Just want to share something interesting with you all.
I was talking to my neighbor who happens to be Chinese. I told him about my babesia and told him it was a close cousin to malaria. He then tells me that he had malaria when he was a child and was cured using an herb. At this time, I'm thinking he must be refering to Artemisia, but he says it was not artemisia. He then tells me that he kept taking quinine in the beginning but kept relapsing. But assures me that once he took this herb for about a week everything went away for good and he is living proof of it. Anyways, he gave me the chinese name of the herb from which I was able to translate to english w/ the information super highway of the internet. It's call dichroa root. It is one of the 50 main chinese herbs. It is known as chinese quinine and is used to treat malaria. Here's a link to it:
After reading this, I was really amazed about how potent this thing is... "This plant is 26 times more powerful than quinine in the treatment of malaria but causes vomiting[176]. Substances in the plant are 100 times more powerful than quinine"
HOWEVER, if you read on you will realize that it does have poisonous properties. So I am BY NO MEANS suggesting to anyone to go try this stuff. I'm thinking at this point that my neighbor basically poisoned the malaria and himself to get better...I could help but chuckle a little.
This board is all about sharing information so we can all get better. I thought this was very interesting. But again, I'm not a medical doctor and suggesting to anyone to try this. The more we know the better off we will be.
Lets all get better!
Posts: 187 | From Gaithersburg, Maryland | Registered: Feb 2006
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This is the first I have heard of this herb. Will see if I can find any other info.
Bea Seibert
Posts: 7306 | From Martinsville,VA,USA | Registered: Oct 2004
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liz28
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posted
Jwenny--
You asked for an update on my babs remission. Currently 1 1/2 months symptom-free. Treatment was 2 months of primaquine, then three 3-day courses of chloroquine spaced one week apart, with pulsed primaquine during the week.
Very interesting herb... sounds like it would be fun to check out.
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posted
-but thats what medicine is, right?-- poison, which is more poisonous to the "bug" than to you!
For babs, I had excellent results with artimisinin, which is called "qing haosu" in chinese medicine. I started out with unprocessed artimesia anua, of which artimisin is a concentrated derivative. I also took massive amounts of garlic, and am quite sure that was very important, too. It is also a component of one the chinrse herbal-med treatments for malaria. It did not make me sick, to any large extent! (the quinine- like herb you linked above is reported to cause vomiting!....) DaveS
Posts: 4567 | From ithaca, NY, usa | Registered: Nov 2000
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posted
One other note...my neighbor did say there were some other herbs in the concoction, but dichroa root was the main ingredient. I will try to find out what the others are and the doses. Also, my neighbor is in his mid 70s and he told me this happened when he was in grade school. He said a lot of his classmates got malaria at the time and were all cured using this herb concoction. He also told me not to take quinine as it had too many side effects and everyone kept relapsing. But right now...I'm wondering wouldn't dichroa root have more side effects since it is so potent.
Liz, that's fantastic news about being symptom free. Please keep us posted on how you progress. I have an appointment w/ my doc on the 31st. I will be asking him about primaquine. I recently bought some hylands leg cramp w/ quinine homeopathic stuff to add to my mep/zith/art... seem to be feeling a little better since taking the stuff.
Hope you all feel better!
Posts: 187 | From Gaithersburg, Maryland | Registered: Feb 2006
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Dave6002
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Dave6002
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Member # 9064
posted
J Med Chem. 2006 Jul 27;49(15):4698-706.Click here to read Links Exploration of a new type of antimalarial compounds based on febrifugine.
* Kikuchi H, * Yamamoto K, * Horoiwa S, * Hirai S, * Kasahara R, * Hariguchi N, * Matsumoto M, * Oshima Y.
Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Tohoku University, Aoba-yama, Sendai 980-8578, Japan.
Febrifugine (1), a quinazoline alkaloid, isolated from Dichroa febrifuga roots, shows powerful antimalarial activity against Plasmodium falciparum. The use of 1 as an antimalarial drug has been precluded because of side effects, such as diarrhea, vomiting, and liver toxicity. However, the potent antimalarial activity of 1 has stimulated medicinal chemists to pursue compounds derived from 1, which may be valuable leads for novel drugs. In this study, we synthesized a new series of febrifugine derivatives formed by structural modifications at (i) the quinazoline ring, (ii) the linker, or (iii) the piperidine ring. Then, we evaluated their antimalarial activities. Thienopyrimidine analogue 15 exhibited a potent antimalarial activity and a high therapeutic selectivity both in vitro and in vivo, suggesting that 15 is a good antimalarial candidate.
PMID: 16854076 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
Posts: 1078 | From Fairland | Registered: Apr 2006
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Dave6002
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Phenanthroline Changshan (Dichroa febrifuga Lour. ) For the treatment of malaria has over 2,000 years of history, its early years have proved effective component of Changshan B (β -Dichroine 31), with Quinazolinone Central alkaloids, because of a strong emetic, to prevent its clinical application. Therefore, the structure of various transformation retain its quinoline-Central, a series of synthetic compounds. Which often 1,10 - phenanthroline (Changrolin 32) to stage Plasmodium falciparum can kill, clinical trials confirm that chloroquine and similar efficacy, toxicity and side effects was significantly lower than chloroquine, but the plasmodium early reappearance shortcomings. Antimalarial in clinical observation, we found a decrease in 1,10 - phenanthroline heterotopic heart rhythm, to prevent further animal tests proved aconitine, due to curfews and ischemia-induced ventricular arrhythmia or barium chloride, stimulate and enhance ventricular fibrillation threshold [50]. Return to the clinical studies to clarify the various causes of paroxysmal tachycardia and ventricular premature beats a good effect on the use of anti-arrhythmic drugs and other invalid refractory arrhythmia patients have good results. Currently, 1,10 - phenanthroline have regular clinical application [51] as anti-arrhythmic agents. 1,10 - phenanthroline often found in the clinical application of the side effects of changes in skin color, structural renovation work to continue. sulcadine is often 1,10 - phenanthroline further structural transformation of the new compounds [52].
Posts: 1078 | From Fairland | Registered: Apr 2006
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Did you take this protocol of antimalarials only, without any other antibiotics?
This is reassuring to me as I'm having problems with Biaxin, Clinda...
Bug
-------------------- Every experience God gives us, every person He puts in our lives, is the perfect preparation for a future only He can see....Corrie Ten Boom Posts: 343 | From Northcentral Iowa | Registered: May 2005
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Thanks for all the technical info. Not sure I understood it though...especially the comparison w/ chloroquine. This herb definitely peaked my interest. What's your take on it's potential for treating babs? My neighbor told me that I could get it in root form from most chinese herb stores and just boil 0.2 ounces and drink it like a tea.
Still leary of it's toxicity though.
Best Wishes!
Posts: 187 | From Gaithersburg, Maryland | Registered: Feb 2006
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treepatrol
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-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
Dave6002
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posted
Hi, jwenny,
I got some from the 1st chinese herb and I am trying it, so far so good. I haven't noticed any toxicity yet.
Good luck.
Dave
Posts: 1078 | From Fairland | Registered: Apr 2006
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Dave6002
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A long and interesting article on Changshan:
From Changshan to a New Antimalarial Drug:
Re-networking Chinese Drugs and Excluding Chinese Doctors
[1] Introduction
In the 1960 Symposium of the American Association for the Advancement of Science it was reported that "pharmacology occupies an exalted position in Communist China, where the emphasis given to pharmacology is probably greater than in any other country."1 Pharmacology acquired such a privileged status in China mainly because the Chinese government had actively promoted the research of traditional Chinese materia medica. While the Communists are proud of their unprecedented commitment to the promotion of Chinese medicine, the governmental support of scientific research on Chinese drugs started long before the Communists took power in 1949. In fact, state support for the study of Chinese drugs arose from the collective struggle between Western-style doctors and Chinese doctors that had started in the 1920s.
At that time, Western-style doctors considered Chinese medicine to be unscientific and an obstacle to public health and national medical construction. Therefore, in the first National Public Health Conference held in 1929, Western-style doctors unanimously passed a resolution to abolish the practice of Chinese medicine. In an attempt to block this resolution, the previously unorganized traditional Chinese doctors mobilized a mass demonstration on 17 March 1929 in Shanghai, and then founded the so-called National Medicine Movement. While Western-style doctors demanded the wholesale abolition of Chinese medicine, they exempted Chinese drugs as distinctively different from other elements of Chinese medicine. In part to recruit the people who had already committed to Chinese drugs for various reasons, Western-style doctors developed a research program which they called Scientific Research on Nationally Produced Drugs [Guochan Yaowu Kexue Yanjiu] (SRNPD). Two main terms were coded. First, Nationally Produced Drugs, in contrast to Chinese drugs, meant those drugs that happened to be produced in China and were not related to Chinese medical theories in any meaningful way. Second, rather than defining "scientific research," Western-trained scientists repeatedly asserted in a self-evident fashion that "Scientific Research on Nationally Produced Drugs could be carried out only by scientists." In short, Western-style doctors claimed a monopoly of scientific competence2 on this project, and the success of their project in no way depended on Chinese medical theories.
The case of changshan, a new anti-malarial drug discovered in the 1940s, provides an excellent opportunity to examine the program of Scientific Research on Nationally Produced Drugs. Celebrated as the major achievement of SRNPD in that period, the changshan research was initiated, recorded, and officially supported by an enthusiastic advocate of Chinese medicine--Chen Guofu. Viewing the history of the discovery of changshan from Chen's strategic position, I will argue that changshan, and Chinese drugs in general, are not primitive, raw materials of mother nature but rather practice-based, fabricated objects sustained by Chinese doctors' socio-technical network. I will further argue that the so-called discovery of changshan was in fact a re-networking process, i.e., one of dissociating Chinese drugs from their traditional network and then assimilating those drugs into Western-style doctors' socio-technical network.
Once we view the so-called discovery process as a re-networking process, a series of issues arise. First, if changshan is also a practice-based, fabricated object, why did western-style doctors, Chinese doctors, and Chen Guofu, all actively promote the project of SRNPD which simply translates one practice-based object into another? Second, how could Western-style doctors monopolize the study of Chinese drugs, i.e., how could they preclude Chinese doctors from participating in or even taking over this project? Third, given that Western-style doctors distrusted the safety and efficacy of Chinese drugs, how could they benefit from the traditional jingyan (experience) of using Chinese drugs? Fourth, how did Western-style doctors manage to guard the boundary of their socio-technical network against both Chinese doctors and Chinese drugs? In short, how could Western-style doctors re-network the Chinese drugs while excluding Chinese doctors from their socio-technical network?3
By studying the history of the discovery of changshan, this chapter will address this series of questions. However, these questions can not be answered by just "following scientists around" and monitoring their "translational" activities--a Latourian methodology that I have adopted in section three of this chapter. In his Pasteurization of France, Latour uses the concept of "translation" to emphasize the active endeavor of building networks and to question the pre-existence of the thing called "context." Instead of being passively determined by their context, Latour argues, scientists must actively build their own socio-technical network and recruit allies.4 Indeed, Latour's network analysis, especially his conception of translation, highlights the role of agency and allows us to study the dramatic moment when scientists reconfigure the preexisting social structure with new objects fabricated in the laboratory. However, Latour fails to take into account that actors make decisions and formulate strategy within a historically constituted field which is taken for granted by the actors and consequently invisible to people following them around. To redress this drawback of the Latourian methodology I will devote an entire section (section two) to tracing the historical emergence of the program of Scientific Research of Nationally Produced Drugs. Because two groups of doctors struggling to recruit state support by way of recruiting Chinese drugs, the 1929 confrontation--a crucial event resulting in what I call a field of the state--had caused both groups of doctors to embrace the project of SRNPD.
After setting the historical stage, I start following Chen Guofu and his Western-trained colleagues to see how they "discovered" the anti-malarial drug changshan in 1940. Roughly following the chronology of this discovery, the rest of this chapter proceeds in three parts. Section three deals with the first stage of the discovery, that is, before Chen Guofu handed changshan over to Western-style doctors for scientific investigation. This section argues that because Western-style doctors guarded the boundary of their socio-technical network against Chinese drugs, there existed a significant barrier of entry for anyone who wanted to assimilate Chinese drugs into this network. While Chen Guofu had played a crucial role in helping changshan to overcome this barrier to entry, his role was unacceptable to Western-style doctors and consequently obscure in most of the Western-style doctors' accounts. Section four looks at the second stage of the discovery of changshan in which Western-trained scientists forced the drug through the filter of their scientific evaluative procedures and translated it into the constituents of their socio-technical network. Taking pharmacognosy as an example, I argue that because Chen Guofu and his colleagues first conducted a clinical experiment with human subjects and verified the traditionally believed curative efficacy of changshan, they crucially shortened the time and labor needed for this translating process. The problem was that Chen Guofu violated a commonly accepted ethical code when he tested the anti-malarial efficacy of changshan directly on the human body. Therefore, in section five, I move from the specific case of changshan into the general controversy about "testing Chinese drugs on the human body"--the very crime of which Western-style doctors have always accused Chinese doctors. In section six, I recast this historical study into a theoretical critique of "scientific translation" as exemplified by the project of Scientific Research on Nationally Produced Drugs.
