies for over 30 years. I integrate a variety of different systems, both in my work with patients and in my public work?irst, when I was a researcher at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), then working with the OAM, and creating other programs. One of these is our nonprofit, the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, that embodies what I hope is the best of the modern western scientific method and the most exciting, hopeful, and promising of the complementary and alternative therapies.

That’s what our annual cancer conference is about as well, bringing those groups together. That may have influenced the White House. Also, I know Mrs. Clinton read my book, Manifesto for a New Medicine and the President at least looked at it. So I assume they have a sense of what I’m about, who I am, and what my perspective is. I also think?nd this is partly based on a conversation with Mrs. Clinton?hat it’s the fact that I am concerned with making sure that people of all income levels and all ethnic groups are involved in this process and have full access to everything that rich folks have access to. That perspective was probably an important one to them as well. A lot of the work I’ve done for the past 35 years has been with people who don? have money and don’t ordinarily have access to these approaches.

REDWOOD: What are some of the ways you’ve brought together people from different worlds?

GORDON: I think that the most recent and ongoing example is the Comprehensive Cancer Care conferences. [See our book review section for a review of Dr. Gordon? new book, Comprehensive Cancer Care]. We just finished our third annual conference. What happens at the conference is that we’re able to bring in the people who are doing the most exciting work, work that has not yet even been looked at by the traditional oncology community, people who a few years ago were persona non grata among oncologists. We’re able to bring those people together with leaders of the cancer establishment?he leadership of the National Cancer Institute, and researchers and clinicians from some of the major cancer centers in the country?nd get them to talk together and think together about how to best study some of these approaches and how to integrate them into cancer care for everyone. So that’s a significant example.

Another is that I’ve worked in D.C. since 1971, first with runaway and homeless kids and then with kids from the Latino and African-American communities, using a holistic approach to help these kids and their families deal with stress and trauma. I’ve worked with a variety of mind-body therapies, with yoga, meditation, Tai Chi and martial arts, nutrition, and exercise, teaching these kids, and their families and teachers in many instances, how to help themselves.

Then there’s the other work that we?e been doing in Kosovo and Bosnia for the past three years, bringing this holistic approach to people who are either in the middle of a war or in a post-war situation, to help them deal with stress and trauma. We?e shared what we know, not only with doctors and nurses but also with teachers and leaders in the women’s community in Kosovo, helping them to then help the mass of the population. These are just three examples of the way that I’ve tried to bring different worlds together and to offer these approaches to people who would not ordinarily have access to them.

REDWOOD: One of the critiques of alternative medicine has been that it is largely a middle and upper middle class phenomenon. You’re talking here about models for branching out far beyond that.

GORDON: It has to happen. I think the receptivity is just as strong among people who don’t have much money, and it? certainly there among people who are not white because in many instances they?e much closer to this kind of healing and this kind of medicine than white upper middle class people. Their mothers or grandmothers were practicing some of these approaches. I’ve also worked over the past 10 years with about 5000 HIV-positive addicts in New York City, teaching a mind-body and holistic approach in a program that a friend of mine started. The receptivity is very, very high. Our work is to serve people, not just to serve people with money.

REDWOOD: Based on the scientific evidence now available, what complementary methods can cancer patients use with confidence?

GORDON: There are several areas in which there is enough evidence for me to recommend that every cancer patient use these approaches. The most important thing, I would say, which goes beyond any of the specific approaches, is to tell cancer patients that you can make a difference in your own health care, that you are not totally dependent on the oncologist. So the first thing is to help people see that they can help themselves. The second is mind-body approaches. There is clear evidence that, at the very least, such mind-body approaches as meditation, biofeedback, and guided imagery, can significantly reduce stress, enhance immune function, and help deal with pain a’d the nausea and vomiting of chemotherapy. That should be included in everybody? cancer care. Third is the use of nutritional therapies, including a basic program of supplementation that can improve people’s chances for good health and for preventing recurrences, and that also can probably be used to help prevent cancer altogether. ***

There was a recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine, which showed that 70 percent of all cancer is related to environmental factors of one kind or another. Only 30 to 40 percent tops is genetics. Environment is pollution, environment is what you eat, it’s how you think, what your life is like. The evidence is becoming clearer and clearer. So a basic program of nutrition is very important here.

Next would be a program of physical exercise. It’s also clear that exercise enhances mood and can enhance immunity. We?e going beyond the old myth, which was that cancer patients shouldn’t do very much. Of course, the old myth also said that cancer patients should eat whatever they want to eat, which is also not a terribly good idea.

REDWOOD: Can Chinese medicine be helpful?

GORDON: Yes, and this is true of both Chinese herbs and acupuncture, in the hands of someone who is knowledgeable. With Chinese herbs, it’s not a matter of saying this herb enhances immunity so let’s grab it off the shelf. If you have cancer, you really need to find someone who knows about Chinese herbs, and ideally someone who knows about Chinese herbs in the treatment of cancer. It can make a big difference, and there are a number of studies indicating this.

REDWOOD: Are there many such practitioners spread widely throughout the country?

GORDON: There are increasing numbers of them. One of the things the commission has to do, which relates to our work on the cancer conference, is to find out who they are. There are people who are licensed as acupuncturists who don’t know that much about herbs. In most states, you don’t have to be an herbalist to receive an acupuncture license. But there are people who are becoming expert in both. There are a few in this area, the Washington, D.C. area. I know there are some in New York, some in Boston, and other major metropolitan areas. For those people who don? have access, there are some more general Chinese herbal therapies for which there is pretty good evidence.

Some of this work was presented at the Comprehensive Cancer Conference. Sophie Chen’s work on prostate cancer, using a formula PC-SPES, looks very promising, as does Alexander Sun? work on non-small cell lung cancer. He’s got a pretty good series of cases and is doing some more research. Both of them are developing formulas for other kinds of cancer as well.

Ideally, you find someone who can individualize the herbal treatment to your particular situation. That? the best way to do it. But if you can’t, then there will be more general formulas. Debu Tripathy, an oncologist at the University of California at San Francisco, is now doing some excellent work in this area. So, I think increasingly for those people who don’t have access, or don’t know who the best trained Chinese herbalists are in their neighborhood, there will be formulas available that will have been tested in clinical trials.

And then, finally, there is group support. The evidence for group support being helpful not only in quality of life but in prolonging life for people with cancer, is as good as the evidence for a number of chemotherapies. I think group support should be available and recommended for every cancer patient. Not just a group that comes together occasionally, but a small group in which people are really helped to understand themselves and to help themselves.

REDWOOD: Are you talking about group support facilitated by a professional?

GORDON: Yes. I’m not saying other groups can? be helpful. I’m saying that the specific research, and certainly my experience here at the Center for Mind-Body Medicine, is working with small groups of 8, 9, or 10 people at most. We meet together over a period of weeks and the people with cancer have an opportunity to talk about their concerns and issues. At the same time, they’re taught a variety of mind-body approaches and ways to help themselves.

The several approaches I’ve mentioned can be included in everybody’s cancer care. Beyond that, there are techniques and other approaches that may be extremely helpful for some people but where we don’t know enough about them to recommend them to everybody and in every situation. Many of those are presented in Comprehensive Cancer Care. Mistletoe, for example, is a very strong immune stimulant that is being used in Germany and other European countries quite a bit, and may have a major role to play in cancer care. Or some of the therapies like Burzynski’s therapy or Gonzalez?therapy, which also may have important roles to play.

REDWOOD: Is it true at this point that no CAM methods have been shown to cure cancer?

