Scientists have been finding a cure for cancer for a very long time and millions of dollars and hundreds of people are involved in various research programs to find the ideal drug to cure cancer.
About Artemisinin
Artemisinin is derived from wormwood and has been used in China for hundreds of years for the treatment of malaria. Artemisinin is derived from 'sweet wormwood' plant or 'Artemisia Annua'. It is a very bitter tasting herb and was called wormwood because of its effect to kill intestinal parasites.
Life Science has published an article which states that various researchers have found that Artemisinin also helps destroy cancer cells.
The first research on Artemisinin was done by Henry Lai and Narendra Singh from the University of Washington. They found that this herb was effective against most types of cancer, but the effect was significant only when combined with iron. Gary Poser of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore too endorsed these facts. He said that their results showed that Artemisinin was able to stop the reproductive cancer cell growth. Many researchers have corroborated this view.
In one of the researches on lung cancer, Artemisinin was able to kill about 28% of the cancer cells, but when the herb was combined with iron, it was able to destroy almost all the cancer cells. The drug also had no impact on the healthy cells in the body. It was found that the iron attached itself to the lung tissues and Artemisinin attacked only the bad cells and left the good cells intact. This was because was iron was found to deposit more in cancerous cells than normal cells by special receptors. Though the receptors were found in normal cells too, they were more widely found in cancerous cells. A combination of iron and Artemisinin was able to attack these cancer cells.
It was thus concluded that when combined with iron, Artemisinin was able to target cancer cells and could be effectively used to treat cancer.
Future of Artemisinin as a cure for cancer
Many of the experiments were initially done under laboratory conditions. They were later tried on animals and a few experiments have been carried out on terminally ill patients as well. All the experiments have been positive so far. So the question that is often asked is why is everyone silent on the possibility of using Artemisininas a means to treat cancer, when it has been established beyond doubt that it could cure 98 % of cancer cells in just 16 hours?
One of the main reasons is the difficulty to procure and use the wormwood extract for mass production of the drug. Scientists are tying various ways to produce the drug at affordable prices to make it available to everyone. Biotech is trying to mass produce this drug. The second concern for the medical fraternity is that the long term effects of using this drug has not been established and Artemisinin has not been approved by FDA. Dr. Paul Newton of Oxford University who studies fake pharmaceuticals has found that there are a number of fake pharmaceuticals especially in Southeast Asian countries selling Artemisinin with no trace of the actual herb thus bringing disrepute to the drug. Doctors are also of opinion that the treatment works better when it is used under professional supervision together with detoxification, controlled diet, immune support etc. It is possible that in the near future Artemisinin will be available to treat cancer.
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