[2] Scientific Research on Nationally Produced Drugs
Since the early twentieth century, the fate of Chinese medicine has been strongly associated with the history of the Chinese state. In 1928, when the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party, KMT) finally terminated the political chaos of the Warlord period (1911-1928) and unified China, it rushed into realizing a modernizing agenda, incorporating the Ministry of Health into its state machine at Nanjing. For the first time in Chinese history, China had a national administrative center to take charge of all health care related issues. The next year, the first National Public Health Conference, dominated by Western-trained physicians, unanimously passed Yu Yunxiu's proposal to abolish the practice of Chinese medicine. Beyond everyone's expectation, this resolution mobilized the largely unorganized traditional Chinese doctors into a massive National Medicine Movement. In the following twenty years Chinese doctors demanded that the KMT state grant them "equal status" to that of their Western-trained colleagues--to set up an official state organ run by themselves, to establish their own state-sanctioned system of licensing, and to incorporate Chinese medicine into the national school system. Being oppressed as a group by the state, Chinese doctors in response organized themselves into a group to pursue power within the state and the professional interests offered by the state. Symbolically, March 17, the first day of the Chinese doctors' demonstration, was designated Guoyijie [National Medicine Day] and has been observed ever since by Chinese doctors. For Chinese doctors, the modern history of Chinese medicine started on March 17, 1929, when Chinese doctors as a group encountered the first modern Chinese state.
Historians have overlooked how important the issue of Chinese drugs was when Chinese doctors gathered on March 17, 1929, to mobilize the National Medicine Movement. A pair of giant posters hung on the wall of the assembly hall in Shanghai; they read "Advocate Chinese medicine to prevent cultural invasion" and "Advocate Chinese drugs to prevent economic invasion."5 In order to recruit other powerful actors, Chinese doctors not only adopted the rhetoric of cultural nationalism, as convincingly argued by Ralph Croizier, but also that of the National Goods Movement [Guohuo Yundong]. Starting simultaneously with the 1911 Revolution, the National Goods Movement, which encouraged Chinese people to buy only goods produced in China in order to aid its economic independence, had just reached its peak in response to Japanese Imperialism.6 Governmental officers and newly emerging Chinese capitalists collaborated to associate patriotism with buying domestic commodities. As a newspaper advertisement suggested: "in order to make the nation wealthy and strong, please use national goods."7 By translating Chinese drugs into National Goods, Chinese doctors could recruit not only those people involved in the Chinese drug industries, but also people already committed to the National Goods Movement, those who otherwise would have no interests in this medical struggle. It turned out to be a very successful strategy. Other than Chinese doctors themselves, the National Business Association, the National Goods Maintenance Association, and the National Labor Union of the Pharmaceutical Industry (mostly Chinese drug workers) were among those immediately committed to supporting the National Medicine Movement.8
By translating Chinese drugs into National Goods, Chinese doctors could address an important state concern--the international trade deficit. A closer look at the Chinese doctors' newspaper campaign around March 17, 1929, shows that a substantial portion of their campaign efforts focused on the economic consequence of abolishing Chinese medicine. Chinese doctors went so far as to propagate a rumor that, behind the proposal to abolish Chinese medicine, Western pharmaceutical companies had offered their opponents a bribe of six million dollars. Once Chinese medicine was wiped out, Chinese doctors' propaganda suggested, Western drugs would necessarily take over all the market share, tremendously increasing China's trade deficit.
Although the rumor might sound absurd, many people believed that abolishing Chinese medicine would be devastating to the KMT state which was already on the verge of bankruptcy. Within several days after the March 17 protest, the representatives of Chinese doctors brought their petition to the KMT's Third National Convention, held in Nanjing. In response to their petition, the secretary-general of the KMT said that the KMT was watching closely to see if foreign companies would take advantage of this chance to expand their market share in China. He also suggested that those representatives bring their petition to the Ministry of Industry and Business because the fate of Chinese medicine was "not only related to medical administration, but also crucial to national economy."9 Just as Western-style doctors invoked non-medical state concerns to recruit the state--one example being the sovereignty crisis caused by the Manchurian Plague in 1910--Chinese doctors also appealed to non-medical state interests. Inasmuch as competing groups of doctors had to appeal to non-medical factors to recruit the state, their struggles were played out through their respective efforts to join their fortunes with that of the state.
While Western-style doctors did not pay much attention to what they saw as conservative cultural nationalism, they appeared very concerned about the accusation that they were traitorous salesmen of Western drugs who supposedly were to blame for China's huge trade deficit.10 Since many of them had assumed the responsibility of state medical officers, Western-style doctors could not afford to laugh away the trade deficit problem which was so crucial to the KMT state's financial well-being. Hu Dingan, one of the major architects of the Ministry of Health, wrote an essay entitled "in order to rectify the non-scientific doctors' reaction, it is urgently necessary to advocate Nationally Produced Drugs."11 Moreover, thanks to a series of world-famous scientific researches on Chinese drugs, which isolated ephedrine from mahuang and eumenol from danggui, it was no longer reasonable to abandon Chinese drugs along with other supposedly groundless, unscientific elements of Chinese medicine. Therefore, Western-style doctors had a twofold reason to dissociate Chinese drugs from Chinese medicine as a whole. Actually, long before the struggle took place in 1929, Western-style doctors had already developed a series of strategies to justify adopting distinctively different attitudes toward Chinese medicine and Chinese drugs. As a result, Chinese drugs emerged from the allegedly "metaphysical" Chinese medicine as an distinct entity having unconfirmed "scientific value" but awaiting investigation.
First of all, from Western-style doctors' point of view, the so-called Chinese drugs should correctly be called Nationally Produced Drugs. The name Chinese drugs by itself was very misleading, as Wang Qizhang argued, because "while the medicines can be properly differentiated into the scientific and metaphysical medicine, it is absurd to differentiate drugs into foreign and Chinese drugs."12 For Wang Qizhang and other critics of Chinese medicine, medicine evolved through time. Regardless of the country or culture in which one specific medicine originated, it could be correctly characterized according to its stage of development, i.e., metaphysical, experiential, or scientific. Moreover, as material things, drugs did not belong to any nation or culture. Although some drugs happened to be produced in a certain country, Western-style doctors believed that the country of origin should not be used as the basis for differentiation. Therefore, although Western-style doctors generally considered Chinese drugs worthy of serious investigation, they did not think that the value of Chinese drugs had anything to do with either Chinese culture or medical theories. The "scientific value" of Nationally Produced Drugs had to be located elsewhere.
Secondly, in response to the Chinese doctors' strategy of translating Chinese drugs into National Goods, critics of Chinese medicine argued that many so-called Chinese drugs did not originate in China,13 and that some of them were actually no longer produced in China but imported from foreign countries.14 Even worse, according to the report from the Chinese Customs Service, the amount of money spent on imported "Chinese drugs," including Western ginseng, Japanese ginseng, rhinoceros horn, etc., actually exceeded that spent on the "Western drugs" by more than one million dollars.15 Therefore it was very dubious as to whether Chinese drugs qualified as National Goods, and Chinese doctors seemed to be at least equally guilty of advertising "Western drugs." Besides, at least in theory, Western drugs did not necessarily have to be imported from foreign countries; the Chinese could build up their own pharmaceutical factories and produce "Western drugs" in China. This line of argument obviously could not explain away the fact that the abolition of Chinese medicine would further increase China's trade deficit. However, Western-style doctors managed to call into question the dichotomy between Chinese drugs/national goods and Western drugs/foreign goods.
Ultimately, it was not the Western-style doctors' best strategy either to dissociate Chinese drugs from Chinese medicine or to disqualify them from being considered as National Goods. Even if they succeeded with these two strategies, the results might still backfire; cultural nationalists might still accuse Western-style doctors of destroying the national essence, and state business bureaucrats would blame them for putting their own professional interest before the national interest. For the Western-style doctors, the best approach would be not only dissociating Chinese drugs from Chinese medicine, but further translating/transforming Chinese drugs into constituents of their own socio-technical network. In short, if Western-style doctors succeeded in translating Chinese drugs into their socio-technical network through their scientific practice--a field where they already claimed a legitimate monopoly--many actors already committed to Chinese drugs would find new interest in Western medicine. Traditional Chinese pharmaceutical workers might find new customers in foreign countries;16 even cultural nationalists would have to give credit to the Western-style doctors for "discovering" the "national essence" in Chinese drugs. In the Western-style doctors' language, this translation project was therefore called Scientific Research on Nationally Produced Drugs .
The majority of Chinese doctors had resisted the discourse of scientific medicine until Yu Yunxiu proposed to abolish Chinese medicine in March 1929.17 For quite a while Chinese doctors had simply ignored Western-style doctors' accusation that Chinese medical theories were unscientific. However, when Western-style doctors dominated the Ministry of Health and determined to abolish Chinese medicine in the name of science, Chinese doctors were forced to make the difficult decision as to whether they wanted to vanish along with their allegedly non-scientific medical theories. After the confrontation in 1929, the mainstream of Chinese doctors--those most active in organizing their professional association and recruiting the KMT state support--all openly committed themselves to scientizing (kexuehua) Chinese medicine. Therefore, while Chinese doctors succeeded in mobilizing the National Medicine Movement and blocking Yu Yunxiu's proposal, they also made a grand strategic retreat in terms of their ideological campaign. This retreat was further codified as Chinese doctors' official opinion when the Institute of National Medicine [Guoyi Guan] was established in 1931. The first article of its constitution read: "This institute has the objective of choosing scientific methods to put in order Chinese medicine and pharmacy, improve treatment of disease, and improve methods of manufacturing drugs."18 Since then, Chinese medicine has seemed to be always in a chaotic situation in need of scientific re-organization.
The most salient example of this strategic retreat could be found in the Chinese doctor Chen Cunren. Chen Cunren was definitely one of the central figures of the National Medicine Movement; he not only instigated the March 17 demonstration but also carried the Chinese Doctors' petition to KMT's National Conference. After Yu Yunxiu's proposal was pigeonholed, the Ministry of Health invited Chen Cunren to serve as a consultant. More than a political activist, in 1935 Chen Cunren published the product of his ten-years' labor--The Dictionary of Chinese Materia Medica,19 which even Western-trained scientists considered to be a masterpiece.20 The first sentence of Chen Cunren's preface read: "Chinese medicine originated from the thousands of years' accumulation of jingyan."21 Then, Chen Cunren elaborated:
It was a terrible catastrophe when people started adulterating Chinese medicine with the theories of Yin-Yang and the Five Phases. Because of this, modern scientists found fault with Chinese medicine. Western-trained doctors took Chinese medicine as their target of attack and were determined to abolish it. To be fair, the theories of Chinese medicine are surely inappropriate in certain respects. What Chinese medicine has been based on to win confidence from the public and to survive the many political struggles was the remarkable efficacy of Chinese drugs.22
To support the point that Chinese drugs were worth being taken seriously, Chen displayed a series of reports on Westerners' recent interests in Chinese drugs. Then he added:
What I particularly hope to see is that [this dictionary] could inspire scientists and Western pharmacologists to find research interests in Chinese pharmacy, and then to do the real work of scientization of Chinese drugs.23
Clearly, while the 1929 confrontation opened up a struggle in the "field of the state," after this historical event even Chinese doctors looked to Western-style doctors for conducting scientific research on Chinese drugs.
[3] Stage One : Overcoming the Barrier of Entry
Starting in 1945, the leading Chinese scientific magazine Kexue [Science] published a series of special issues to review the past three decades of development of each scientific discipline in China. In the issue on "The Recent Thirty Years of Scientific Research in Chinese Drugs," the author of the review essay praised the research on changshan, second only to the world-famous work on mahuang in the 1920s, as the major achievement on Chinese drugs studies in the 1940s.24
In addition to being separated by two decades, these two studies were performed in distinctly different environments. The exemplary research on mahuang started in the prestigious Peking Union Medical College, which was re-established by the Rockefeller Foundation in 1915.25 Within five years, the mahuang research grew into the resources for more than five hundred research papers on ephedrine (for relief of asthma) published around the world. It is difficult to overemphasize the importance of the mahuang research in establishing the domestic consensus on studying Chinese drugs, especially because the mahuang research arose in the time when the struggle between the two groups of doctors was going through its hottest stage. K. K. Chen and C. F. Schmidt co-authored their original paper on mahuang in 1924 and published a 117-page review article, Ephedrine and Related Substances, in 1930 issue of the American journal Medicine. After that, literally every discussion on issues related to Chinese drugs cited the mahuang research to support its argument. In sharp contrast, the research on changshan originated within a humble school clinic in the southwestern mountainous area of China. While the changshan research never drew similar international attention, its success resulted in the establishments of the state-funded Research Institute for Chinese Specific Drugs and the Jingfoshan Chinese Drug Experimental Farm.