GORDON: I’d say that? generally true. But on the other hand, there is data accumulating to show that some of the approaches are significantly prolonging life. We don’t have follow-ups for long enough periods to know if it cures them, but that may just be a matter of time. If Nick Gonzalez [Nicholas Gonzalez, M.D., practices in New York City] has patients with pancreatic cancer who are alive four or five or eight or nine years later, do we count five-year survival as a cure? For five-year survival, yes, there are some [CAM therapies] that are showing that now. But cure means that you live as long as you would if you didn’t have cancer, and we just don? have the statistics for that yet. But there are there are definitely therapies that are significantly prolonging survival of people with cancer, including Chinese herbal therapies used in combination with radiation and chemo. In that instance, it’s a complementary therapy, but it’s making a real difference in how long people live.

REDWOOD: How would you characterize the current degree of integration of alternative medicine in medical education?

GORDON: Poor!

REDWOOD: What else needs to happen?

GORDON: The first thing that needs to happen is that the people who are teaching in medical schools need to have both a personal experience and an intellectual experience of the efficacy of some of these therapies. Once that begins to happen on a wider basis, then I think they will begin to integrate these therapies more into the curriculum. At least in Western allopathic medical schools, it’s extremely hard to change the basic curriculum. Even if you want to change a single lecture in biochemistry from one lecture to another, you may need months of curriculum meetings to do it. So to bring in a whole different worldview and a whole variety of other healing approaches is a major effort.

The state of the art is that in probably three-quarters of medical schools there is at least some kind of elective on alternative approaches to health care. It’s there because large numbers of students and small numbers of committed faculty want to have it there. What I think is going to happen, in significant part because of the NIH push in this direction, is that a number of medical schools are going to come up with more comprehensive plans to integrate these therapies into all aspects of their curriculum.

I’ve worked on the Georgetown Medical School application for the NIH grant. Because the grant was available, some interested faculty (including some very prominent basic science faculty) thought, “This is a great idea, let? do this.” So I worked with them on the grant, and we were able to get support from the dean’s office and from a number of different departments. We have a plan, a way to integrate this approach into all years of the medical school curriculum. Until now at Georgetown, I’ve been teaching a lecture here, a seminar there, or an elective course. Our plan is to have required education in CAM therapies in all of the major parts of medical education. So I think in the next few years we?e going to be taking a big step ahead.

REDWOOD: So the increased funding available through NCCAM and other federal sources is really helping to catalyze the expansion.

GORDON: Exactly. It’s money and it? also the support and the imprimatur of the NIH. I mean, money always talks, but it talks much more coherently when it’s the NIH that? giving it out. Because of this, many academics have felt much more comfortable expressing their own interest and being willing to take on a project in this area. I’ve seen this at Georgetown, where there are people who are very interested in this area, but they were previously interested on their own or in isolated research projects. Once the money and the opportunity became available, they were really ready to step up and be extremely helpful.

REDWOOD: You were the first Chair of the Advisory Committee for the Office of Alternative Medicine. Looking back ten years or so to the time before OAM existed, did you have any idea that by the year 2000 things would have progressed to the point they have?

GORDON: Let me think.

REDWOOD: I’m asking because it’s been my sense that virtually no one?nd you may be an exception?eally saw in advance the leaps and bounds that would occur in the 1990s.

GORDON: I know that this approach makes sense and I know that there are a number of techniques that are helpful. It always seemed so obvious, and therefore it seemed to me that other people would come around to it as well. On one level, I couldn? imagine why it wouldn’t happen. People?rdinary, non-physician type people?re often much more sensible than all of the medical establishment. If something makes sense to them and it works, then eventually it’s going to happen, no matter what interests are arrayed against it.

I guess I’m optimistic by nature. I just kept seeing the increase in interest at every step along the way. Thirty years ago, when I was at NIMH and beginning to talk about this, there were certainly a lot of people who thought I was probably a nice fellow, working with runaway and homeless kids and all, but rather strange. They wondered, what were these alternative therapies all about? I said, “Well, I’ve come to it out of my experience of the limitations of other therapies.” At this point, I think what’s happened is that we’ve had such a long run, so much research, so many hundreds of billions of dollars being spent on conventional pharmacotherapy and surgery, that we’ve all seen its limitations. Just as I felt these limitations on my own body and in my own life, other people have as well, including lots of physicians. In a sense, it feels like this is just a redressing of an imbalance and an enlarging of our perspective.

I understood why people resisted these approaches because I had some of that resistance myself when I first heard about them. When I first heard about Chinese medicine in the 1960s, I thought, “What is this stuff? This is weird, this is different. Could this possibly work, energy circulating in the body?” It sounded like a nice idea. But once I began to experience it and look at it more deeply, it just became clear. I figure that people with open minds and people in need are going to discover the same kinds of things that I?e been discovering.

So on one level I could say I’m surprised. Did I know when OAM started with $2 million that it would grow to $100 million? No, I can’t say I specifically expected that. But did I think in some deep way that this approach was going to make a major difference in health care in this country? I think so. Again, it? a combination of a sense that “of course it’s going to happen,” and yet at the same time incredible surprise at seeing Andy Weil and Dean Ornish on the cover of news magazines, and seeing this interest in all these medical schools, and all these orthodox physicians who are coming around. It’s a combination of pleasure and surprise, and at the same time, “Yeah, of course, why not? It should be happening!”

REDWOOD: If there were a single key message you’d like to impart to all healing arts professionals and students, what would it be?

GORDON: I’d say that the most crucial thing for physicians and students in all the health care professions is not their specific technique?hether it? allopathic medicine, or chiropractic, or acupuncture?ut rather a worldview that has to emphasize first of all that being a physician is a privilege. That being a healer and a helper is a privilege, and that we’re there to serve other people. This is not just about having a trade, or a profession, or a way of making money. The primary work that we do?his is the message of all medical traditions, but unfortunately it’s often been lost?s to serve other people.

One of the fascinating things at this year’s cancer conference was the clear message from patients that our role is not to promote our particular brand of healing, our particular technique. We had a wonderful panel of patients, ranging in age from 8 to 60. They said that one of the most crucial things to them in an oncologist, or any other physician, was that that person not only be willing to talk about what he or she was doing but also willing to help them consider all forms of healing. So it seems to me crucial that anybody who’s in the health care professions be open to helping people find what’s best for them, whether or not it’s something that they themselves offer, and whether or not it’s something that they?e paid for.

The other thing is that people have a far greater capacity to help themselves than most of us ordinarily realize. The only way we as physicians are going to realize that other people can help themselves is by helping ourselves, by doing what we can to take care of ourselves, to become more self-aware, to learn more, and to deepen ourselves as human beings. If we can do that, then we can help other people do the same. For me, what’s crucial, whether it’s in our training programs for professionals, or in programs in medical schools, or with the commission, is really to come back to helping people help themselves, helping people to help one another, and making self-knowledge and self-care integral to all health education and all treatment of all people for all conditions.

Our work is not ultimately about relieving symptoms. That’s part of our work. Our work is about helping human beings to live fulfilled lives. That’s what the ultimate healing is about, and all our techniques are ultimately in the service of that. I think that’s a really important message to get across, and especially to get across to physicians.

Every year we have our training program at the Center for Mind-Body
Medicine, which we now limit to 120 people. And every year, we have about six people, usually MDs, who come and say, “I didn’t know I was going to have to work on myself. I didn’t know I was going to have to use this guided imagery and meditation and knowledge about these therapies to help myself. I thought I was just going to learn to use this on my patients.” No matter how many times we say in our brochure that healing others begins with self-healing, some people don’t see it.

The wonderful thing, of course, is that after they?e been in the training program for a few days, they get it. They say, “I’m glad I didn’t see it. I wouldn’t have come if I’d seen it. But now that I’m here, I realize how much help I need, and how important it is for me to learn how to take care of myself so I can then take care of other people.”

REDWOOD: So it all leads back to the point of realizing that we?e all in it together.

GORDON: That’s right.

