| Can
Cactus Heal?
continued... Feeling Better By
Mike Touzeau
Food-drived agents, such as prickly pear nectar, are a fraction of the cost, and have no side effects. As McGee puts it, "The only side effect is that you feel better." After a three-day trial, Zou's postdoctoral fellows were calling her out of a meeting from the lab to report an incredible discovery. The cactus nectar was killing human cancer cells grown in tissue cultures! Those results prompted Zou to test the substance i an animal study, which resulted in reduced tumor growth. The next step, according to Zou, is to carry out more animal studies, eventually followed by trials with humans. FDA approval for possible cancer prevention drugs generally averages around 76 months, according to an NCI report, but natural agents aren't required to meet that kind of deadline, a fact that McGee, and people like friend and free-lance writer Gael Mustapha, who has already had a full mastectomy from breast cancer, believe gives higher risk people hope for something simple and safe and affordable that they can use to significantly reduce their chances of getting recurrent cancer. "I thought (being diagnosed with breast cancer) it was a death sentence, said Mustapha, who took tamoxifen, one of the chemically produced chemopreventive agents, for five years and remains cancer free so far. But, there's still a possibility in my thinking that there could be a recurrence," she emphasized, referring to the lingering fear that most cancer survivors face each day. That
possibility was reflected in a study in 2001 at the European Institute
of Oncology in Milan, Italy, that produced significant reduction in ovarian
carcinoma occurrence during a five-year period.
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