Unlike most other "Scientific Research on Nationally Produced Drugs," the research on changshan was initiated, recorded and officially supported by an enthusiastic advocate of Chinese medicine--Chen Guofu.26 By every standard, Chen Guofu and his younger brother Chen Lifu were the crucial figures for understanding the struggle under consideration. As the cadre of the KMT and Chiang Kai-shek's long-term political allies, the Chen brothers provided strong political support for the National Medicine Movement. Chen Lifu, one of the KMT's main ideologues, served as the first president of the Guoyi Guan [National Medicine Institute] established in 1931 and Chen Guofu was on that institute's board of directors. On the other hand, as statists, they were deeply involved in constructing the German-style state health administration. In cooperation with the vocal critic of Chinese medicine--Hu Dingan--Chen Guofu founded the Jiangsu Yizheng [Medical Administration] School, where they planned to have a eugenics department and a supplemental Western medicine class for Chinese doctors. The last but not least important point was that, having been a victim of TB for forty years, Chen Guofu had developed a strong concern about medicine. He had consulted more than one hundred doctors, including both Chinese and Western-trained ones, and written a multitude of booklets on medical matters
While the Chen brothers' interests in medical matters were simultaneously medical, political, and personal, they had no formal medical education at all. Chen Lifu possessed a Master of Mining Engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and Chen Guofu's formal education ended with military high school. Therefore, even though they both had been life-long supporters for Chinese medicine, their support was generally perceived as being motivated purely by the idealogical function of cultural nationalism.27 As a result, no historian has ever taken seriously the Chen brothers' influence on the real, material practice of Chinese medicine, such as scientific research of Chinese drugs. However, according to Chen Guofu, the discovery of the anti-malarial efficacy of changshan was built completely on his audacious "personal experiment."
Thanks to the social constructionists' efforts, students of science studies now generally recognize that when scientists "discover" any new scientific entity, they are involved in a socio-technical process much more complicated than instantaneously uncovering what had been out there all along.28 First of all, unlike what is implied by the "dis-cover" metaphor, the discovered entity is not pre-existent and independent of the process of "discovery." Rather, the discovered entities are actually constituted--materially, conceptually, linguistically, and socially, if these aspects are distinguishable--in and through the process of discovery. Secondly, while the metaphor of "dis-covering" clearly builds upon an individualist conception of knowledge production--i.e., one uncovers the truth by oneself--the conventional usage of this term suggest that discovery is really about the social recognition of novelty. It makes no sense for me to claim that I have just discovered the malaria-causing parasite, since this fact is well-known but only new to me. In this sense, the recognition of discovery necessarily pre-supposes a reference community which determines what counts as novel and significant. With regard to twentieth-century Scientific Research on Chinese Drugs, the most salient feature was that this reference community was by definition outside the traditional Chinese doctors' circle.
No Western-style doctor's account recognized Chen Guofu's role in "discovering" changshan, although those who later on joined the Chinese Institute of Specific Drugs praised him for his general support. However, from Chen Guofu's point of view, he played a ground-breaking role in this discovery. For him, the history of discovering changshan could be roughly divided into two stages. The dividing point was in 1940 when he sent the Chinese prescription for treating malaria into the clinic of the KMT's Central Politics School [Zhongyang Zhengzhi Xuexiao]. Once changshan, one of the seven drugs in this prescription, entered the school clinic, it was handled almost exclusively by Western-trained scientists and physicians. Therefore, exactly because Chen Guofu and Western-trained scientists had very different opinions about the importance of the first stage history of discovering changshan, they differed critically in evaluating Chen's contribution to the changshan research. The crucial question becomes very clear: Was there, or wasn't there, any significant barrier making it difficult for changshan to get into the school clinic?
Fortunately for historians, Chen Guofu was so proud of his achievement that he wrote a screenplay for the educational film on the discovery of changshan. In this screenplay, Chen Guofu described in detail how this anonymous prescription became the inspiration for scientific research. Reading this screenplay closely, we can understand what role Chen Guofu saw himself play in this history and what he saw as the main barrier for changshan to get into the Western-style doctors' network.
The first stage of discovering changshan looked clear and simple. As Chen Guofu recalled, the starting point was when one of the school guards found in the local newspaper a prescription for treating malaria and distributed the copies of this prescription to the staff members of the Central Politics School.29 Chen Guofu described what followed:
At that time, the director of our school clinic, Doctor Cheng Peizhen was in Chen Guofu's office. While Doctor Cheng was working, he mentioned to Chen Guofu that because the price of quinine had risen steeply, he was very worried about a potential shortage. Then, Chen Guofu asked Doctor Cheng why he did not use traditional Chinese drugs instead. Doctor Cheng responded that since he had no idea which Chinese drug was effective for treating malaria, he could not take advantage of Chinese drugs.30
At least two crucial points were revealed in this conversation. First of all, the terrible situation of which Chinese doctors had warned the KMT government for decades had finally come to pass. In order to link Chinese medicine to some important problems worthy of the state concern, Chinese doctors had predicted the situation: after Chinese medicine was wiped out, if certain Western drugs were in short supply due to warfare or other reasons, then the whole nation would be in great danger.31 No matter how absurd it might have sounded, that was exactly the situation of China in the end of the 1930s. At that time, the KMT central government had retreated to the southwestern provinces of China, a pandemic area of various strains of malaria. A large portion of the governmental and military personnel fell victim to malaria. Meanwhile, the Dutch East Indies were lost to the Japanese, resulting in a cutoff of 90 percent of the world's supply of quinine to the Allies.32 Therefore, even before Chen Guofu started his research on changshan, a group of Western-style doctors in a governmental laboratory had already recognized this crisis and looked for substitutes for quinine from Chinese drugs.33 The Western-style doctors' parallel effort reveals that, in the 1940s, the driving force behind the research on Chinese drugs was to solve the well-established state problem--epidemic diseases.34
Ever since Robert Koch called cholera "our best ally" in the fight for better hygiene,35 epidemics had always been on the side of Western medicine. In 1911, Wu Lien-teh successfully contained the great Manchurian Plague and consequently asserted the Qing state's sovereignty in that area against Russia and Japan. To many Western-style doctors, Wu Lien-teh's success was celebrated as the watershed event in the history of Western medicine in China.36 Ever since, the prevention and control of epidemics has generally been accepted as an important state concern and consequently, a yardstick for measuring the inferiority of Chinese medicine. In his famous proposal, "Abolishing Old Medicine in order to Clear away the Obstacles to Medicine and Public Health," Yu Yunxiu specifically pointed out that Chinese medicine, being "individualistic medicine," is useless for preventing epidemics.37 Yu Yunxiu used this as one of his rationales for demanding the wholesale abolition of Chinese medicine in the First Public Health Conference held in 1929. Again and again, Western-style doctors ridiculed Chinese doctors for having no way either to prevent or to control all kinds of epidemics. Because both groups of doctors struggled for the power over the state, they took for granted the priority of medical problems as measured by their importance to the state. Throughout this period, no one had ever challenged the status of epidemics as the "crucial experiment" for evaluating the usefulness and efficacy of medicine. Partially due to this, Chinese Doctors devoted enormous effort to re-studying the Chinese medical classic of shanghanlun [Treatise on Cold Disorders], which dealt with illness roughly corresponding to the Western conception of epidemics.38 In this context, it was no wonder and no accident, that Chen Guofu became interested in the problem of malaria. If he succeeded in finding the "Chinese specific drug," his success would demonstrate that, contrary to the common wisdom, Chinese medicine could also contribute to solving "state medical problems." However, since Chen Guofu set out to look for a substitute for quinine, the success of his project unavoidably resulted in translating Chinese drugs into another therapeutic technique in the Western-style doctors' arsenal of scientific weaponry.39
Secondly, although Dr. Cheng Peizhen, the director of the KMT's school clinic, claimed his ignorance as the reason why he did not take advantage of Chinese drugs, lack of information was by no means the real problem. Chinese prescriptions for treating malaria were easily accessible for anyone who bothered to look for them. In Elementary Introduction to Chinese Drugs [Zhongyao Qianshuo](1930), Ding Fubao (1873-1950) mentioned a Chinese antimalarial prescription in his opening summary. The prescription, including the herbal drug changshan, was suggested by Ding to be marvelously effective and inexpensive.40 In one of the most often consulted English studies of Chinese materia medica, F. Porter Smith also recognized that "there is no form of the malarial fever for which changshan is not recommended [by Chinese materia medica]."41 Furthermore, when the National Medical Journal of China, the Western-style doctors' leading journal, published a special issue on malaria, it included an article on "Historic Study of Malaria in Chinese Medicine." In that paper, Li Tao, a historian of Chinese medicine, pointed out that a prescription of Chinese drugs (again, including changshan) was one of four major traditional methods for treating malaria. However, Li Tao was quick to add that "no one is sure about the curative efficacy of this prescription."42 It was not difficult at all to find those pieces of "information" about Chinese drugs; the problem was trusting those Chinese drugs in the way they used to be trusted and used by Chinese doctors.43 Western-style doctors could not trust Chinese drugs until they succeeded in translating Chinese drugs into their socio-technical network.
Nothing better explains my point than the following episode. After the antimalarial efficacy of changshan was generally accepted by the Western-style doctors, Xu Zhifang, a chemist in the Chinese Academia Sinica, recalled how he had cured his own malaria with jienue pill, which included changshan as its key component. After taking the pills which he made according to the prescription in the Bencao Gangmu [Systematic Materia Medica] (1552-1593), Xu Zhifang recovered completely. However, because "there were no physiological and pharmacological experiments [on the efficacy of changshan], I did not dare to announce my result to the public. Moreover, since I could not figure out the chemical composition of the pill, I could not trust it myself," wrote Xu Zhifang.44 As revealed in this case, Xu Zhifang was not lacking information; he not only knew of the reputed curative efficacy of the jienue pill but also conducted a self-experiment which confirmed its efficacy. Unfortunately, the success of his experiment did not mean anything to the Western-trained scientists as a group. As long as he could not tell his colleagues and would not write a paper on his success, his success remained his personal jingyan (experience). Most importantly, Xu Zhifang's confession made it clear that he could not make his "personal experiment" public unless the Chinese Drug first went through a series of trials--chemical, physiological, and pharmacological. This means that the Chinese drugs had to be materially translated into something identifiable in the Western-style doctors' technical network. Individual scientists and Western-style doctors (including Doctors Cheng Peizhen and Xu Zhifang) could not use Chinese Drugs, not because they happened to have no information about Chinese drugs, but because Western-style doctors as a group would not collectively recognize the efficacy of a specific Chinese drug before it was assimilated into constituents of their collectively shared socio-technical network.
While Xu Zhifang did not dare to announce his jingyan, four years later when he found that so many poor villagers were sick from malaria and could not afford either Western or Chinese drugs, Xu Zhifang decided to produce the pills for sale. Within eight months, Xu Zhifang sold more than 100,000 pills. One might find Xu Zhifang inconsistent in these two occasions, but Xu faced a difficult situation. As a Western-trained chemist, he was not allowed to recognize the efficacy of changshan without first translating changshan into the constituents of the socio-technical network which he shared with his colleagues. On the other hand, as long as Chinese drugs were foreign to Western-style doctors, even if Xu declared the efficacy of changshan on the basis of his personal jingyan, his claim would not have been honored by his colleagues as anything more than one made by a Chinese doctor.45 However, it took a lot of resources and hard labor to get changshan (technically) translated and its efficacy (collectively) recognized. Xu Zhifang ended up using changshan in its traditional network--making the jienue pills according to the Systematic Materia Medica and then selling them to Chinese patients.
Dr. Cheng Peizhen was under similar constraints that prevented him from recognizing the efficacy of Chinese drugs. Dr. Cheng Peizhen was not ignorant about anti-malaria Chinese drugs by accident; his self-claimed ignorance was a structured one: he was required by his professional membership to claim ignorance in situations where average Chinese people would think otherwise. Therefore, no matter how many "personal experiences" had confirmed the efficacy of this prescription, Dr. Cheng Peizhen or any other individual Western-style doctor simply could not openly recognize its efficacy. In other words, before changshan was assimilated into Western-style doctors' socio-technical network, any clinical success with it would still be categorized as personal jingyan (experience) which was in need of experimental verification.
After receiving the prescription, Chen Guofu described in detail how he tested this prescription on a visitor of his family, Mrs. Chu, who was sick with malaria. When Mrs. Chu recovered after taking this prescription, "Director Chen [Guofu] took ease and felt strongly interested in this prescription. A grant project emerged in Director Chen's mind."46 While Chen Guofu excitedly boasted about his "experiment" on Mrs. Chu, his experiment did not matter as much as he thought. Ultimately, in what sense was Chen Guofu's experiment more convincing or reliable than that of either the Western-trained chemist Xu Zhifang or the renowned Chinese doctor Zhang Xichun? If Chen Guofu had not been in the position to push the prescription into this school clinic, his curing of Mrs. Chu would just have added another jingyan whose scientific status was highly questionable.