Daniel Redwood practices chiropractic and acupuncture in Virginia Beach, Virginia. He is the author of A Time to Heal: How to Reap the Benefits of Holistic Health and Contemporary Chiropractic. A collection of his writing is available at http://www.drredwood.com. He can be reached by e-mail at danredwood@aol.com

© 2000 by Daniel Redwood
lson M. Haasti ¡ Weaver ]]> 23609 https://healthy.net/2019/08/26/shark-cartilage-and-cancer-revisiteda-follow-up-interview/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=shark-cartilage-and-cancer-revisiteda-follow-up-interview Mon, 26 Aug 2019 21:02:31 +0000 https://healthy.net/2019/08/26/shark-cartilage-and-cancer-revisiteda-follow-up-interview/ Every day I can count on calls and letters on three subjects — one of
them is shark cartilage. Ever since William Lane, Ph.D. discussed shark cartilage
and cancer with us in the March 1993 issue and the “60 Minutes”
TV show that followed in three-to-four weeks, I have been getting requests
for more information such as how much to use shark cartilage, which doctors
are using it, are the results from the clinical trials known yet, and what
is the latest that is known about shark cartilage. Dr. Lane was kind enough
to address these questions in a follow-up discussion.



To refresh your memory, the first interview discussed how cancer grows,
how shark cartilage destroys tumors and how shark cartilage can be tested
for effectiveness. Basically, cancers that have solid tumors require a blood
supply to feed the tumors. Cartilage is tissue that contains no blood vessels
due to special proteins that inhibit blood vessel formation. These proteins
are called “antiangiogenesis” factors. This term is derived from
“anti” meaning here that it will inhibit, “angio” meaning
“pertaining to blood vessels,” and “genesis” meaning
“formation of.” Without blood vessels to feed the tumor, it will
die.



The blood network of a tumor is fragile. Tumor capillaries are different
from those of normal tissues and may be considered to be “immature.”
Their walls are thinner and decidedly more fragile. Tumor blood vessels
are constantly broken down and replaced by new blood vessels. When an existing
blood vessel is broken down in the presence of antiangiogenesis factors,
it is not replaced by a new vessel and the section of the tumor fed by that
blood vessel dies (necrosis).



Dr. Lane has been lecturing on shark cartilage all over the world, but we
had a chance to chat again during the first week of November at the American
College for Advancement in Medicine (ACAM) where I was speaking on the latest
in antioxidant research.



Passwater: Dr. Lane, in mid-February 1993, the “60 Minutes”
TV show reported on your research with shark cartilage and 29 Stage III
and Stage IV terminal cancer patients in Cuba from late 1992 through early
1993. The story was rebroadcast in July of 1993. Did the “60 Minutes”
show aid or hinder your research efforts?



Lane: The “60 Minutes” show didn’t aid my research efforts
but it seems to have added credibility to shark cartilage therapy. It also
opened the doors for an Investigative New Drug (IND) application with the
Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The “60 Minutes” show was
better than a peer-reviewed journal article because they did their homework
to prove that it worked. In fact, they spent $350,000 on doing that 12 minute
segment including relatively large expenses to ensure that they weren’t
getting caught in a fraud — especially with the CBS Network’s leading program
and its star, Mike Wallace. So, they studied everything including where
I went to school and if I actually graduated. They went to Cuba with me
four times to see the patients and that is what convinced them. At the beginning,
they saw that the patients were not able to get out of bed. After six weeks
they saw the patients starting to stir. After eleven weeks, they saw the
patients with major tumor reductions On the fourth visit, after sixteen
weeks they were taping Mike Wallace running around the track with this prostrate
cancer patient who couldn’t get out of bed 16 weeks earlier.



Now remember, these patients were diagnosed as being terminal by two physicians.
They were “stage four” patients who were not expected to live
six months. The remarkable thing is that as we speak, it has been two- and-a-half
years after that study started. To get one to live eight months is almost
impossible. It has been 2-l/2 years now and half of those patients are completely
normal people today– running, walking, bathing, swimming. All the brain
cancer patients responded; only nine of the 29 patients died of cancer.
Of those 9 that died of cancer, they all died in the first 17 weeks. Since
that time 6 others died but not of cancer; two in accidents, two had heart
attacks; pneumonia, but not cancer — and 14 of them are normal.



I returned to Cuba last Spring as part of the filming of a documentary now
on my research called “The Politics of Cancer; A study in chaos.”
. While I was there the movie team and I visited with seven of the patients.
One of them — a woman who had a 24-pound tumor — had me to her home. She
broke down and cried and said, “Dr. Lane, without you, I would have
been long gone. I never would have seen my home or my children again. Here
I am again back with my family. It was heartwarming.



The” 60 Minutes” show did my research a lot of good, but it had
a bad side as well. Bad because it suddenly brought in about 30 new competitors.
Some of them are good products but some of them are not. It seems odd that
something that took me years of research to develop took others less than
two weeks. You can’t even run tests in two weeks! Yet, there were 30 new
products on the market in about two weeks. Half of these “overnight”
products were half sugar. There seem to be more sharks on the land than
there are in the ocean.



Passwater: Does “60 Minutes” plan to do a follow up on
your research?



Lane: To my knowledge, “60 Minutes” has never in their
history done a follow-up. They did the story on my research twice, which
is itself is remarkable, and when they did it, it was the promo piece each
time, They are following the work. I talk to Mike Wallace periodically.
Whether they ever do a follow-up is hard to say. It’s not their style but
in the same token they are still very much interested.



Passwater: What has been the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) response?



Lane: NCI is still saying “we still don’t know about it,”
” it’s no good,” ” the Cuban study was worthless,” “come
to us with a $2 million study, fully documented, and we may look at it.”
NCI is still very negative. The support that I have gotten is from the FDA.
The FDA, especially the New Drug Application Department, has bent over backwards
to cooperate with me. There is an Phase II Investigative New Drug (IND)
study underway for Cartilade(tm) led by Dr. Michael Rothkopf. Now the FDA
is telling me that they will give the “fast track” to a new product
that I am researching called BeneFin(tm). We plan to have the submission
stage underway before the end of 1994. We will be submitting for IND approval
for Kaposi’s Sarcoma which is a tumor-like situation common in AIDS patients,
as well as for prostate cancer.



Passwater: You mentioned following up with the Cuban patients. Do
you have much follow-up with patients taking shark cartilage?



Lane: I am involved with some patients first hand as part of clinical
trials conducted by various physicians. I also refer a lot of patients to
doctors who use shark cartilage in their treatments. I have to rely on these
patients or their doctors calling me to let me know what is happening. This
is second hand and is never very accurate. Each week I get receive an average
of 20 to 30 “God Bless You, Dr. Lane, for keeping me (or their loved
ones) alive letters. I have kept a file. In fact in my new book called “Sharks
Still Don’t Get Cancer,” I discuss several cases that are complete
with the proper documentation from the medical community. We’re finding
tremendous effect on brain cancer; in fact, I’d say we’re getting almost
100 percent response on various types of brain cancer.



Passwater: How about ovarian and breast cancers?



Lane: We don’t see that many ovarian or uterine/cervical cancer cases
any more. Years ago there seemed to be more. It’s breast cancer that is
increasing alarmingly in the U.S. Now you will find the uterine and ovarian
cancers in the underdeveloped countries presumably because the men don’t
wash as much so women have more infections which are believed to increase
the risk of uterine and ovarian cancers. In our society we get less cancer
percentage-wise in that part of the human body. I am a consultant for many
physicians who use shark cartilage in their therapy for breast, prostate,
brain, and lung cancers and most other solid tumors.



What breaks my heart is that my office also gets a lot of calls from multiple
myeloma, Hodgkin’s and lymphomas which I can’t help. I tell you it makes
you cry. I try to insulate myself not to talk to the patients because I’m
not a medical doctor. Sometimes my assistant who takes many of the calls
tells me that I have to take a certain call because it is so pathetic and
I try to help them by referring them to one of the doctors on my list. I
have set up a network of doctors in different areas of the world to which
I refer patients. In fact here at the American College for Advancement in
Medicine (ACAM) meeting where we are talking, I have added 20 more doctors
to my network.



