Centuries-old forest secret… or a cancer GAME-CHANGER?!
You’ve been diagnosed with cancer…
And you want to make sure you take EVERY RECOURSE NECESSARY to beat this thing.
So, you ask your cancer doc about incorporating natural medicine into your cancer care…
And whether any herbs or vitamins might help you in your fight.
Sadly, far too many conventional docs SCOFF at the idea…
As though they don’t have A CLUE about the LONG history of killing cancer with plant medicine!
It’s not as CRAZY as they make it seem…
And you’re NOT a “kook” for asking about it.
Here’s how one humble, overlooked tree CHANGED THE GAME in cancer treatments decades ago…
And what it could mean for the future of this disease.
A bark with BITE
The Pacific yew tree (Taxus brevifolia) was once so INFAMOUS for its toxicity…
Children were warned to stay FAR AWAY from it!
Nearly every single part of the tree is poisonous… thanks to a plant chemical called taxine.
But a MAJOR event in 1962 TURNED AROUND the tree’s BAD reputation.
That’s when the National Cancer Institute was analyzing American plants for their potential to fight cancer… and botanists offered samples of the yew tree from the forests of Washington State.
Turns out, the bark of this “toxic tree” ALSO contains plant chemicals called taxanes… which showed the potential to be cancer-killers!
They work by INTERRUPTING a crucial stage in cell division of cancer cells (a.k.a. a “microtubule stabilizer”)…
And that mechanism was different than the cancer drugs that were available at the time.
The right folks must’ve been paying attention… because yew bark was EMBRACED by the mainstream.
The only problem?
There just weren’t enough 100-year-old yew trees that could be harvested to meet the demand for its bark extract.
So, Big Pharma did what it does…
And starting in the late 1970s, drug company scientists ISOLATED its most powerful compound… and made a (partially) synthetic, supercharged version of it in a laboratory.
Today, it’s been patented as the chemo drug paclitaxel.
The FDA first approved it in 1992 for ovarian cancer… which it helped fight even in patients who’d developed a resistance to other cancer drugs.
It’s currently also used against breast… pancreatic… and certain types of lung cancers… as well as Kaposi’s sarcoma.
Paclitaxel first reached “blockbuster” status in 1997… and it’s generated BILLIONS of dollars in sales since.
The mainstream considers this a success story – but there’s a hitch.
Because paclitaxel, like many other cancer drugs, is POISON.
The drug version of yew bark extract comes with the usual rogue’s gallery of side effects, like hair loss… and loss of appetite, nausea, and even vomiting.
And some of that toxicity is linked to NOT the yew extract itself… but the stuff that the drug companies have ADDED to it!
It may have the power to DESTROY tumors…
But it won’t HESITATE to take the rest of you down with it.
Here’s where I see the “success” in this story…
Scientists are SO encouraged by the effectiveness of the Pacific yew tree as a source for a cancer drug… they’re looking at the rest of the species included under the scientific classification of Taxus.
They’re even finding ways to make cancer drugs out of certain types of fungi that GROW on these trees… and contain some amounts of the same cancer-killing chemicals as the trees themselves.
So, the next time a doc tries to tell you that herbal medicine is “just a bunch of twigs and leaves”… tell him about paclitaxel (best-known by the brand name Taxol).