By no means do I suggest that Chen Guofu enforced the entry of changshan purely by way of his political power. From Chen Guofu's point of view, it was completely legitimate for him to "introduce" this prescription to Dr. Cheng Peizhen because he had already confirmed its efficacy through his own experience. However, from the Western-style doctors' point of view, Chen Guofu, just like any other Chinese doctor, had no scientific competence at all for evaluating the efficacy of Chinese drugs. Inasmuch as SRNPD means nothing more than to assimilate Chinese drugs into Western-style doctors' socio-technical network, Western-style doctors had in fact monopolized the means of "scientizing" Chinese drugs. No wonder that during this period Western-style doctors took it as self-evident that "only scientists can scientifically research Chinese drugs."47
Since there was no collectively-sanctioned mechanism to screen Chinese drugs, when individual Western-style doctors wanted to select a Chinese drug for research, his initial selection was often influenced by "extraneous" factors such as the informants' social status or his non-professional relationship with the informant. In the paradigmatic study on ephedrine conducted in the Peking Union Medical College, K. K. Chen chose to investigate mahuang precisely because his uncle, a herb physician, strongly suggested him to look into it.48 Although mahuang and changshan research were done in two dramatically different environments, these two researches shared a crucial similarity--when Western-style doctors first selected those Chinese drugs for investigation, they were influenced by people with whom they had personal relationships. Chen Guofu was Dr. Cheng Peizhen's superior in the school,49 and K. K. Chen trusted his uncle's recommendation. In both cases, scientists' preliminary trust in Chinese drugs was based on trust in their personal acquaintances. In the final analysis, the information flow between outside and inside a network is unavoidably irregular and by definition influenced by "extraneous" factors.50
The third day, Director Chen [Guofu] checked out books and studied the characteristics of the seven Chinese drugs in this prescription. Then, he invited Dr. Cheng Peizhen to come to his office, telling Dr. Cheng about this prescription and his successful experiment. Director Chen Guofu asked Dr. Cheng to buy those Chinese drugs and take on systematic experimentation on them. Later, director Chen [Guofu] visited doctor Zhang Jianzhai [a very famous traditional Chinese Doctor] and discussed with him the properties of this prescription and the procedure for making this remedy. Director Chen learned a lot through this discussion.51
Chen Guofu never spelled out how his learning from Chinese doctor Zhang Jianzhai had assisted the further research; neither did any Western-style doctor or scientist. Actually, no Western-style doctor gave any credit to either Chen Guofu or Zhang Jianzhai. They traced this prescription back to the classic materia medica for which no one could claim credit. Besides, Chen Guofu's role was unspeakable for Western-style doctors--using Mrs. Chu as guinea pig,52 facilitating the entry of changshan with his position, not to mention his totally lacking qualifications in medicine. Most importantly, Chen Guofu disappeared from Western-style doctors' accounts of this story because from their point of view the scientific value of Chen Gufu's so-called "personal experiment" amounted to nothing.
[4] Stage Two: Re-networking Changshan
Dr. Cheng Peizhen immediately organized a clinical research team to investigate the effectiveness of this prescription.53 According to Chen Guofu, they first recruited a group of fifty students reportedly sick with malaria. Once it was confirmed that there were malaria parasites in their blood, the students were assigned to take this Chinese remedy. On the night when the experimental result revealed that the Chinese remedy was capable of killing malaria parasites, "Dr. Cheng became extremely excited and ran in pouring rain to report [it] to the director, Chen Guofu."54 Clearly, Dr. Cheng Peizhen contained his excitement (or suspicion) about Chen Guofu's success until he had confirmed the efficacy of this prescription himself. Doctor Cheng's reservation further supported the possibility that he was willing to conduct clinical experiments on this prescription mainly because it was suggested by Chen Guofu.
Doctor Cheng Peizhen's clinical experiment was the Western-style doctors' first step in assimilating the prescription into their socio-technical network. It, I would argue, was also the step of critical importance. Instead of relying on patients' reports of their physical situation, Dr. Cheng measured the level of malaria-causing plasmodia in the patients' blood and took the disappearance of those parasites to be the criterion of cure. While Western-style doctors still had no knowledge about the chemical composition of the seven drugs in this prescription, they at least knew by now that in combination these drugs, like quinine, could serve as a magic bullet to kill those malaria-causing parasites.
After Dr. Cheng Peizhen succeeded in the clinical experiment, he further found that changshan used alone was as effective against malaria as when used in combination with other substances, except for attendant nausea. Then Chen Guofu reported his discovery directly to the leader of the KMT--Chiang Kai-shek. According to Chen Guofu, Chiang Kai-shek immediately appropriated special aid to fund the Research Laboratory for National Drugs in the Central Politics School. Moreover, Chiang Kai-shek ordered the National Health Administration (which had been dominated by Western-style doctors since its establishment) to support Chen Guofu's project. Under Chiang's full support, Chen Guofu not only set up a relatively well-equipped research laboratory but also recruited a team of Western-style doctors and scientists from various fields to join his project.55
The results of their research were collected in the Preliminary Research Report on Changshan for Treating Malaria [Changshan Zhinue Chubu Yanjiu Baogao]56 published in 1944. With Chen Guofu's preface in front, the report was subdivided into four disciplines: (1) pharmacognosy, by Guan Guangdi, (2) chemistry, by Jiang Daqu, (3) pharmacology, by Liu Chenru, and (4) clinical research, by Chen Fangzhi et al. As the project director admitted, the common departure point for all four research groups was the fact that changshan had been clinically confirmed to have antimalarial activity.57 Taking Guan Guangdi's pharmacognostic study as an example, I will demonstrate how Doctor Cheng Peizhen's successful clinical experiment crucially shaped the course of changshan research.
* * *
Before Guan Guangdi conducted modern pharmacognostic research on changshan, he had to solve a tricky problem: What was the thing called changshan? For Guan Guangdi, the problem of identifying changshan consisted of two sub-problems. First of all, what was the historical identity of the herbal drug changshan in the tradition of Chinese materia medica? Second, in terms of modern pharmacognosy, which plant was the source of this herbal drug changshan described in the Chinese materia medica?
By comparing descriptions of changshan documented in the Chinese materia medica, Guan Guangdi classified changshan into three types of herbal drugs--jigu-changshan, haizhou-changshan, and tu-changshan. Then, citing the famous Qing dynasty bencaologist58 (roughly, scholar of Chinese materia medica) Wu Qijun's59 (1789-1847) remarks on changshan, Guan Guangdi concluded that "at that time there were so many types of changshan that Wu Qijun could not differentiate the genuine from the fake ones."60 Just like Wu Qijun almost a century before, Guan Guangdi could not conclude positively which was the genuine article among these three possibilities. Throughout this paper, he called his tentative conclusion--jigu-changshan--a hypothesis.61
The historical documents of the materia medica provided only partial information for identifying changshan. However, the clinically confirmed antimalarial activity of changshan turned out to be the most useful guide (or constraint) in determining its identity. For example, Guan Guangdi eliminated the possibility that tu-changshan was the genuine changshan, because it was reported to have no efficacy in curing malaria.62 Initially, in order to conduct chemical and pharmacological experiments on Chinese drugs, Western-style doctors demanded "a complete identification of mineral drugs, animal drugs, and herbal drugs."63 However, in this case, the logic of actual practice went in the opposite direction--the clinically confirmed antimalarial efficacy played the pivotal role in determining the "most possible" historical identity of changshan. I say "most possible" not only because Guan Guangdi self-consciously considered his choice of jigu-changshan to be a hypothesis, but also because he clearly did not care very much whether jigu-changshan really corresponded to the historical reality of changshan, or even whether a unique and consistent historical identity of changshan existed at all.64 The ancient doctors could get confused, just as the best nineteenth century bencaologist Wu Qijun admitted. Among many types of changshan recorded in the documents, Guan's project was to identify the "effective" changshan as judged by current scientific standards.65
The already confirmed efficacy of changshan also played a crucial role in determining the botanical identity of changshan. Assuming jigu-changshan to be the changshan described in the materia medica, Guan Guangdi found two possible plant sources: Orixa Japonica Thunb. and Dichroa Febrifuga Lour.66 The former was produced mostly in Japan and had been thoroughly studied by Japanese scientists from the fields of chemistry, pharmacology, and pharmacognosy. It was known for sure that while the Orixa Japonica Thunb. demonstrated antipyretic activity, it had no efficacy for treating malaria.67 Since Western-trained scientists generally accepted the Japanese identification of the changshan source as Orixa Japonica Thunb, they were suspicious about the antimalarial efficacy of changshan as recorded in Chinese materia medica.68
The truth was that the Japanese changshan was completely different from the Chinese changshan. Although Japanese scholars had traced changshan to Orixa Japonica Thunb. since 1827, the root of this plant was morphologically different from the one described in Chinese materia medica.69 In fact, because changshan was not produced in Japan, Japanese doctors had used various native substitutes, including kokusaki (Orixa Japonica Thunb) since ancient times.70 Before this time, because of Japanese scholars' leading position in the scientific research of Chinese materia medica, Chinese doctors just copied the Japanese scholars' conclusion that Orixa Japonica Thunb was the botanical identity of Chinese changshan. For example, in Chen Cunren's The Dictionary of Chinese Materia Medica (1935),71 he simply put Orixa Japonica Thunb under the entry of "foreign name" for changshan. Therefore, if Chen Guofu was determined to look for Orixa Japonica Thunb, he would have not been able to buy the "right" drug from the local drug store. Now that this local changshan was demonstrated to be effective in treating malaria, Guan Guangdi rejected the non-effective Orixa Japonica Thunb and took Dichroa Febrifuga Lour. to be the plant source of changshan.
The ultimate evidence came from juxtaposing the sliced specimen of the root of Dichroa Febrifuga Lour. (grown in the laboratory) and jigu-changshan (bought from the local drug market in Chongqing) under a microscope. Jigu-changshan could serve as the ultimate referent because it was the same type of local herbal drug which Chen Guofu's and Doctor Cheng Peizhen's clinical experiments had demonstrated to be active. In principle, in order to know if changshan was effective, one had to be able to first identify changshan and then conduct clinical experimentation on it. In reality, without the knowledge that changshan was effective in treating malaria, one would find it very difficult to sort out its identity, not to mention that one might end up doubting the existence of "an" identity for changshan. I am not suggesting that there was no way out of this paradox. Rather, my point is that because Chen Guofu and his colleagues first conducted a clinical experiment with human subjects and verified the traditionally believed curative efficacy of changshan, they crucially shortened the time and labour needed to escape this cycle.
[5] Testing Chinese Drugs on the Human Body
The Western pharmacologists always tested their drugs with animals, and then put the drugs into clinical use on humans. In order to study the efficacy of drugs, Chinese had experimented on "humans" for thousands of years. For what reason do the present physicians not trust those drugs? Why do those precious jingyan (experiences) accumulated for thousands of years not count?
Chen Guofu72
Although Chen Guofu's "clinical experiment first strategy" had substantially accelerated the scientific research on changshan, he and Chinese doctors in other similar contexts, were severely criticized by Western-style doctors for this strategy. Chen Guofu once recalled that the way his laboratory studied changshan was criticized by a visitor as "54321," i.e., in the reversed order of research.73 Maybe because Chen Guofu was neither a scientist nor a doctor, he did not care about this criticism too much. However, his colleague scientists and doctors took it bitterly, because they recognized that their approach was generally perceived to be violating an ethical consensus among scientists.
Let me first explain what 54321 meant.74 In his 1952 paper, "Now Is the Time to Study Chinese Drugs!" Yu Yunxiu juxtaposed two competing programs for conducting scientific research on Chinese drugs. These two programs--the Received Program vs. the Reverse-Ordered Program--were differentiated mainly by the order of research procedures, i.e., 12345 vs. 54321. The order of the "Received Program," prescribed by the Western-style doctors, was chemical analysis--animal experiment--clinical application--artificial synthesis--structural modification.75 First, scientists put Chinese drugs into chemical analysis in order to find the active component which was supposed to be responsible for the activity of the herbs. Then, they conducted pharmacological experiments with the isolated chemical, in which a solution of the chemical was injected into laboratory animals and the effect on blood pressure, respiration, heartbeat, and other vital signs observed. Only with the success of animal experiments did they start clinical experiments of the extracted chemical with human subjects. Once the clinical efficacy was confirmed, chemists would try to synthesize the chemical through artificial means, forming the basis for production on an industrial scale. Finally, in order to get rid of the unwanted side effects or to improve the curative efficacy, scientists would try to modify the chemical structure of the extracted active chemical. Predictably, as the first step of this popular program, chemical research disproportionally dominated the study of Chinese drugs in both the 1930s and 1940s.76
To a very large degree, what Yu Yunxiu called 12345 captured the procedures that K. K. Chen's group and their forerunners used to develop ephedrine from the Chinese herbal drug mahuang.77 Unknown to their Western colleagues, the pioneering work was totally done by the Japanese scholars. First, in 1885, G. Yamanashi isolated the active principle from mahuang. The pure alkaloid was obtained by N. Nagai and Y. Hori in 1887, and E. Merck in 1888. The physiological investigation, done by K. Miura, while demonstrating the mydriatic action of the drug, disclosed the toxic effect of large doses upon the circulation. Consequently, the ephedrine for a while was used in Western Medicine only as a new mydriatic and regarded as a very toxic substance. For many years after that, research on ephedrine was limited to chemistry: analyzing its chemical composition and trying to synthesize it artificially. This situation continued until K. K. Chen and C. F. Schmidt discovered the clinical use of ephedrine through animal experiments. Their work demonstrated that ephedrine could be used as a substitute for epinephrine and consequently justified many traditional Chinese uses of it, such as a circulatory stimulant, diaphoretic, antipyretic, and sedative for coughs.78 In this sense, many Chinese doctors later argued, traditional jingyan of Chinese drugs could better serve as a guide for scientific research on Chinese drugs. If one really trusted Chinese drugs, he would never be satisfied with using mahuang--a key ingredient of many well-respected Chinese prescriptions--simply as a mydriatic. More interestingly, as K. K. Chen pointed out, "ephedrine was available in pure form...more than twelve years before epinephrine, the active principle of the suprarenal medulla, was first isolated."79 Finally, it should be emphasized that after the Japanese chemist Nagai Nagayoshi first isolated the alkaloid from mahuang in 1887, it took almost half a century to turn this alkaloid into a clinically useful drug.