Passwater: The word about shark cartilage eliminating tumors in stage
III and stage IV terminal cancer patients is getting around among holistic
physicians. Are orthodox physicians using shark cartilage therapy to any
great extent?



Lane: I estimate that twenty – to- twenty-five thousand people are
using shark cartilage therapeutically around the world. Japan and the entire
Far East have become a gigantic market for shark cartilage. As big as the
United States is, it can’t hold a candle on a per capita basis to some of
these other markets. It’s because the conventional doctors are slow to try
it. If they get sick or their wives gets sick or their children get sick,
I get a phone call. But most physicians don’t use it for their patients.
Since no large drug company is involved, their is no sales person or “Detail
man” calling on the doctors.



Some of the physicians that do know about the benefit of shark cartilage
are still afraid to use it on their patients. I can understand this in a
way, and it bothers me in another way, because they take an oath to help
their patients but they seem more concerned about possibly being sued. There
are ways they can get around that. They can suggest to the patient –“Look,
we can’t help you but there is something else and I’ll be happy to monitor
you.” In that manner, the doctor isn’t at risk of a suit, but most
of the doctors aren’t even willing to go that far.



We are talking here in California at the ACAM meeting. I have spoken in
California, the Los Angeles area maybe twenty times in the last three years.
Telly Savalas died of advanced prostrate cancer. No excuse, as we get 90
percent response on prostrate cancer; did his doctors try it? No! They just
let him die. Dr. Linus Pauling and I had an hour talk two months before
he died . He heard about my research and he wrote to me. At the end of our
talk he said, “Dr. Lane, you’ve got something that is good; I know
it, but I have devoted my life to vitamin C and I would find it very hard
not to follow along with it.” What’s the answer? I don’t know. People
are humans and every human has to make his or her own decision.



Passwater: Can patients call you to help locate a doctor near them
that is trained in using shark cartilage therapy?



Lane: I have set up an information service with an 800 number (800-742-7534)
People who call will be sent a list of the 15 most asked questions and their
answers about shark cartilage. Then if they want to follow up we will check
the list of doctors in the network for doctors in their area or nearest
their area. The problem is there is always someone who will call from a
town where there is no one trained in shark cartilage therapy. It’s a matter
of life and death so even if there isn’t a local doctor trained, I recommend
that the patient travels to where there is a doctor trained in shark cartilage
therapy. There just isn’t one in every town or in every city.



Passwater: Not yet. How do you train doctors in shark cartilage therapy?



Lane: It’s hard. Most of them are so locked up in orthodox medicine,
but I can tell you it is changing. My research was just written up in “Oncology
Times” which goes strictly to oncologists. The article was only lukewarm,
so I wrote a letter to the editor. They printed it on Page 2 in the October
1994 issue and they printed it in its entirety. So we are getting through.
It takes time but alternative medicine has made more strides in the last
two years than it has made in the ten previous years.



Passwater: You have researched shark cartilage for many years and
developed the product. It has been more than a year since our first Whole
Foods discussion. What have you learned about shark cartilage since then?



Lane: Well, I developed that original product five years ago and
I think it was a great breakthrough in that we helped a lot of people. That
the product worked but like anything else, further research leads to improvements.
When helping physicians treat cancer patients using shark cartilage therapy,
the big problem was that we might start 10 patients on it, but only one
or two would stay on it because the of the taste and odor. In Australia
I discovered a new technology when I was there presenting my research to
a major big health conference.



This new technology uses a “good” bacterium to clean shark cartilage
of flesh including the blood vessels and the nerves in the channel in the
backbone. In addition, this new technology is even able to clean the cartilage
without having to cut off the fins that stick out of the backbone. When
cartilage is cleaned by hand, these fins have to be cut off. But, these
fins contain a lot of the antiangiogenic activity. The good bacterium used
in the new technology only removes the shark meat and not the cartilage,
so those fins stay on. As a result, a product has now been developed, called
BeneFin(tm) , which is about 35-40 percent more effective antiangiogenically



as an inhibitor of angiogenesis. Just as important, it has a major reduction
in smell and odor and has no aftertaste at all. The aftertaste of shark
cartilage made by the old method caused nausea in many patients and was
the major reason why patients discontinued its use. In addition, the new
process is around 30-35 percent less costly because there is little manual
labor involved as the bacterium does the work.



Passwater: Since you use a bacterium to clean the product, some readers
may be concerned that the product may be contaminated with bacteria. Would
you please comment on that?



Lane: There are good bacteria and there are bad bacteria. The lactobacillus
strains are good bacteria and this a variation of those strains. Still,
the product is almost sterile and this is achieved without heat or chemicals
— not even ethylene oxide, and without irradiation as these processes could
harm the fragile antiangiogenesis (angiogenesis inhibiting) factors in the
shark cartilage. As I said, the problem has been the taste and odor. The
bad taste and odor are partly caused by the blood vessels and nerves of
the backbone that can’t be removed by mechanical cleaning, and partly by
the high bacteria load which has been on the product. The bacteria count
can be in the trillions which are killed in the end, but all the time they
have been alive they have been making toxins. These toxins are not removed
and those toxins and plus all these dead bacteria bodies result in a distinctive
taste. It’s fine to kill the bacteria at the end, but it’s a lot better
to keep the product basically sterile throughout and not have the toxins
and dead bacteria accumulate.



Passwater: In our March 1993 discussion, you educated our readers
on the Chick Chorioallantoic Membrane (CAM) assay. Now you are relying on
the Quantitative Endothelial Cell (QEC) assay. Please tell our readers about
this test and why you use it?



Lane: I stopped using the CAM assay about a year ago because there
was such inconsistency with results. Fertile eggs must be used and there
is great variability in the length of time that the eggs have been fertile.
Another factor that causes variability is the egg of the hen. Whether or
not the hen has just started to lay eggs or is at the end of her productive
cycle makes a difference in the CAM assay. I found too much variation and
poor correlation.



In the QEC assay, which has been developed and is being used in California
by one of the top universities and a professor who has worked on shark cartilage
almost as long as I have worked on it. Shark cartilage works by stopping
endothelial cell development. Endothelia cells are needed to make the walls
of the blood vessel. If you stop the formation of the walls of the blood
vessel, you stop the formation of the blood vessel and you stop the feeding
mechanism which brings about the necrosis. Basically, the QEC assay uses
known amounts of cultured endothelial cells divided into aliquots to which
known amounts of test materials and standards are added. These aliquots
are incubated for three days. After three days, you go back and weigh the
endothelial cell cultures and compare the results to the standards and controls.



You then determine if the growth of endothelial cells in the control culture
was good. If it is normal, then we proceed with the test and assign the
control a relative value of 100%. Next we measure the test cell cultures.
Let’s say that the product we are testing produced very modest growth, which
means the inhibitor worked pretty darn well. You give that sample a gradation
based on the its comparative weight. So the QEC assay is a very accurate
evaluation.



We have done this measurements on only two products so far, but we will
do it on all of the major shark cartilage products being sold. We did it
on the new product BeneFin(tm) and we did it on the product that was the
standard before, a product called Cartilade(tm). We have shown that the
BeneFin(tm) is about 35 percent more effective based on the QEC test, and
we have it now on two evaluations. I will evaluate another seven or eight
products when I return from this meeting. I am particularly interested in
seeing if any inhibition results from a product from Canada that is being
marketed that is about 99-l/2 percent water. The manufacturer claims that
if you take seven milliliters of their liquid, it produces the same results
as 100 grams of shark cartilage powder. It sounds preposterous and I have
found the patients are dying on that one and so I’m going to be sure to
evaluate that one. I’m going to evaluate all of the major shark cartilage
products by this comparison. This test is an expensive test but it’s a very
meaningful test and I take the position that before a product is sold to
someone in a life and death situation, the patient that is putting out the
money deserves to have the person who is selling it to him or her do some
research. Concrete evidence is needed, not just saying it’s good. I want
to provide meaningful evidence for comparison to the people who spend the
money.



