Friday, December 5, 2008

Better Than Chemotherapy



Qing Hao 青蒿 has been shown to be much more effective at killing human cancer cells than chemotherapy drugs.

According to a study conducted by researchers at the University of Washington, this medicinal herb is more specific in killing cancer cells than current pharmaceutical therapies. Current chemotherapy drugs destroy one normal cell for every five to ten cancer cells, whereas Qing Hao was shown to kill 12,000 cancer cells for every one normal cell. Development of a treatment utilizing qing hao could potentially lower the risk of undesirable side effects, allowing more of the compound to be taken safely, as well as being lower in cost to produce. A mature artemesia takes only about five months to mature from seed to harvest.

3 comments:

mb said...

Additional fun fact: the Artemesia family is known to thrive in poor-quality soils.

Jason Moskovitz said...

Cross your fingers that the pharm industry doesn't start extracting active ingredients and render it weak

Jonah Ewell said...

Too late, I'm sure. They already use a pharmaceutical version (super concentrated extract) for malaria when mefloquine has ceased to be effective.