In contrast, the Reverse-Ordered Program--which Chen Guofu called 54321 and Yu Yunxiu called dao-xing-ni-shi (acting in the reversed order)--went in the following sequence: clinical experiment--animal experiment--chemical analysis--re-test and artificial synthesis--structural modification. The key difference between the two competing programs depended on whether to put clinical experiment on human subjects as the first step.80 In fact, in the 1930's, clinical experimentation with Chinese drugs on the human body was a highly charged issue. Western-style doctors repeatedly and strongly attacked Chinese doctor for treating their patients as guinea pigs by feeding them life-threatening drugs.81 Zhao Juhuang, the first and probably the most important Chinese pharmacognost at that time, specifically argued against the research program which conducted clinical experiments on the human body before chemical analysis and pharmacological experiments.82 In his proposal for establishing the Research Institute of Chinese Drugs in Academia Sinica (Chinese Academy of Science), Zhao Juhuang did not include clinical experiments among the tasks of the Experiment Section, which exclusively specialized in animal experiments.83 In order to emphasize the danger of taking Chinese drugs, elsewhere Yu Yunxiu repeatedly quoted a famous Chinese saying--xue-yi-fei-ren, meaning "(one) learns medicine through sacrificing human lives."84 Therefore, rather than simply being an alternative research strategy, Chen Guofu's "clinical experiment first" approach invoked serious ethical concerns.
As a matter of fact, scientists involved in Chen Guofu's project appeared very uncomfortable about directly conducting clinical experiments with the human subject. Chen Fangzhi, a Western-trained scientist responsible for clinical experimentation on changshan, specifically commented on this issue. According to the regular procedure of developing a new drug, he said, one should not skip animal testing before going directly to clinical experimentation on humans. Nevertheless, Chen Fangzhi circumvented the issue by arguing:
Our changshan is actually not a new drug. The Old-style Doctors have used it for thousands of years.... Therefore, even though we used it directly on the human body, our act is supposedly not against the standard of humanism. Consequently, it does not matter that we skipped over animal experimentation.85
Chen Fangzhi's rationale presupposed that Western-style doctors had trusted the efficacy of changshan before they started conducting clinical trials. Otherwise, how could he deny changshan to be a "new drug?"86 Chen Fangzhi did concede this point in the beginning of his paper:
Among all the research on changshan, the clinical experiment is probably the least rewarding one, because in our country the antimalarial efficacy of changshan has been well known for more than one thousand years....everyone has agreed that it [changshan] is effective, no one has disagreed about this fact. Therefore, our report of efficacy is no more than a duplication of the established opinion and, consequently, by no means as valuable as the reports from the chemical, pharmacological, and pharmacognostic research.87
Chen Fangzhi was right that "no one disagreed about the antimalarial efficacy of changshan," if he referred exclusively to traditional Chinese doctors. Before Chen Guofu handed the prescription to Dr. Cheng Peizhen, Dr. Cheng claimed that he had no idea which Chinese drug was effective for treating malaria. Besides, even with his personal experience, chemist Xu Zhifang did not dare to announce the curative efficacy of changshan. In Chen Guofu's screenplay, even his own wife disagreed with him on feeding Mrs. Chu Chinese drugs. Suddenly, as Chen Fangzhi claimed in the above paragraph, the antimalarial efficacy of changshan became such a well-known fact that changshan was no longer considered as a "new drug" for the Western-style doctors. My point is that before changshan was re-networked into Western-style doctors' collectively shared intellectual capital, Western-style doctors had to withhold their collective recognition of its efficacy. Individual Western-style doctors could not and Western-style doctors as a group would not recognize its efficacy. However, once Western-style doctor (Doctor Cheng Peizhen in this case) demonstrated changshan to be as effective as quinine in killing malaria-causing parasites, changshan was no longer "strange" to them. As a result, there was no need for Western-style doctors to maintain the prior high standard (scientific or ethical) used to guard the boundary of their socio-technical network.
The way that Western-style doctors guard the boundary of their socio-technical network was very similar to the strategies that people adopted to keep a privileged club exclusive. In the case of the exclusive clubs, each member is instituted as a custodian of the limits of their club: because the definition of the criterion of entry is at stake in each new entry. However, the analogy between an exclusive club and a priviledged socio-technical network broke down at a crucial point: the latter included not only human subjects but also non-human objects. To effectively police the boundary of their socio-technical network, Western-style doctors had to guard against both Chinese doctors and objects.88 Therefore, they had to renounce, or at least withhold, the trust and knowledge traditionally associated with Chinese drugs. Just like strangers were often perceived to be associated with danger, the "new drugs" were also put under suspicious eyes. As the result of this boundary work, the Chinese drugs such as changshan which "everyone [had] agreed to be effective for more than a thousand years" (Chen Fangzhi in The Changshan Report) became "no one [is] sure about its antimalarial efficacy" (Li Tao in Special Issue on Malaria). By regarding Chinese drugs as "new" drugs, they further made it unethical to conduct clinical experiment using supposedly dangerous Chinese drugs directly on human subjects. From the Western-style doctors' point of view, that was exactly what Chinese doctors had done to their innocent patients for centuries--"learning medicine through sacrificing human lives."
This last point was crucial to the Western-style doctors because Chinese drugs and the clinical jingyan with Chinese drugs was Chinese doctors' last bulwark. After the 1929 confrontation, Chinese doctors also endorsed the discourse of science and tried to build up their own program of "scientization of Chinese medicine" on the basis of clinical "experiment" on human bodies. To buttress the autonomy of their program, Chinese doctors emphasized the heuristic value of their jingyan gained from experimenting on the human body. In his introduction to the Institute of Chinese Specific Drugs, Chen Guofu suggested that "Chinese drugs...were the resultant product of the thousands and thousands of doctors' and patients' experimentation on the human body. They (Chinese drugs) were the most valuable heritage of our national culture."89 Their efforts pointed to one common concern: how to secure a foundation for maintaining the relative autonomy of Chinese medicine while it was going through certain forms of "Scientization."
Chinese doctors had good reasons to adopt the "clinical experiment first" strategy. First of all, if clinical experimentation was generally accepted as the first step for studying Chinese drugs, to a certain degree the autonomy of Chinese medicine would be automatically maintained. Since clinical experimentation was the first step, it had to be conducted more or less in the traditional fashion. On the other hand, if the research procedure on Chinese drugs followed the Received Program, then right after the first step of chemical analysis, the extracted active component would be totally foreign to Chinese doctors. Secondly, as revealed in the study of changshan, precisely because Chen Guofu's research did not follow the Received Program but started with clinical experiment, it had the subversive power to demonstrate that Japanese and Western scholars had been wrong for decades in assuming that the botanical identity of Chinese changshan was the root of the Orixa Japonica Thunb. Thirdly, inasmuch as the Received Program presupposed that the efficacy of Chinese drugs could be traced to one active chemical, a reductionist framework was built into it. As a result, as long as the researchers worked within this Received Program, there was no way that they could empirically prove this reductionist presupposition to be wrong or counterproductive.90 If the extracted principal component of a Chinese drug turned out not to have traditional curative efficacy, this failure would be taken as a refutation of the traditional belief, just as in the case of mahuang before 1924. On the contrary, if the curative efficacy of a Chinese drug was clinically verified from the outset, chemists' failure to find the active component would call into question the reductionist presupposition. In reality, even in the case of changshan, because of the side effects of vomiting and nausea, the isolated alkaloids never replaced the extract of changshan for treating malaria.91
In short, in the Reverse-Ordered Program, Chinese drugs would more or less circulate in their traditional socio-technical network until Western-style doctors succeeded in materially translating/reducing them into the constituents of their network. In this case, Chinese doctors had a good chance to travel with Chinese drugs into places where they had not previously had access.92 On the contrary, if the Received Program did work, the fully scientized drugs would be taken away from the hands of Chinese doctors. Drugs would be synthesized chemically, named by their chemical composition, designated to treat "Western" diseases, and circulated in the network of Western-styled hospitals, laboratories, and pharmacies. Chinese doctors had nothing to do and nowhere to go except to watch the inevitable demise of Chinese medicine.
To use Latour's language, in a highly ordered research program, the product of the previous step of research will automatically be used as a "black box" in the subsequent steps. Therefore, the black box being reified after the clinical experiments would circulate all over the network. For Western-style doctors, the danger of reifying Chinese drugs was apparent, as Zhao Juhuang put it succinctly:
If we had no idea about the chemical composition of a Chinese Drug and still went ahead to test its clinical efficacy, we are just like Old-style [Chinese] Doctors who treat human beings as animals for experimentation. Then, there would be no hope for the Scientization of Chinese drugs.93
Ironically, in reality the history of discovering changshan was quite close to the procedure suggested by the Reverse-Ordered Program. After the clinical experiments on the human body showed changshan to be active, Joseph Needham sent the same local herbal drug to K. K. Chen's research group in Eli Lilly & Company94 and another US group for animal experiments.95 When the US animal experiments confirmed the antimalarial efficacy of changshan, some samples of the same herbal drug were sent to the University of London for pharmacognostic research.96 The other governmental laboratory which pioneered antimalarial drugs also requested an aqueous extract of changshan from the Research Laboratory of National Drugs.97 Chen Guofu and his Western-trained colleagues' clinical success made the local variety of changshan and its extract the standard tools for further research.98 In the end, Chen Guofu did not wait for the Western-style doctors to isolate the active agents or to synthesize the chemical component through artificial means. While Western-style doctors were busy performing experiments and writing papers, which never led to a useful substitute for the extract of changshan, Chen Guofu worked on the mass cultivation of changshan on the Jingfo Mountain. Looking at the Jingfo Mountain farm, Chen Guofu said that "this green hill and the laboratory, pharmaceutical factory, hospital, and the malaria had jointly formed an inseparable ring."99 An international socio-technical network on changshan research and production was thus established; the first black box--the herbal drug produced in Chongqing--was circulated all over the network.
While the Received Program helped the Western-style doctors to maintain their monopoly on SRNPD, they legitimized it on the ethical ground that scientists should not conduct clinical experiments directly on the human body. Similarly, Chinese doctors needed to legitimize their interest in putting clinical experiments first. To do so, they appealed to the heuristic value of their clinical jingyan. In his "Pharmaceutical Experiments Should Not Ignore jingyan [Experience]," the Chinese doctor Tan Cizhong (1897-1955) argued:
No matter what kind of drug is concerned, if one wanted first to verify scientifically the principle [of why it works] and then clinically evaluate its efficacy, one would find this approach logical in principle but difficult in practice. On the other hand, if one tried first to evaluate clinically the curative efficacy [of this specific drug] and then scientifically verify its principle, one would find his approach illogical in principle but fruitful in practice.100
Tan Cizhong was right at least in the case of changshan. As mentioned before, the project director openly admitted that "all the other kinds of research (on changshan) began with clinical experiments which verified changshan's curative efficacy."101 Without first confirming the curative efficacy of the herbal drug changshan, scientists would have encountered much greater difficulty in both sorting out its pharmacognostic identification and analyzing its chemical composition.
In fact, Doctor Cheng Peizhen's clinical experiment constituted the historical turning point in terms of the way that Western-style doctors treated changshan. Before he verified the anti-malarial efficacy of changshan, Western-style doctors regarded changshan as an untrustworthy and potentially life-threatening "new drug." Therefore, Western-style doctors had to start their scientific research from scratch, to follow the Received Program for developing a new drug, and never to conduct clinical experiment directly on a human subject. As long as changshan was treated as a "new drug," the "clinical experiment first" approach as used by Chen Guofu and suggested by Tan Cizhong was doubly unacceptable. First, it was unscientific, because the scientific (pharmacogonostic and chemical) identity of changshan was unknown. Second, it was unethical, because changshan presumably could cause serious damage to the patients. It only takes a "thought experiment" to appreciate how serious this charge could be at that historical moment. What would have happened if Mrs. Chu or any of the malaria-inflicted students had died immediately after taking the prescription changshan?
Once the curative efficacy of changshan was confirmed, Western-style doctors refused to consider changshan as a "new drug." By switching changshan from a "new drug" to a well-known one, Western-style doctors had done themselves two big favors. First of all, since changshan was not a new drug, as Chen Fangzhi argued, "even though we (Western-trained doctors) used changshan directly on human body, our act is supposedly not against the standard of humanism." Secondly, since "the antimalarial efficacy of changshan has been well-known for more than one thousand years," Western-style doctors did not really need a clinical experiment to verify its curative efficacy. Now that all the "clinical report of efficacy (of changshan) was no more than a duplication of the established opinion," the western-style doctors found no heuristic value at all in the clinical experiments done by Chen Guofu, Cheng Peizhen, and Chen Fangzhi. Therefore, although all the scientific research on changshan was based on clinical experiment, Western-style doctors were still justified in dismissing Chinese doctor Tan Cizhong's point that the "clinical experiment first" approach was "illogical in principle but fruitful in practice."