Also, I am hoping to get some human studies going pretty quickly, in China,
possibly in Russia, possibly in Malaysia and then hopefully in the US we
will have FDA approval we’ll have the U.S. studies with the FDA’s approval.
In the meantime, I will have QEC assays and bacteria evaluations which are
the only evaluations provided on shark cartilage products. Additionally,
human clinical trials have now been arranged for breast and uterine/cervical
cancers in Mexico to start in January 1995 at the Contreras Clinic.



Passwater: Are you still seeing good results with shark cartilage
on rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis?



Lane: Yes, it’s amazing. When you are treating cancer, you often
find improvement in other diseases the patient has as well. Many of the
patients in the Cuba study had either psoriasis or rheumatoid arthritis.
While these patients were being treated for cancer, all of sudden after
four weeks, the psoriasis and rheumatoid arthritis just disappeared at that
high dosage rate. Patients of those diseases who do not also have cancer
will be helped at a lower dose, but it will take longer. So, I am now suggesting
about 30 grams a day for psoriasis patients and I am finding people are
responding beautifully. I mean that within four to five weeks it’s a different
person. With rheumatoid arthritis, you can’t reverse the knurled knuckles,
but you can ease the pain. If there is a pinched nerve, the shark cartilage
doesn’t help, but if it is angiogenesis as you find in a lot of rheumatoid
arthritis patients, shark cartilage has a good affect.



Passwater: While we are discussing the amount to take, let’s review
your recommendations for cancer patients.



Lane: In all of my previous research with shark cartilage, and the
clinical trials on non-responsive advanced breast and prostate cancers,
including the FDA IND now underway, a dosage level of one gram of shark
cartilage for each kilogram of the patients body weight (about one gram
per each 2.2 pounds of body weight) has been used. Routinely, this level
has shown promising results with many desperate cases. This dosage level
is significantly higher than the dietary dosage recommended on shark cartilage
labels which are intended for nutritional dietary supplement purposes. For
patients with extremely advanced cancer, some doctors have nearly doubled
the dosage to almost one gram of shark cartilage for each pound of body
weight with good results and no observed toxicity or side effects. As I
said, some patients don’t like the taste and don’t like to take that much,
so perhaps the new product can be used in lesser quantity because it is
more effective. Hopefully, the Mexican study about to begin will give more
information tying the QEC assay to human clinical trial results.



Passwater: Are there any tricks to help the patient tolerate the
taste?



Lane: The new product tastes much better, but generally when shark
cartilage is taken orally, it is mixed with a pulpy juice such as pineapple,
tomato or apricot nectar. Up to 20 grams (4 level teaspoons) of shark cartilage
powder is blended in a mechanical blender with 6-8 ounces of juice to make
a frothy and aerated “shake.” This is taken three or four times
daily, usually before meals.



If taken rectally via a retention enema, use 20 grams in 3-4 ounces of body
temperature water. It is introduced into the lower rectal area as a free-flowing
slurry using a 3-4 foot hose from an enema bag or a kit is available from
Real Life Products at 800-547-6649 (* check last digit could be a 7). Often
a few drops of aloe vera added to the slurry produces a smoother mix. Load
3-4 large (60-80 cc) plastic syringes with the slurry, insert one end of
the hose into the rectum, and squeeze the loaded syringes through the hose.
Laying on one side for 25 minutes allows absorption. Remember, this is a
retentive, not evacuative, enema.



Passwater: When can a patient expect to see results?



Lane: Many patients, learning of remarkable results for cancer patients
being treated with shark cartilage, anticipate immediate, dramatic improvement
in their own condition. After a week or two of treatment, they often become
disappointed when expected improvements are not noted; immediately they
cease continuing with shark cartilage and miss an opportunity that may save
their lives.



Similar to every other cancer treatment, shark therapy does not produce
immediate improvement in a patient’s condition. Occasionally patients will
experience an improved quality of life as early as the fourth week. However,
with advanced cancer, results are rarely noted in less than six-to-eight
weeks. I cannot stress enough the need for patience. Remember, it took years
to develop the cancer and this is a biologic response which takes time.



As the quality of life continues to improve other results follow — continued
reduction of pain, tumor size reduction and tumor morbidity (tumor death).
As I mentioned in our first discussion, this tumor encapsulation has been
confirmed by examination and the “Swiss-cheese” effect can be
observed by Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) and Computer-assisted Tomography
(CAT scan).



Passwater: Dr. Lane, your research is an amazing story, one of the
most important advances in alternative medicine as well as in the nutrition
and health food arena. We will all be awaiting the FDA IND and Mexican clinical
trial results. Thank you for keeping us up to date.



All rights, including electronic and print media, to this article are copyrighted
by © Richard A. Passwater, Ph.D. and Whole Foods magazine (WFC Inc.).

Palmae

Names: Sabal.

Habitat: Eastern N. America.

Collection: The berries of this impressive palm are gathered from September through until January.

Part Used: Berries.

Constituents: * Essential oil

* Fixed oil, consisting of 25% fatty acids; caproic, lauric,palmitic & 75% neutral fats

* Sterols

* Polysaccharides; galactose, arabinose and uronic acid.

Actions: Diuretic, urinary antiseptic, endocrine agent.

Indications: Saw Palmetto is a herb that acts to tone and strengthenthe male reproductive system. It may be used with safety where a boost to themale sex hormones is required. It is specific in cases of enlarged prostateglands. It will be of value in infections of the genito-urinary tract.

Ellingwood gives the following specific symptomatology: “The directinfluence of this agent is exerted upon the entire reproductive apparatus,especially upon the prostate gland of the male. It is demanded in enlargedprostate, with throbbing, aching, dull pain, discharge of prostatic fluid, attimes discharge of mucus, also of a yellowish, watery fluid, with weakenedsexual power, orchalgia, epididymitis and orchitis, when associated withenlarged prostate. In women, ovarian enlargement, with tenderness and dullaching pains, weakened sexual activity, and small undeveloped mammary glands,are much benefited by its continued use. It is a sedative to all irritableconditions of these organs and is a profound nutritive tonic, operating muchlike phosphorus. It increases the size and secreting power of the mammaryglands where they are abnormally small and inactive. It improves the tone andovercomes irritability of the ovaries, relieving dysmenorrhoea when due toatonicity. It may be given with confidence in wasting of the testes in theearly stages and the development of varicocele retarded with the growth andnutrition of the testes developed materially by its use. To this agent isascribed considerable power in reducing the size of hypertrophied prostate inolder men and in quickly relieving cystic and other disorders incident to thiscondition. It relieves irritation of the bladder to a satisfactory extent,correcting the irritable character of the urine, increases the muscular powerof the patient to expel the urine and produces a sense of relief, that is inevery way gratifying and satisfactory. In the treatment of impotence in youngmen who have been excessive in their habits, or have masturbated, it can berelied upon with positiveness. It will overcome the excitability fromexhaustion and increase sexual power in those newly married who, having beenanxious concerning their sexual strength or ability, have become suddenlyalmost entirely impotent after marriage. If the patient is instructed toabstain, from 4 to 6 weeks and to have confidence in his ultimate recovery,this agent in doses of from 20 to 30 drops 3 or 4 times daily, combined with adirect nerve tonic, such as Avena sativa in doses of 15 drops or the oneone-hundredth of a grain of phosphorus, will establish a cure. It will relieveany undue irritation, due to excess and exhaustion, that may be present in anypart of the genito-urinary apparatus. An exceedingly important use for thisremedy that I have not been able to find in the books, is its use forsterility. In simple cases where there is no organic lesion on the part of thepatient, this agent has an excellent reputation for restoring the ovarianaction properly and assisting in putting the patient into an excellentcondition. One conscientious reliable lady physician assures me that in fivedefinite cases, pregnancy has followed the use of this remedy where sterilitywas pronounced previously, and thought to be incurable. In its influence uponthe nasal and bronchial mucous membranes this agent has been given withexcellent advantage in the treatment of acute catarrh, chronic bronchial coughsof all characters, including whooping cough, laryngitis and the cough ofphthisis. It is credited also with cures in the treatment of aphonia.”

