Cancer Fighting Drug Found in Dirt

firesquirt writes "From an article in LiveScience, the bark of certain yew trees can yield a medicine that fights cancer. Now scientists find the dirt that yew trees grow in can supply the drug as well, suggesting a new way to commercially harvest the medicine."

It's Soil

[Anonymous Coward]

I can still hear the words of my college biology instructor from 30 years ago: "It's not dirt, it's soil."

It isn't a new medicine just a new way to get it

[MSRedfox]

The headline makes it sound like a new wonder drug was found. According to the article, this drug was found in 1967. So it's been around for quite a while. They've just found that the soil around the trees end up with the drug in it to. Thus when they harvest the drug, they can harvest the soil to get more of it at one time. Nothing new cure wise, just a better way for drug companies to produce a product.

It's a good drug

[Anonymous Coward]

I was one of the guinea-pigs that tested it. It worked incredibly well, better than the alternative at the time which hadn't worked for me leaving me with a choice of taking part in the experiment or trying a large dose of the other medicine with little chance of success.

I'd heard at the time that it was becoming viable because they'd found a way of synthesising it using chemicals extracted from the needles of the tree, so reducing the impact on the tree. If they can get hold of it with less impact on the tree then that's great!

As a point to all those people who think of "natural remedies" as harmless and western medicine as evil: I was treated with yew tree bark and some fungus. These two nearly killed me even in the precisely controlled doses, doses that had been determined through the deaths of some thousand or so rats rather than trial and error on some thousand or so humans. Now many thousands of humans can be saved from what is quite a nasty death thanks to this new treatment.

Natural remedies are just the same as any other item taken into the body. They can be good, or can cause harm. Unfortunately in this case, animal experiments did work very well and in my opinion have caused net good.

Re:Time and time again...

[Skrynesaver]

This is not an alternative to anything, this is a chemical which can be found in yew bark. Do you consider Asprin an alternative remedy? it can be harvested from willow bark after all. As yew is a highly toxic plant I don't recommend chewing on it in the hope of a cure, similarly the concentration of salicylic acid in willow bark is variable and chewing on willow bark will give you ulcers as a result.

Bayer managed to patent not Asprin itself but the process of synthesising it. As I don't believe you can patent discoveries even in the US.

Re:Next headline...

[delire]

Why don't any of them blow the whistle on this massive conspiracy?

Because it's not a consipiracy. It's good common sense capitalism.

Re:Here we go again

[pointbeing]

But do most people know about these differences? Hell, I'll admit that even I have no idea what you're talking about. All I know is that mutations in cells's DNA can cause them to replicate uncontrollably, hence cancer. There are differences in lung/blod/colon/skin cancer? Sounds plausible! ... but I have no idea what they are. To me, and to most normal people, "cancer" encompasses all cancers.

A common misconception. Cancer is a catch-all term for more than 100 diseases that display similar characteristics - the ability to mask itself from the host immune system, angiogenesis and some cell replication tricks that normal cells can't pull off.

The spousal unit has been undergoing treatment for Stage IV breast cancer for almost eight years - it had already metastasized to her lungs by the time she was diagnosed. Breast cancer in your lungs is still breast cancer and at least as far as medical oncology (as opposed to radiation or surgical oncology) is concerned the treatment is the same.

My father-in-law was treated with a drug called Gemzar for pancreatic cancer a couple of years ago. My wife just finished up Gemzar + Herceptin before we started the current Tykerb + Xeloda regime. Gemzar is first-line chemotherapy for pancreatic cancer but is only indicated in breast cancer after an anthracycline and a taxane have been tried and determined they were ineffective. The Xeloda she's doing now is on the bottom of the breast cancer treatment list but is first line treatment for Stage IV colon cancer.

Different diseases, different treatment.