In the end, the contest between the two research programs boiled down to a deceptively simple question: Is changshan a new drug or not?
[6] Conclusion: The Problem of Scientific Translation.
What is the Chinese Drug changshan? Is changshan, as many critics of Chinese medicine suggested in contempt, simply caogen shupi (grass roots and tree bark),102 i.e., primitive raw materials of nature? Isn't it also true that, being "grass roots and tree bark," the primitive Chinese drugs correctly reflect the equally primitive developmental stage of Chinese medicine? After going through such a long journey, at least one thing is clear: changshan in particular and Chinese drugs in general, like every other object of modern science, are constructed and reproduced in the institutions of network and practice--materia medica, local drugstores, reputed prescriptions, classification of diseases, Chinese doctors and their "clinical jingyan." When people unproblematically used the term changshan, bought the herb from the local drugstores, recommended the prescription to their relatives, and used changshan to treat malaria, it was not because changshan existed "out there" as physical reality in nature. Rather, it was because Chinese doctors had succeeded in bringing changshan "right here" into their heterogeneous networks of practices: linguistic taxonomy, conceptual classification, material reproduction, and commercial distribution. As Gaston Bachelard put it, "simple things are things simplified."103 Changshan, just like artificially synthesized chemicals, is not primitive, raw material as "grass roots and tree bark," but rather a practice-based, fabricated object.104
In the sense that changshan is also a practice-based, fabricated object, the so-called discovering process was actually a multi-layered "re-networking" process through which Western-style doctors decoupled changshan from the Chinese doctors' traditional network and then assimilated it into their own socio-technical network. In this re-networking process, the material existence as well as the conceptual characterization of changshan had undergone dramatic changes.105 Within different stages, the conceptual characterization and material existence of changshan was interactively stabilized within different conceptual and material settings.106 While changshan transformed materially and conceptually, the historical actors associated with it also changed accordingly. The point is that since the conceptual identity and material existence of changshan were constructed and reproduced within these heterogeneous networks of practice, it would be very problematic to appropriate changshan while simultaneously destroying the socio-technical network in which changshan circulated. However, the Western-style doctors' program, the Scientification of Nationally Produced Drugs, aimed at exactly this objective--re-networking Chinese drugs, and excluding Chinese doctors.
By way of tracing the history of re-networking changshan, this chapter intends to provide a critique of scientific translation as exemplified by the SRNPD.107 First, unlike the translation between common languages, scientific translation presupposes a highly asymmetric relationship between the host language (scientists' social-technical network) and the guest language (Chinese doctors' socio-technical network).108 Second, scientists by definition monopolize the means of scientific translation/re-networking. Third, scientific translation is assumed to be a complete translation: any information worthy of being translated at all is completely translated because the performance of a scientific translation is measured by the practical purposes of the host language. (For example, in the case of changshan, the practical purpose of scientific translation was to find a magic bullet --the equivalent of quinine--in Chinese drugs. As a result, the objective of Guan Guangdi's pharmacognostic project was to identify the "effective" changshan as judged by current scientific standards.) Fourth, scientific translation is strictly one-directional; the fundamental categories of the host language should not be transformed at all in the translation process.
To maintain such an asymmetric relationship between two networks, it required a tremendous amount of effort to police the boundary of the Western network, guarding against both Chinese doctors and Chinese drugs. Consequently, in this history under discussion we see that Chen Guofu's contribution became invisible, the well-known Chinese drugs became untrustworthy and life-threatening, and Chinese doctors' effort of studying those drugs became "learning medicine through sacrificing human lives." Most importantly, the more intense the struggle between the two groups of doctors became, the more effort was put into guarding the boundary and the higher the barrier of entry became. In the end, even Western-style doctors (such as Dr. Cheng Pei-zheng) lost motivation to study Chinese drugs and chemist Xu Zhifang did not dare announce the curative efficacy of changshan even though he had successfully cured himself with it. Given the hegemony of scientific translation, predictably, we still have quite a number of Chinese drugs having unconfirmed "scientific value" but awaiting investigation.
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sizzled
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Interesting post! Worth researching!
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sizzled
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^
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Excellent, excellent, excellent articles....guess thousand year of human testing has to account for something. my neighbor told me all the kids w/ malaria were cured where as quinine failed.
I went to the chinese herbal store and bought some myself. Is yours in root form? and how much are you taking?
I was going to boil some and then dilute it with water and just drink throughout the day and see what happens. Neighbor says it is bitter in taste though.
Great job!
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sizzled
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Up for responses!
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Dave6002
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Hi, jwenny,
Thanks for your encouragement.
I have been taking Changshan for 5 days now and felt some improvements, which is good enough for me to keep on.
The herb I bought is 5:1 extract powder (total 100g). I take 2X1g per day with warm water.
Good luck and thanks for starting this interesting thread.
Dave
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Michelle M
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I am most impressed.
No, that doesn't mean I'm tossin my Mepron down the toilet or anything just yet.
But a day looms in the near future when I ain't gettin' no more. (So sez the insurance powers...After all, in THEIR opinion, 7 days of goop shoulda fixed me right up. Ha ha.)
Babesia WA-1 has been kickin my butt all over town.
It is comforting to know there's another gun in the arsenal.
I imagine greedy pharmaceutical companies would have twin cows if word got out there was a safe, cheap and effective treatment and we really didn't need their $600 a bottle concoction. I can see the PR campaigns now.
No, wait, I'm sorry, they're all philanthropists who want us to be well.
Thanks a WHOLE lot for the diggin!
Michelle
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It's very inspirational to see the interest in changshan. I hope we can continue to spark more interests and information about this. Whether it leads to something good or just a dead end is unknown...but we can't leave any stones unturned given the current difficulties of treating and preventing relapses.
From my googling and reading Dave's articles, my impression is there is very little doubt about it's potency especially for treating malaria. My gut feeling is it may be more effective than other malaria herbs such as quinine and artemisinin. Seems like the Chinese view the side effects as being more minor than US studies...which is consistent with Dave's articles. However, lets not take the toxicity lightly and continue on the side of caution.
Guess at this point I have so many questions/unknowns about it and probably there's not a whole lot of info since babesia isn't as common in China, and this herb was not pursued by the west because the west regarded it as too toxic or simply for polical reasons.
Dave, I am really happy for you that changshan is working for you. Did you experience a herx or just continual improvement? Also,I was was wondering are you taking any other meds with your changshan? Right now, I'm on mep/zith/art for babs and amoxi for lyme. Just a little concern about taking too much stuff at once. Also, how did you come up with your doses...I'm guessing there is very little info at this point. Maybe a chinese herbalist could shed more light on this area...perhaps Dr. Z in NY. When I start taking this, I was thinking of pulsing it (like 4 days on 3 days off) in order to give my body chance to detox....not sure how you feel about this.
But REALlY, please keep us posted on how your changshan treatment progresses.
Best Wishes!
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treepatrol
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I found this and it is way more than promising it may be a Great. THE WORD recrudescentMEANS a new outbreak after a period of abatement or inactivity.
Here bolding for attention to.
Febrifugine has been identified as a natural antimalarial compound for more than a half century. = Chinese herb chang shan {{Dichroa febrifuga Lour}} Reevaluation of the properties of febrifugine by advanced biomedical research approaches has brought a number of new discoveries since the 1990s.
Our study of the febrifugine analogs has indicated that the mechanisms of antimalarial action of febrifugine appear to be unique. Febrifugine is an excellent compound that can be used to block the proliferation of malarial parasites.
However, we found that febrifugine failed to stop the recrudescence of the parasites, which was the main cause of death of the infected mice after the discontinuation of drug treatment.
This phenomenon is also the major reason that febrifugine was excluded from the list of active antimalarials in the past. Nevertheless, we have found that the mice that were cured in the in vivo tests sustained and cleared the recrudescent parasites without any subsequent treatment.
The mice experienced heavy loads of recrudescent parasites and appeared to be very sick about 10 days after the treatment stopped.
[A week later, however, they mysteriously eliminated the parasites from their bodies and completely recovered from the sickness. {{{{We are absolutely clueless}}} about how the mice survived the recrudescence and recovered from the illness.[/b]
It is likely that febrifugine analogs and their metabolites may stay in the mice and remain potent against P. berghei for a much longer time.
It could also be possible that the innate immunity of the tested mice was enhanced by infection with the parasites and thereafter enabled the recrudescent malarial parasites to be eradicated from the mice.
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
treepatrol
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Up!!!!
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
Jellybelly
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Am I missing someithing here????? Why would anyone consider such an herb that seems to have such properties and can make you vomit when there is something out there showing promise, with a study on Pub Med.
Heparin is shown to inhibit Babesia!!!! Heparin is a natural occuring substance in or bodies, it is not considered poisonous or toxic!!! I'm sorry I don't understand, why you would consider this herb.
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treepatrol
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quote:Originally posted by Jellybelly: Am I missing someithing here????? Why would anyone consider such an herb that seems to have such properties and can make you vomit when there is something out there showing promise, with a study on Pub Med.
Heparin is shown to inhibit Babesia!!!! Heparin is a natural occuring substance in or bodies, it is not considered poisonous or toxic!!! I'm sorry I don't understand, why you would consider this herb.
Theres lots of things that make you throw up its like ipecac sp? induces vomiting dosent kill you.
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
posted
That is very interesting TreePatrol... wouldn't it be great if changshan can take care of both Bb and babs. Could the "recrudescent" be symptoms from the toxins of the remaining dead parasites?
JellyBelly, I definitely see your concern and I have similar concerns...i certainly don't want to puke or have diarhea either. I guess what peaks my interest in this herb is it's potency and what my neighbor told me in totally eradicating malaria for many. Seems relapse is very common with babesia treatment so it's nice to hear about something of this potency. I think in this war with these bugs, we need as much amunition as we can so we can attack from different angles. For instance, some herbs/drugs may work better for some than others or address certain symptoms or tissues. This may end up as nothing but I'd much rather learn more about it than not knowing. But you have rightfully brought up some very valid concerns.
Best Wishes!
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posted
Why would anyone consider it? Well, I am interested for my husband because his doctor only prescribed 21 days of Mepron/zith and now he's done.
He is not better.
Where do we go from here? My dh tried quinine/clindamycin for one month and did not recover.
These LLMD's that he's seen are not prescribing long periods of time for babs. I don't know why. But I am anxious to see him recover!
I need to find a chinese herb shop . . . and yes! I'm going to encourage him to give it a try.
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treepatrol
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Hey if all I had to do is vomit and get the sh*ts Iam all for it. I have to read way more on this before I would even think of taking it.
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
sizzled
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^
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Jellybelly
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Tree, if it was just one time, I might consider, but I doubt you really believe it would be one time.
What else was said about this stuff is this:
quote: if you read on you will realize that it does have poisonous properties . So I am BY NO MEANS suggesting to anyone to go try this stuff. I'm thinking at this point that my neighbor basically poisoned the malaria and himself to get better
I think we can hardly compare that to epicac
I think people may really be grabbing at dangerous straws when you are willing to take something that is rather posionous IF you don't have too. If heparin works, then why would anyone choose a poison instead???
Nobody even knows if this stuff would work on Babs, at least there is one scientific study that shows heparin inhibits Babesia.
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treepatrol
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quote:Originally posted by Jellybelly: Tree, if it was just one time, I might consider, but I doubt you really believe it would be one time.
What else was said about this stuff is this:
quote: if you read on you will realize that it does have poisonous properties . So I am BY NO MEANS suggesting to anyone to go try this stuff. I'm thinking at this point that my neighbor basically poisoned the malaria and himself to get better
I think we can hardly compare that to epicac
I think people may really be grabbing at dangerous straws when you are willing to take something that is rather posionous IF you don't have too. If heparin works, then why would anyone choose a poison instead??? Heparin woks??? according to the journal this stuff cleared it and they have no idea why immune booster ???
Nobody even knows if this stuff would work on Babs, at least there is one scientific study that shows heparin inhibits Babesia.
Iam not saying to go out and take it And poisonous properties thats a matter of degree!
What do you think abx's are there all poisonous including over the counter drugs hey take a whole bottle of asprin and see what havok that can produce? or drink a bottle of grain alcohol or take 10 biaxin xl its all a matter of degree amounts.
I think this from what I have read sofar is very promissing.
The chinese friend who took when he was a kid and has never gotton it back thats pretty interestning and what I am reading in the journals also nope my mind is not shut off deffinatly promissing.
Hey I wouldnt mind throwing up for a week and the craps if it rid me of all this!!! Beats all the years of abx's for which Iam thankfull at least slowing it down or keeping my head above water.