Combinations: For debility associated with the reproductive system itwill combine well with Damiana and Kola. For the treatment of enlarged prostateglands it may be used with Horsetail and Hydrangea.

Preparations & Dosage: Decoction: put l/2-l teaspoonful of theberries in a cup of water, bring to the boil and simmer gently for 5 minutes.This should be drunk three times a day.

Tincture: take l-2 ml of the tincture three times a day.

Citations from the Medline database for the genus Serenoa(Sabal)

Saw Palmetto Boccafoschi and Annoscia S:
Comparison of Serenoa repens extract with placebo by controlled clinical trialin patients with prostatic adenomatosis.
Urologia 50:1257-68, 1983
Breu W Hagenlocher M Redl K Tittel G Stadler F Wagner H [Anti-inflammatory activity of sabal fruit extracts prepared withsupercritical carbon dioxide. In vitro antagonists of cyclooxygenase and5-lipoxygenase metabolism]

Arzneimittelforschung (1992 Apr) 42(4):547-51Champault G, Bonnard AM, Cauquil J and Patel JC:
Medical treatment of prostatic adenoma. Con trolled trial: PA 109 vs placebo in110 patients.
Ann Urol 18:407-10, 1984
Champault G, Patel JC and Bonnard AM:
A double-blind trial of an extract of the plant Serenoa repens in benignprostatic hyperplasia.
Br J Clin Pharmacol 18:461-2, 1984
Cirillo-Marucco E, Pagliarulo A, Tritto G, et al:
Extract of Serenoa repens (PermixonR) in the early treatment of prostatichypertrophy.
Urologia 5:1269-77, 1983
Crimi A and Russo A:
Extract of Serenoa repens for the treatment of the functional disturbances ofprostate hypertrophy.
Med Praxis 4:47-51, 1983
Duvia R, Radice GP and Galdini R:
Advances in the phytotherapy of prostatic hypertrophy.
Med Praxis 4:143-8, 1983
Emili E, Lo Cigno M and Petrone U:
Clinical trial of a new drug for treating hypertrophy of the prostate(Permixon).
Urologia 50:1042-8, 1983
Hiermann A [The contents of sabal fruits and testing of their anti-inflammatoryeffect]

Arch Pharm (Weinheim) (1989 Feb) 322(2):111-4Sultan C, Terraza A, Devillier C, et al:
Inhibition of androgen metabolism and binding by a liposterolic extract of”Serenoa repens B” in human foreskin fibroblasts.
J Steroid Biochem 20:515-9, 1984
Tarayre JP, Delhon A, Lauressergues H, et al:
Anti-edematous action of ahexane extract of the stone fruit of Serenoa repens Bartr.
Ann Pharm Franc41:559-70, 1983
Tasca A, Barulli M, Cavazzana A, et al:
Treatment of obstructivesymptomatology caused by prostatic adenoma with an extract of Serenoa repens.Double-blind clinical study vs. placebo.
Minerva Urol Nefrol 37:87-91, 1985
Timmermans LM Timmermans LG Jr [Determination of the activity of extracts of Echinaceae and Sabal in thetreatment of idiopathic megabladder in women]

Acta Urol Belg (1990) 58(2):43-59 Tripodi V, Giancaspro M, Pascarella M, et al:
Treatment of prostatichypertrophy with Serenoa repens extract.
Med Praxis 4:41-6, 1983
Wagner H Flachsbarth H [A new antiphlogistic principle from Sabal serrulata, I (author’stransl)]

Planta Med (1981 Mar) 41(3):244-51

Ephedraceae

Names: Ephedra

Habitat: China

Collection: Gather the young branches in the autumn before the first frost, as the alkaloid content is then highest. They may be dried in the sun.

Part Used: Aerial stems.

Constituents: Alkaloids; l-ephedrine, with d-ephedrine, pseudoephedrine, norephedrine, N- methylephedrine, benzylmethylamine.

Actions: Vasodilator, hypertensive, circulatory stimulant, anti-allergic.

Indications: Ma Huang, has been used in China for at least 5000 years, treating a range of health problems, but especially those of the respiratory system. This ancient medicinal plant was also mentioned in the Hindu Vedas. With the discovery of the alkaloids in Ma Huang, time honored, traditional herbal wisdom has been verified, providing modern medicine with important healing tools. A range of therapeutically active alkaloids are found inEphedra, sometimes amounting up to 2.0% of the dried herb. The alkaloids were first isolated in 1887 and came into extensive use in the 1930’s. Various species of Asian Ephedra are used as a source of the widely use dalkaloids ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, mainly Ephedra sinica and E.equisetina from China and E. gerardiana from India.

The alkaloids present in Ephedra have apparently opposite effects on the body. The overall action however is one of balance and benefit. A brief review of the pharmacology of these alkaloids might be illuminating. Ephedrine was the first Ma Huang alkaloid to find wide use in western medicine, being hailed as a cure’ for asthma because of its ability to relax the airways in the lungs. Unfortunately, as is often the way with `miracle cures’, it soon became clear that this isolated constituent of Ephedra had unacceptable side-effects which dramatically limited its use. The problems related to the way in which ephedrine stimulates the autonomic nervous system causing, amongst other things, elevated blood pressure. When studies were done using the whole plant, only a slight blood pressure elevation was found. This led to the discovery that pseudoephedrine, another one of the alkaloids present, slightly reduces both heart rate and lowers blood pressure, thus avoiding the side-effects that often accompany the use of ephedrine. Pseudoephedrine is an effective bronchodilator, equivalent in strength to ephedrine, but having the advantage of causing less stimulation of the nervous system, and so less vaso-constriction, tachycardia (heart palpitations) and other cardiovascular symptoms. Clinical studies have found insignificant side effects with pseudoephedrine. The efficacy and safety of pseudoephedrine are recognized by the Food and Drug Administration, who approve its use in over the counter medications as a safe and effective nasal decongestant. The naturally occurring alkaloids have been synthesized in the laboratory, however even though they have the same molecular structure they have different physical properties, the natural form rotating polarized light to the left whilst the synthetic form is optically inactive. In practice the natural form has the advantage of being better tolerated with less impact upon the heart.

All of these findings lead to the confirmation of traditional uses forEphedra sinica as an effective and safe treatment for nasal congestion and sinus pressure whether due to the common cold, allergies or sinusitis. The herb is used with great success in the treatment of asthma and associated conditions due to its power to relieve spasms in the bronchial tubes. It is thus used in bronchial asthma, bronchitis and whooping cough. It also reduces allergic reactions, giving it a role in the treatment of hayfever and other allergies. It may be used in the treatment of low blood pressure and circulatory insufficiency.

Combinations: Ephedra sinica is best used in conjunction with herbs that support its effects or help the body deal with the underlying health problem. An example might be with Echinacea, Hydrastis andGlycorrhiza.

Preparations & Dosage: Decoction: put 1-2 teaspoonfuls of the dried herb in one cup of water, bring it to boil and simmer for 10-15 minutes. This should be drunk three times a day.

Tincture: take 1-4 ml of the tincture three times a day.

