Botanical Medicine in Cancer Prevention and Treatment

“Plants have been used as medicines since the dawn of animal life. The initial use of plants as medicines by humans is thought to have been a result of ‘instinctive’ dowsing. Animals in the wild still provide evidence that this phenomenon occurs. Animals, with a few notable exceptions, eat plants that heal them and avoid plants that do them harm.” “The use of botanicals in oncology is based on the synergistic hypothesis – that combinations of well-selected active constituents form one or more botanical species will together have a synergistic anticancer effect. Some of the ancient Traditional Chinese Medicine combination therapies have been shown to improve efficacy of chemotherapy in pancreatic and colon cancer patients.” Unfortunately, but not surprisingly, the use of whole plants or combination plants constituents has not been pursued by mainstream oncology research (mainly in the U.S.). “Even those who have pursued whole-plant botanical oncology have been stymied by the absence of adequate taxonomic, chemical, and bioassay validation of the natural products used in research.”