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
oxygenbabe
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In terms of heparin for babesia, it's interesting that it is suppressive, but your case seems a bit unusual (very responsive). I'm assuming either the heparin binds to a receptor the babesia would use, and/or the babesia binds to the heparin instead of our cells. But in any case, thinning the blood is a little scary, even at low doses, some may not tolerate it well or be at risk for excessive bleeding (imo).
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Jellybelly
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Babe, how can anyone know if I am an unusual respose to the heparin destroying the Babesia? There aren't that many of us who have used heparin for any length of time. I know just a handful myself. Some of them are here on this board and others are else where. What I do know for sure, it that nearly ALL feel that heparin made a huge difference for them and most feel they are by far less sick then prior to using heparin, and some claiming remission to a large percentage. They believe that heparin made it possible also for the ABX they were taking to penetrate better.
Your fear of heparin thinning your blood to much really seems to be unfounded, but that doesn't mean your concerns aren't real. I have said this before, but in case you have missed it, my daughter gave birth to her first child "while' on heparin. I had a surgery and wisdom teeth extracted "while" on heparin. I have spoken with many a doc about my health situation and not a one was ever in any way concerned about the doses my daughter or myself were taking.
My doctor even told me that with our clotting issues, heparin might even save your life in the case of massive bleeding caused by say an massive injury. How? When there is massive bleeding, it's an emergency and the body's clotting cascade is started. One of those pieces of the cascade is the fibrin that we already have to much of. When the body starts dumping more fibrin and activating platelets to form clots, because of our pre-existing hypercoagulation we may be more likely to throw a clot that could be life threatening, going directly to the heart.
So even in critical situations, the micro doses of heparin still isn't considered dangerous, IF you don't have some of the other genetic non-clotting problems. But that is easy enough to find out.
There is actually a scientific study out there on heparin and babesia. Man, you know how often we actually get that?? Almost never! We are usually just punching away in the dark. Putting ourselves out there as lab rats.
If you or Tree, or anyone else wants to try this stuff or just read up on it, that's ok with me. What ever floats your boat. I'm not upset, I just don't understand, but that shouldn't matter to you. So please none of you worry about me asking a question. I have very high regard for all of you, and only see you as another sick one struggling to find normalcy in life.
I am in remission, but my kids are not. My daughter is so sick, she going to be put on disability. I feel desperate. I believe my dad died early because of Lyme and there is nothing I can do to reverse that. This crap makes us desperate.....I understand, I really do. Posts: 1251 | From california | Registered: Apr 2005
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oxygenbabe
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I know you mean well, and I am glad you got better. I know a few people personally who used heparin. Are you saying your daughter used it but is still really ill?
I suppose some of my fears could be intuitively correct and some could be irrational. It's hard to know the difference, but the more I learn about stuff I *did* decide to take or do, the more amazed I am that there's often a logic to it, biochemically, that I later learn...especially based on my recent testing of my genetics.
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Marnie
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WOW!!! WHAT A FIND!!!
2 for the price of 1:
"AIM: To study the anti-inflammatory effects of aqueous extract from Dichroa febrifuga root (AEDF) for suppression in the process of lipopolysaccharide (LPS)-induced sepsis in the rat liver.
METHODS: The inhibitory effectof AEDF on the alteration of inflammatory proteins was investigated by Western blot and immunohistochemical analysis.
RESULTS: Western blot analysis showed that the level of nuclear factor (NF)-κBp65 was markedly up-regulated and (I)-κBα was down-regulated by LPS (8 mg/kg) challenge.
However, AEDF 100 mg/kg inhibited induction of NF-κBp65 and degradation of I-κBα in the liver of LPS-challenged rats.
Immunohistochemical analysis showed that while the expression of the NF-κBp65, tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-a, and inducible nitric oxide synthase (iNOS) tended to increase, that of I-κBα was decreased in the hepatocytes of rats challenged with LPS.
A slight decline of
NF-KBp65, TNF-a, and iNOS,
but an increase of I-κBα were observed in the hepatocytes of the rats pretreated with AEDF.
CONCLUSION: AEDF may act as a therapeutic agent for inflammatory disease through a regulation of inflammation-related proteins."
Dichroa Dichroa is a genus of flowering plants in the family Hydrangeaceae. Dichroa febrifuga is an important herb in traditional Chinese medicine, where it is considered one of the 50 fundamental herbs. Species Dichroa febrifuga ..
dichroine (di�chro�ine) (di-kro�ēn) an
***alkaloid***
from the plant Dichroa febrifuga (ch'ang shan); it has three isomeric forms: α-, β-, and γ-dichroine.
ch'ang shan (ch'ang shan) (chahng shahn) [Chinese] 1. Dichroa febrifuga. 2. the root of D. febrifuga, which contains the alkaloids dichroine, febrifugine, and isofebrifugine; used in Chinese medicine in the treatment of malaria because of its antiparasitic, emetic, and antipyretic properties.
For malaria add Dichroa Root (Chang Shan) and Cardamom Seed (Cao Ko)
What is dichroa root? What is it used for?
The dichroa is a hardy type of shrub related to the hydrangea. It can reach a height of eight feet, and is relatively easy to grow.
In the United States, it is often used as an ornamental plant because of the bright blue flowers and berries it produces.
It is sometimes referred to as the "blue sapphire" because of the flowers and berries. The root is used in herbal remedies. The roots are usually dug up in autumn, stripped of any loose fibrous material, then dried and cut into slices.
Dichroa root is associated with the Heart, Liver and Lung meridians, and has bitter, spicy, cold, and slightly toxic properties. It has been used for centuries to help treat malaria, often as part of a formula that includes tsaoko, anemarrhena and areca seed.
Some research suggests it can also reduce inflammation and swelling.
How much dichroa root should I take?
The typical dosage of dichroa root is between 5 and 10 grams, taken with hot water as a decoction.
What forms of dichroa root are available?
Dried, sliced dichroa root can be found at some Asian markets. Some vendors also sell dichroa root powders, extracts, pills and capsules.
What can happen if I take too much dichroa root?
Are there any interactions I should be aware of? What precautions should I take?
Because dichroa is slightly toxic, large doses may cause nausea and vomiting in patients with weak constitutions.
It should be used with extreme caution, and should not be taken by women who are pregnant or breastfeeding.
As of this writing, there are no known drug interactions associated with dichroa. As always, however, make sure to consult with a licensed health care provider before taking dichroa or any other herbal remedy or dietary supplement.
References
� Choi BT, Lee JH, Ko WS, et al. Anti-inflammatory effects of aqueous extract from dichroa febrifuga root in rat liver. Acta Pharmacol Sin February 2003;24(2):127-32.
� Hirai S, Kikuchi H, Kim HS, et al. Metabolites of febrifugine and its synthetic analogue by mouse liver S9 and their antimalarial activity against plasmodium malaria parasite. J Med Chem September 25, 2003;46(20):4351-9.
� Kikuchi H, Tasaka H, Hirai S, et al. Potent antimalarial febrifugine analogues against the plasmodium malaria parasite. J Med Chem June 6, 2002;45(12):2563-70.
� Murata K, Takano F, Fushiya S, et al. Enhancement of NO production in activated macrophages in vivo by an antimalarial crude drug, dichroa febrifuga. J Nat Prod June 26, 1998;61(6):729-33.
� Takaya Y, Tasaka H, Chiba T, et al. New type of febrifugine analogues, bearing a quinolizidine moiety, show potent antimalarial activity against plasmodium malaria parasite. J Med Chem August 12, 1999;42(16):3163-6.
Alkaloids These organic compounds are some of the most biologically active molecules that plants produce. At their simplest, they consist of a carbon ring into which a
Nitrogen (N) atom
is inserted (a simple piperidine alkaloid is pictured at right). There are many sub-groups, the detail of which is beyond the scope of this course.
Some examples are Nicotine (Tobacco), Lobeline (Lobelia), Morphine and Codeine (Opium poppy), Atropine (Belladonna), Cocaine (Coca), Caffeine (Coffee), Hydrastine and Berberine (Goldenseal), Ephedrine (Ephedra), Mescaline (Peyote), Quinine (Cinchona spp.), Taxol (Yew). From this list you can get a good idea of their powers: they are very intense, heroic medicines that can be quite toxic in high doses.
...alkaloid, any of a class of organic compounds composed of carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and usually oxygen that are often derived from plants. Although the name means alkalilike, some alkaloids do not exhibit alkaline properties. Many alkaloids, though poisons, have physiological effects that render them valuable as medicines.
Other common alkaloids include quinine quinine (kwī`nīn', kwĭnēn`), white crystalline alkaloid with a bitter taste. Before the development of more effective synthetic drugs such as quinacrine, chloroquine, and primaquine, quinine was the specific agent in the treatment of malaria .
Guess what else is an alkaloid...
serotonin (sĕr'ətō`nĭn), organic compound that was first recognized as a powerful vasoconstrictor occurring in blood serum. It was partially purified, crystallized, and named in 1948, and its structure was deduced a year later.
serotonin (sĕr'ətō`nĭn), organic compound that was first recognized as a powerful vasoconstrictor occurring in blood serum. It was partially purified, crystallized, and named in 1948, and its structure was deduced a year later. Independent work indicated that serotonin was widely distributed in nature and occurred in tissues other than blood. It has been shown to be in many representatives of the animal kingdom, in wasp stings and scorpion venom, in various fruits, such as pineapples, bananas, and plums, and in various nuts. It has been estimated that an adult human contains about 5 to 10 mg of serotonin, 90% of which is in the intestine and the rest in blood platelets and the brain.
(Serotonin - from 5HTP - converts to the powerful antioxidant, melatonin (to help us to fall asleep) via 2 enzymes that kick in as darkness falls.) It looks like AA triggers the hypothalamus to do this.)
Note: chemotherapy is toxic. Keep an open mind.
MANY of our medicines come from plants. Nostradamus was trained in Italy. His medical school had an HERB GARDEN.
Chemists find "active" ingredients and use those as a basis for drugs. Problem is, the plants/herbs contain MANY nutrients which work TOGETHER...which is part of the reason why drugs sometimes fail.
WOW...great find!!!
[ 29. September 2006, 12:25 PM: Message edited by: Marnie ]
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Jellybelly
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posted
Yes Babe, she did take the heparin, but heparin ONLY. She never used any ABX. So far it seems that treating the infection is still a must even when using heparin. Heparin inhibits Babesia, that is all we know so far. She still has Lyme, and so far, that seems to need ABX.
In the past when I was taking heparin only and tried to stop, hypercoagulation came right back. It wasn't until I did a few doses of very low ABX that I was able to stop the heparin. I was on heparin for about 3 1/2 years. My daughter about 1 1/2 to 2.
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treepatrol
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posted
I think we hit on it !!!!
But Iam still going to read more and cross all my T's and dot all I's
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
Marnie
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
Member # 773
posted
Bb looks to trigger cell death.
This makes sense...Bb wants to divide and wiggle from cell to cell for the nutrients there...invade the tissues.
NFkB (an enzyme) inhibits cell death which is why it goes up.
So does DHA (inhibits NFkB) which looks like it is being "downregulated" (too little), so the body finds another way...to stop the cellular destruction.
If the cell doesn't die and thus release Bb...so long Bb...but...is it harder for the antibodies to REACH the infection if Bb is INSIDE the cells?
"Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, occurs during normal cellular differentiation and
development of multicellular organisms."
I see I have more research ahead of me:
"Apoptosis multiple cellular organisms."
Posts: 9424 | From Sunshine State | Registered: Mar 2001
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treepatrol
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posted
quote:Originally posted by Marnie: Bb looks to trigger cell death.
This makes sense...Bb wants to divide and wiggle from cell to cell for the nutrients there...invade the tissues.
NFkB (an enzyme) inhibits cell death which is why it goes up.
So does DHA (inhibits NFkB) which looks like it is being "downregulated" (too little), so the body finds another way...to stop the cellular destruction.
If the cell doesn't die and thus release Bb...so long Bb...but...is it harder for the antibodies to REACH the infection if Bb is INSIDE the cells?
"Apoptosis, or programmed cell death, occurs during normal cellular differentiation and
development of multicellular organisms."
I see I have more research ahead of me:
"Apoptosis multiple cellular organisms."
This is from earlier in these postings Marnie just refresh memory.
THE WORD recrudescent MEANS a new outbreak after a period of abatement or inactivity.
Here bolding for attention to.
Febrifugine has been identified as a natural antimalarial compound for more than a half century. = Chinese herb chang shan {{Dichroa febrifuga Lour}} Reevaluation of the properties of febrifugine by advanced biomedical research approaches has brought a number of new discoveries since the 1990s.
Our study of the febrifugine analogs has indicated that the mechanisms of antimalarial action of febrifugine appear to be unique. Febrifugine is an excellent compound that can be used to block the proliferation of malarial parasites.
However, we found that febrifugine failed to stop the recrudescence of the parasites, which was the main cause of death of the infected mice after the discontinuation of drug treatment.
This phenomenon is also the major reason that febrifugine was excluded from the list of active antimalarials in the past. Nevertheless, we have found that the mice that were cured in the in vivo tests sustained and cleared the recrudescent parasites without any subsequent treatment.
The mice experienced heavy loads of recrudescent parasites and appeared to be very sick about 10 days after the treatment stopped.