Caution: It is contra-indicated in certain health problems as it might aggravate (but not cause) the pre-existing condition. It should not be used by people with cardiovascular conditions, thyroid disease, diabetes or by men experiencing difficulty urinating due to prostate enlargement.

Equisetaceae

Names: Shavegrass.

Habitat: Common on wet ground and waste places.

Collection: Take care to ensure the plants being picked are E.arvense or other common species, as some other specices are rare butlocally abundant. Collect in early summer. Cut the plant just above the ground, hang in bundles and dry in an
airy place.

Part Used: Dried aerial stems.


Constituents:

• Alkaloids, including nicotine, palustrine andpalustrinine
• Flavonoids such as isoquercitrin and equicetrin
• Sterols including cholesterol, isofucosterol, campesterol.
• Silicic acid.
• Misc: a saponin equisitonin, dimethylsulphone, thiaminase & aconitic acid.

Actions: Astringent, diuretic, vulnerary.

Indications: Horsetail is an excellent astringent for the genito-urinary system, reducing hemorrhage and healing wounds thanks to the high silica content. Whilst it acts as a mild diuretic, its toning and astringent actions make it invaluable in the treatment of incontinence and bed wetting in children. It is considered a specific in cases of inflammation or benign enlargement of the prostate gland. Externally it is a vulnerary. In some cases it
has been found to ease the pain of rheumatism and stimulate the healing of chilblains.

Ellingwood suggest the following uses: dropsy, lithaemia, haematuria, gonorrhea, gleet, irritable bladder, enuresis in children, prostatitis, and the ashes for acid dyspepsia.

Combinations: Horsetail is often combined with Hydrangea in the treatment of prostate troubles.

Preparations & Dosage: Infusion: pour a cup
of boiling water onto 2 teaspoonfuls of the dried plant and let infuse for l5-20 minutes.. This should be drunk three times a day. Bath: a useful bath can be made to help in rheumatic pain and chilblains. Allow l00 grams (3 l/2 ounces of the herb to steep in hot water for an hour. Add this to the bath. Tincture: take 2-4 ml of the tincture three times a day.

Saxifragaceae

Names: Seven Barks, Wild Hydrangea

Habitat: USA.

Collection: The roots should be unearthed in the autumn. Clean and slice whilst still fresh as they become very hard on drying.

Part Used: Dried roots and rhizome.

Constituents:

• Flavonoids; kaempferol and quercetin
• Hydrangin, saponin, volatile oil

Actions: Diuretic, anti-lithic.

Indications: Hydrangea’s greatest use is in the treatment of inflamed or enlarged prostate glands. It may also be used for urinary stones or gravel associated with infections such as cystitis.

Ellingwood gives the following specific symptomatology for this under used remedy: “frequent urination with heat, burning, accompanied with quick, sharp, acute pains in the urethra; partial suppression of urine with general irritation and aching or pain in the back, pain from the passage of renal sand, are direct indications for this agent. I am convinced after a lifetime of experience that it is more specifically, more universally a sedative to pain and distress in kidneys and urinary bladder than any other one remedy.” He gives the following indications: acute nephritis, lithaemia, backache due to urinary tract problems, urinary irritation.

Combinations: In kidney stones it is often combined with Stone Root, Bearberry and Gravel Root. In prostate problems it combines well with Horsetail and Saw Palmetto.

Preparations & Dosage: Decoction: put 2 teaspoonfuls of the root in a cup of water, bring to the boil and simmer for l0-l5 minutes. This should be drunk three times a day. Tincture: 2-4 ml of the tincture 3 times a day.

Graminaceae

Names: Twitchgrass, Quickgrass, Doggrass.

Habitat: Grows in many parts of the world, and all too frequently ingardens.

Collection: The rhizome should be unearthed in spring or early autumn. Wash it, carefully dry in sun or shade.

Part Used: The rhizome.

Constituents:

• Carbohydrates; triticin, a fructosan polysaccharide, inositol, mannitol & mucilage
• Volatile oil, mainly of agropyrene
• Miscellaneous; vanillin glycoside, vitamins A and some of the B complex,

  fixed oil, minerals including silica and iron.

Actions: Diuretic, demulcent, anti-microbial.

Indications: Couchgrass may be used in urinary infections such as cystitis, urethritis and prostatitis. Its demulcent properties soothe irritation and inflammation. It is of value in the treatment of enlarged prostate glands. It may also be used in kidney stones and gravel. As a tonic diuretic, Couchgrass has been used with other herbs inthe treatment of rheumatism.

Ellingwood says that “its action is solely upon the urinary apparatus. It exercises a soothing, diuretic influence, greatly increasing the flow of the watery portion of the urine without to the same extent influencing the actual renal secretion. It is bland, mild, unirritating, and is used whenever urine, having a high specific gravity, causes irritation of the kidneys or bladder, more especially of their mucous surfaces.” He recommends it for the following conditions: pyelitis, catarrhal and purulent cystitis, gonorrhoea, lithaemia, dysuria, tenesmus, prostatitis, strangury and haematuria.

Combinations: For urinary tract infections it may be used with Buchu, Bearberry or Yarrow. It can be combined with Hydrangea for prostrate problems.

Preparations & Dosage: Decoction: put 2 teaspoonfuls of the cutrhizome in a cup of water, bring to boiling and let simmer for l0 minutes. This should be drunk three times a day.

Tincture: take 2-4 ml of the tincture three times a day.

Ranunculaceae

Names: Black Snakeroot, Bugbane, Rattleroot, Rattleweed, Squawroot.

Habitat: USA and Canada.

Collection: The roots are unearthed with the rhizome in autumn after the fruits have ripened. They should be cut lengthwise and dried carefully.

Part Used: Root and rhizome; dried, not fresh.

Constituents:

• Triterpene glycosides, including actein, cimigoside, cimifugine (=macrotin), racemoside
• Isoflavones such as formononetin
• Isoferulic acid
• Miscellaneous; volatile oil, tannin.

Actions: Emmenagogue, anti-spasmodic, alterative, nervine, hypotensive.

Indications: Black Cohosh is a most valuable herb that has a powerful action as a relaxant and a normalizer of the female reproductive system. It maybe used beneficially in cases of painful or delayed menstruation. Ovarian cramps or cramping pain in the womb will be relieved by Black Cohosh. It is very active in the treatment of rheumatic pains, but also in rheumatoid arthritis, osteo-arthritis, in muscular and neurological pain. It finds use in sciatica andneuralgia. As a relaxing nervine it may be used in many situations where such an agent is needed. It has been found beneficial in cases of tinnitus. Because of the wealth of accrued experience, it is worth quoting from Kings American Dispensatory:

Kings “This is a very active, powerful, and useful remedy, and appears to fulfill a great number of indications. It possesses an undoubted influence over the nervous system. In small doses the appetite and digestion are improved, and larger amounts augment the secretions of the gastro-intestinal tract. Excretions from the skin and kidneys are increased by it, the peculiar earthy odor of the drug being imparted to the urine; the secretions of the bronchial mucous surfaces are also augmented under its administration. The heart-beat is slowed and given increased power by it, while arterial tension is elevated.

Upon the reproductive organs it exerts a specific influence, promoting the menstrual discharge, and by its power of increasing contractility of the unstriped fibers of the uterus, it acts as an efficient parturient. The venereal propensity in man is said to be stimulated by Cimicifuga.

Few of our remedies have acquired as great a reputation in the treatment of rheumatism and neuralgia. Indeed, few cases of rheumatism, or conditions depending upon a rheumatic basis, will present, which will not be influenced for the better by Cimicifuga. Rheumatism of the heart, diaphragm, psoasmuscles, “lumbago” “stiff neck” in fact all cases characterized by that kind of pain known as “rheumatic” dull, tensive intermittent, as if dependent upon a contracted state of muscular fibre, soreness in muscular tissue, especially over the abdomen and in the extensor and flexor muscles of the extremities, all yield readily to it.

