Coca-cola is over 120 years old. Only seven people in the history of the world have known the Coke formula. No matter how large, corporations are great at keeping secrets. Drug giant Eli Lilly is no exception. While working as an organic chemist, I was appalled to learn how they methodically kept natural remedies from the watchful eye of the media, especially when it involved effective cancer fighters like Madagascar periwinkle.

According to folklore, periwinkle is an effective ant-diabetic shrub. Looking closely into the unique medicinal properties, Eli Lilly used state of the art characterization techniques to identify about 70 different active ingredients known as alkaloids. Their studies unfolded an unexpected, yet shocking finding: It was also effective in treating leukemia and a wide variety of other cancers. Remission rates were found to be as high as 50% in short term studies. But long term studies ceased and were replaced with attempts at making more profitable, synthetic copy cats.

To date, only two of the 70 identified, anti-cancer compounds found in Periwinkle have been replicated. Unfortunately, they don’t carry the highly sought after remission rates as their inexpensive, nutritive parents do.

The final story on Madagascar periwinkle according to Big Pharma is that it’s poisonous. But In Madagascar, its extracts have been used for hundreds of years as medicine. If Eli Lilly is half as good as Coke at keeping secrets, this potential, natural cancer cure will probably forever remain under the pharmaceutical drug rug, along with all the other less profitable, natural cures.

© 2009 Shane Ellison – All Rights Reserved

Written by Shane Ellison M. Sc. and posted on The People’s Chemist, August 5, 2009.

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