are eager to help—or to make a quick Medicine Man with Sean Connery. As est alchemist and 'teacher' in curing dis-
buck—can be found everywhere trying in the movie, nature's secrets are often ease, promoting health and healing, and
to convince others about products that diffi cult to fi nd and quite unexpected. re-establishing balance. Nature also
may not be credible. Unfortunately, it’s The Pacifi c Yew tree is yet another great teaches us that it is the symbiotic rela-
because of these types of situations that example. For you see, it was later dis- tionships—the teamwork—that produce
we now have huge walls and separa- covered that it wasn't just the bark of the answers and the miracles... and it is
tions that have prevented the legitimate the tree that produced the paclitaxel.... what makes it possible for life itself.
therapies from being more accepted in it was the symbiotic relationship of fungi
Western health care. with the bark, that produced the pacli- Amy Greeson, RPh is the President/
The beauty of integrative medicine taxel. Founder of Healing Seekers, www.heal-
is that it combines the best of all worlds It is vital that we preserve these
ingseekers.com, a company devoted to
of medicine—from chemotherapy, ra- environments and these cultures. It is exploring the most remote regions of
diation, and pharmaceuticals to medi- imperative that exploration and discov- Planet Earth in search of medical cures.
tation, reiki, acupuncture, shamanism, ery continue, as it has been proven in- Amy is a lecturer, writer, and the Co-
and herbal remedies. Perhaps for most numerable times that nature not only Founder of Natural Discoveries, Inc. See
of us, the ultimate in health care resides holds the secrets, but remains the great- ad on page 49.
somewhere in between. It’s remarkable
to think how much integrative medicine
is already a strong part of our health
care today: the power of positive think-
ing, meditation, vitamins, and the many
examples of products from natural re-
sources.
Take for example, the Pacifi c Yew
tree. The Pacifi c Yew tree was once con-
sidered a nuisance by loggers who rou-
tinely discarded it because it had 'no
commercial value'. A National Cancer
Institute program, through Research Tri-
angle Institute, isolated a compound (an
alkaloid) called paclitaxel from the bark
of this tree. Paclitaxel had an amazing,
unique chemistry that researchers found
to be tremendously powerful in the treat-
ments of cancers like advanced ovarian
and breast cancers. This activity was un-
like any other treatment in the way that
it stopped cancer.
There was a problem though, and
that was the diffi culty in supplying the
raw material. In fact, it was estimated
that it would take 62,480 trees to yield
enough paclitaxel to treat the 12,000
American women who died of ovarian
cancer each year. (1992). Attempts to
harvest the compounds failed to yield
enough of the active compound. There-
fore, it became imperative that scientists
re-create the chemistry, or semi-synthet-
ically make it. It became critical that we
utilized the best of both 'worlds'. This
approach of fi nding the 'blue-print' in
nature and then recreating it in the labo-
ratory has been quite effective in many
ways.
Perhaps one of the most wonderful
and powerful movies about the signifi -
cance of nature, its cures and the preser-
vation of our environment is the movie,
MAY 2009
23
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