Muscular pain of a rheumatoid character, when not amounting to a true rheumatic attack, and other rheumatoid pains when acute and not of spinal origin such as gastralgia, enteralgia, tenesmic vesical pains, pleurodynia, pain in the mediastina orbits or ears, are relieved by Cimicifuga. In diseases of the ear the drug is indicated when the condition is aggravated by rheumatic association, or in neuralgia of the parts with stiffness in the faucial and pharyngeal muscles. In eye strain, giving rise to headache, and associated with a sensation of stiffness in the ocular muscles, or a bruised feeling in the muscles of the frontal region, it will give marked benefit. In doses of 1 fluid drachm of the tincture, repeated every hour, it has effected thorough cures of acute conjunctivitis, without the aid of any local application.

Cimicifuga plays a very important part in the therapeutics of gynecology. It is a remedy for atony of the reproductive tract. In the painful conditions incident to imperfect menstruation, its remedial action is fully displayed. By its special affinity for the female reproductive organs, it is an efficient agent for the restoration of suppressed menses. It is even a better remedy in that variety of amenorrhoea termed “absentio mesium”. In dysmenorrhoea it is surpassed by no other drug, being of greatest utility in irritate and congestive conditions of the uterus and appendages, characterized by tensive, dragging pains, resembling the pains of rheumatism. If the patient be despondent and chilly, combineCimicifuga with Pulsatilla, especially in anemic subjects. It is a good remedy for the reflex “side-aches” of the unmarred woman; also for mastitis and mastodynia. It should be remembered in rheumatism of the uterus, and in uterine leucorrhoea, with a flabby condition of the viscus, its effects are decided. When there is a disordered action or lack of functional power in the uterus, giving rise to sterility, Cimicifugaoften corrects the impaired condition and cures. Reflex mammary pains during gestation are met by it, and in rheumatic subjects it promptly relieves such ovarian troubles as ovarialgia and neuralgia, the pain being of an aching character. Orchialgia and aching sensations of theprostate are conditions calling for Cimicifuga, and as a tonic it is not without good effects in spermatorrhoea.

Cimicifuga has proved a better agent in obstetrical practice than ergot. It produces natural intermittent uterine contractions, whereas ergot produces constant contractions, thereby endangering the life of the child, or rupture of the uterus. Where the pains are inefficient, feeble, or irregular, Cimicifuga will stimulate to normal action. It is an excellent”partus praeparator” if given for several weeks before confinement. It is a diagnostic agent to differentiate between spurious and true labor pains, the latter being increased, while the former are dissipated under its use. It is the best and safest agent known for the relief of after-pains, and is effectual in allaying the general excitement of the nervous system after labor.

Cimicifuga exerts, a powerful influence over the nervous system, and has long been favorably known as a remedy for chorea. It may be used alone or with Valeriana, equal parts. It is, particularly useful here when associated with amenorrhoea, or when the menstrual function fails to act for the first time. Its action is slow, but its effects, are permanent. It has been used successfully as an antispasmodic in hysteria, epilepsy when due to menstrual failures, asthma and kindred affections, periodical convulsions, nervous excitability, pertussis, delirium tremens and many other spasmodic affections.

For headache, whether congestive or from cold, neuralgia, dysmenorrhoea, or from la grippe, it is promptly curative. As a palliative agent in phthisispulmonalis, good results are obtained, in that it lessens cough, soothes the pain, especially the “aching” under the scapulae, lessens secretions and allays nervous irritability. Fevers, intermittent and remittent have been benefited by it; well-marked antiperiodic and tonic virtues having been observed in the drug. In the exanthemata, it is a valuable agent, controlling pain, especially the terrible “bone aches” of smallpox, rendering the disease much milder. Inscarlatina and measles, it relieves the headache and the backache preceding the eruptions. It is stated that it has been used in the south with some success as a prophylactic against variola. Cimicifuga exerts a tonic influence over both the serous and mucous tissues of the system, and will be found a superior remedy in the majority of chronic diseases of these parts. In all cases where acidity of the stomach is present, this should first be removed, or some mild alkaline preparation be administered in conjunction with the remedy, before any beneficial change will ensue. As a remedy for pain, Cimicifuga is a very prompt agent, often relieving in a few hours, painful conditions that have existed for a long time

The saturated tincture of the root is recommended as a valuable embrocation in all cases where a stimulant, tonic, anodyne, and alterative combined is required, as in all cases of inflammation of the nerves, tic-dolloureux, periodic cephalic pain, inflammation of the spine, ovarian inflammation, spasms of the broad ligaments, rheumatism, crick in the back or side, inflammation of the eyes, old ulcers, etc. Preparations of Cimicifuga, to be of any medicinal value, must be prepared from recently dried roots.

Preparations & Dosage : Decoction: pour a cup of water onto l/2-l teaspoonfuls of the dried root and bring to boil. Let it simmer for l0-l5 minutes. This should be drunk three times a day.

Tincture: take 2-4 ml of the tincture three times a day.

“As a partus accelerator, it may be substituted for, and should be preferred to, ergot; 1/2 drachm of the powdered root may be given in warm water every 15 or 20 minutes, until the expulsive action of the uterus is induced, and which it seldom fails to bring on speedily and powerfully. In acute troubles, as acute muscular rheumatism, and in false pains, and as an oxytocic, Webster prefers the strong decoction of the recent root in tablespoonful doses. The fluid extract of black cohosh may be used in all cases where the article is indicated; its dose is from 1/2 fluid drachm to 2 fluid drachms. The ordinary dose for its specific effects is a teaspoonful of a mixture of from 10 drops to 1 drachm of Cimicifuga tincture in 4 ounces of water, the larger or smaller dose being determined by the condition of the patient.”

Citations from the Medline database for the genus Cimicifuga

Black Cohosh Duker EM Kopanski L Jarry H Wuttke W Effects of extracts from Cimicifuga racemosa on gonadotropin release inmenopausal women and ovariectomized rats.

Planta Med 1991 Oct;57(5):420-4 Ito M Kondo Y Takemoto T spasmolytic substances from Cimicifuga dahurica maxim.

Chem Pharm Bull (Tokyo) 1976 Apr;24(4):580-3>Jarry H Harnischfeger G [Endocrine effects of constituents of Cimicifuga racemosa. 1. The effect onserum levels of pituitary hormones in ovariectomized rats]

Planta Med 1985 Feb(1):46-9 (Published in German)>Jarry H Harnischfeger G Duker E [The endocrine effects of constituents of Cimicifuga racemosa. 2. In vitrobinding of constituents to estrogen receptors]

Planta Med 1985 Aug(4):316-9 (Published in German) Shibata M Ikoma M Onoda M Sato F Sakurai N [Pharmacological studies on the Chinese crude drug “Shoma”. III. Centraldepressant and antispasmodic actions of Cimicifuga rhizoma, Cimicifuga simplex Wormsk (author’s transl)]

Yakugaku Zasshi 1980 Nov;100(11):1143-50 (Published in Japanese) Shibata M Sakurai N Onoda M [Pharmacological studies on the Chinese crude drug “Shoma”. II. Anti-inflammatory action of Cimicifuga rhizoma, Cimicifuga simplex Wormsk (author’stransl)]

Yakugaku Zasshi 1977 Aug;97(8):911-5 (Published in Japanese) Shibata M Yamatake Y Amagaya Y Fukushima M [Pharmacological studies on the Chinese crude drug “Shoma”. I. Acutetoxicity and anti-inflammatory action of Cimicifuga rhizoma, Cimicifugadahurica Maxim. (author’s transl)]

Yakugaku Zasshi 1975 May;95(5):539-46 (Published in Japanese)