It is likely that febrifugine analogs and their metabolites may stay in the mice and remain potent against P. berghei for a much longer time.
It could also be possible that the innate immunity of the tested mice was enhanced by infection with the parasites and thereafter enabled the recrudescent malarial parasites to be eradicated from the mice.
THATS SOMETHING VERY INTERESTING NOW ISNT IT???
From:
ASM Journal
If what they say that it may inhance the immune system to erradicate this form of malaria it may also inhance it to remove borrelia along with Babs???
::::::::::::
::::::::::::::::::
Now the mice were all cleared of it!
This phenomenon is also the major reason that febrifugine was excluded from the list of active antimalarials in the past. Nevertheless, we have found that the mice that were cured in the in vivo tests sustained and cleared the recrudescent parasites {{{without any subsequent treatment.}}}
Next they said this:
A week later, however, they mysteriously eliminated the parasites from their bodies and completely recovered from the sickness. {{{{We are absolutely clueless}}} about how the mice survived the recrudescence and recovered from the illness.
There clueless???hahaha
Then they say this::
It could also be possible that the innate immunity of the tested mice was enhanced by infection with the parasites and thereafter enabled the recrudescent malarial parasites to be eradicated from the mice.
I think it is more likely immune function was inhanced by the herb.
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
Appears Changshan is mentioned a lot if you do an In Book Search on Amazon.
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sizzled
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posted
Wonder if Dr. Z (Chinese Med) in NY would know about this???
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oxygenbabe
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posted
Come to think of it, I know a Chinese mycologist (in Shanghai). That's for fungi, but I'll email him and ask him what he knows about this.
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Marnie
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
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posted
Refresher below for some here who are not aware of my ORIGINAL "Updated Nutshell". The link still works.
"The diagnosis and treatment of acid-base deranged dogs infected with
Babesia canis.
Malherbe WD, Immelman A, Haupt WH, Walzl HJ. A study was made of the acid-base status of Babesia canis infected dogs judged unlikely to recover after specific babesicidal drug therapy despite the use of blood transfusion and other conventional supportive measures.
Such cases were invariabley acidotic and responded well and often dramatically to supportive
intravenous sodium bicarbonate
administration. Elevated blood urea nitrogen, also responded gratifyingly to this procedure. The rationale is discussed in some detail.
The link talks about blood urea nitrogen levels being up.
Incidentally, the above is "old"...1970s. Why it was never tried again or "followed thru" remains a mystery to me - too cheap, too easy, pharm. companies can't "sell" nutrients?
Is that the problem...not able to USE nitrogen?
Bicarbonates look to trigger nitrogen release. Sodium (and magnesium) compounds are known to destroy pathogens. Think of the pioneers used to salt meat to preserve it/prevent it from going "bad" (caused by bacteria).
Now...getting back to our body's most powerful antioxidant - melatonin (which I believe is capable of destroying Bb, but we don't make enough and can't take the dosages needed to do so).
Melatonin contains an "indole" which, if you look at the molecular STRUCTURE is a H-N bond with the "N" sorta sticking out. This is a weak bond. ("H" is hydrogen and "N" is nitrogen).
Another review: we can't "utilize" the huge amount of nitrogen in the air, but plants can and do take it up. Then animals eat plants and we eat both to give us nitrogen in a "usable" form.
We rid the nitrogen we breathe (a LOT is in air) as we exhale. I believe we also rid nitrogen via our "aura" that supposedly surrounds us.
But we can't see this "blue" light because our eyes contain natural "blue blockers" - leutin appears to be one that protects our eyes from this powerful tiny part of the electromagnetic spectrum.
Blue light is a small part of white light...which contains all the colors (think: rainbow). It is very powerful (violet even moreso).
Somehow this all relates to the fact that Bb uses C-acetyltransferase.
N-acetyltransferase is needed to convert serotonin -> melatonin.
(acetyltransferase - an acyltransferase specifically catalyzing the transfer of an acetyl group, often acetyl coenzyme A, to another compound).
Isn't this curious:
"heparan-α-glucosaminide N-acetyltransferase"
Bb needs sugar and fats. It appears it does not like proteins (which are very high in nitrogen). Caution: too many proteins are very hard on the kidney!!!
It looks like Arachidonic acid (an Omega 6)is being overproduced in relation to DHA (a part of Omega 3 essential fatty acid).
"Serum creatinine levels and blood urea nitrogen were significantly lower in the DHA group, which indicates beneficial changes in renal function."
The following link is talking about salmon, but... (vivo means in a living thing, vitro refers to in a lab dish...huge difference)
"the transcriptional down-regulation of iron metabolism in vitro was reflected in decreased in vivo iron stores with
increasing levels of dietary EPA/DHA.
Hence, to avoid overloading of the iron transport/storage-systems resulting in increased susceptibility to bacterial infections,
high levels of dietary EPA/DHA should be accompanied by low levels of dietary iron.
PMID: 14513972
With babesia depleting iron stores, theoretically the need for EPA/DHA (esp. DHA) would need to go up if co-infected.
"These findings suggest that new DHA-enriched formulas may be used as an efficient alternative source of (n-3) polyunsaturated fatty acids to normalize MEL secretion." Journal of Nutrition. 1999;129:2074-2080.)
(MEL = melatonin).
Somehow this all has to do with nitrogen...too much, not utilized...
More...
"Analysis of the structure-activity relationships of the febrifugine analogs tested further supports the proposition that the
nitrogen atom and the hydroxyl group
of the piperidine ring and the 4-quinazolinone moiety of febrifugine are necessary for antimalarial activity (11, 31)."
" Document title Metabolites of febrifugine and its synthetic analogue by mouse liver S9 and their antimalarial activity against Plasmodium malaria parasite
The results suggest that basicity of both the 1- and the 1-nitrogen atoms of 1 is crucial in conferring powerful antimalarial activity."
2000 JOURNAL OF ETHNOPHARMACOLOGY 69 (1): 35-43 Kim YH; Ko WS; Ha MS; Lee CH; Choi BT; et al. The production of nitric oxide and TNF-alpha in peritoneal macrophages is inhibited by Dichroa febrifuga Lour
Nitric oxide is NO - nitrogen + oxygen. Is the available nitrogen being utilized in place of (too low) DHA to dilate the vessels?
2000 MEDICAL HYPOTHESES 54 (5): 829-831 Harvey BH Acid-dependent dismutation of nitrogen oxides may be a critical source of nitric oxide in human macrophages.
Which acid?
Gotta run for now.
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oxygenbabe
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I asked my Chinese mycologist 'friend'(acquaintance? very nice helpful person). He instantly knew the herb and said it was for malaria, however (make allowances for his english--):
"There is no one formula for chinese herbal medicine. Even in known Malaria or Lyme disease. The Herbal Doctor will have to look at several points of view. Whether the patient is Hot or Cold . In herbal medicine, one need to look at the tongue to see whether it is Red or White, Whether the underneath of the tongue has White patches. Also the pulse of the patient is rather important. One need to know whether the pulse is strong or weak. She then can make up the formulation for the patient. Also the Sex, herbal medicine is different in male or female. The literature you gave me contain the full information on the plant. But you can't use it alone, It must be used in combination with other herbs."
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treepatrol
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Recently, state-of-the-art biomedical technology has proven that chemical modification of febrifugine decreases its toxicity, while its antiparasitic efficacy remains unchanged.
For example, it was found that the administration of febrifugine analogs did not cause changes to body or liver weights, irritation of the gastrointestinal tract, or alteration of the levels of hepatic enzyme markers in infected mice. Febrifugine altered the production of nitric oxide and tumor necrosis factor alpha in mouse macrophages (19).
These studies indicate not only that febrifugine is a plausible antimalarial lead for the search for new analogss but also that it possesses unique antimalarial mechanisms. We therefore selected a group of febrifugine analogs that have been stored in WRAIR CIS for years to reevaluate their potential antimalarial activities and possible toxicities.
The synthesis and chemical characterization of the analogs were partially published before. This report summarizes the new data that we obtained from studies of the antimalarial properties of the febrifugine analogs.
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
posted
I just started with the root form in which I boiled and drank like a tea. I noticed a slight increase in muscle tightness...especially the areas of bab symptoms. I wonder if this is a herx. Probably still too early to tell. Will keep you all posted.
Best Wishes!
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posted
Looking for something else and ran across this thread in the archives.
Any updates from anyone?
Bea Seibert
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Marnie
Frequent Contributor (5K+ posts)
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posted
Let me try to explain something...
In the 1970s in Germany, docs cured dogs with neurobabesia with.. IV Na bicarbonate.
Terrific, right?
Sodium bicarbonate. Wow...cheap and easy.
Problem is..this:
"It is also interesting that motility of B. burgdorferi requires a high concentration of
NaCl
and pH 7.6, which are the normal physiological conditions for interstitial fluids. In any case, our data suggest that chemotaxis may indeed be important for the pathogenesis of B. burgdorferi."
Bb loves/needs sodium, Na and Cl...it is being upregulated via glutamate levels which are off the charts in lyme and all the other diseases discussed on this board.
So you think a sodium compound will rid babesia, but it will "feed" Bb.
We MUST hit Bb FIRST, IMO.
BTW...anemia is a sign of low PFK levels, so lyme ALONE can can cause anemia. This happens to our astronauts who return to earth anemic and with low PFK levels due to "oxidative stress" issues which happen in space travel. (Skylab research...I can document.)
To combat high glutamate levels, use Ginkgo, vitamin E, and vitamin C. Take D-ribose to protect the cells...it is a 5 carbon sugar that WE need (to make RNA -> DNA), but Bb cannot use.
Eat gelatin esp. for the glycine in it.
Get a far infrared sauna and use it faithfully...every day. Replenish the electolytes (water with minerals after the sauna). Make it enjoyable. Read a romance book while in it or take a portable DVD player inside...whatever it takes so you look forward to the 1/2 hour in the sauna. Put it in your basement or garage corner.
This sauna (and none other) works by reducing TNF alpha and IL1B, INactivating NFkB, increasing NO...nitric oxide, dilating the blood vessels reducing glutamate toxicity and delivering healing nutrients...esp. oxygen.
It is APPROVED for use by cerebral palsy patients who have nonstop muscle contractions. It was featured on Extreme Makeover Home Edition...for this purpose...to help a child with cerebral palsy.
Get 10 minutes of real sunlight exposure every day for the "blue" wavelength to convert melatonin back to serotonin (avoid depression). This will also help to protect you from viruses.
HIV patients have high bilirubin levels. This is RBCs breaking down (babies born with emergency supply of RBCs). Newborns can be jaundiced and have high bilirubin levels. We put them under blue lights (but shield their eyes) to remedy this jaundice...quickly. Big difference between looking directly at the "sun" and not.
When inflammation is at its worse...get cold. Take cool baths. We know cold reduces inflammation. Or put cold pacs wrapped in thin towels under your armpits, your knees, the back of your neck...drop your body temp. FURTHER. It is protective.
The saunas, "detox"...detox glutamate. Raise our temperature...but...
Alternating hot and cold = stimulate the immune system to do its job.
Take good old ASA...Bufferin might be best. Look closely at what it is.
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Dave6002
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posted
Tabers,
Thanks for asking.
Since I thought I didn't have Babesia, I discontinued Bab treatment including Changshan, which I took for awhile(see my post above. I bought two bottles and used one and a half)and I didn't see any obvious toxicity nor improvement.
I have done two rounds of 28-days of Mepron/ZIth/Arte, which didn't give me any improvement but relapse.
I then switched to Bart. treatment with Levaquin or Rifampin, which gave me immediate improvement.
So I figured that my symptoms were caused by Bart.
Right now I am Dough rifing while pulsing Rifampin/Arte or Mino/Arte. MWF and garlic juice.
I feel good(85% recovery) recently and hope eventually will get out the woods soon.
Best wishes,
Dave
Posts: 1078 | From Fairland | Registered: Apr 2006
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posted
Dave6002, Thanks for the [older post] long but very interesting article. Did you notice this gem?
quote:After Dr. Cheng Peizhen succeeded in the clinical experiment, he further found that changshan used alone was as effective against malaria as when used in combination with other substances, except for attendant nausea.
If I am reading this correctly, it is saying that the nausea is present when the herb is used ALONE.
Maybe that is why the traditional formula used multiple herbs? To avoid the nausea?
-------------------- When I lost my grip on Faith in the maze of illness, Hope gently clasped my hand and led on.
RuthRuth Posts: 478 | From California | Registered: Jan 2007
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quote:"These and other studies led to the proposal that heparan sulfate may be involved in the cell-cell recognition phenomena and control of cell growth, whereas heparin may be involved in defense mechanisms against bacteria and other foreign materials." PMID 10412563
-------------------- When I lost my grip on Faith in the maze of illness, Hope gently clasped my hand and led on.
RuthRuth Posts: 478 | From California | Registered: Jan 2007
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treepatrol
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posted
up
-------------------- Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Remember Iam not a Doctor Just someone struggling like you with Tick Borne Diseases.
posted
Marnie, When I read your post about the dog cure with IV sod bicarb, It reminded me of Nov 2 2005. I drank 7 teaspoons of sod bicarb in 4 oz of oj.
I had had a deep seated burning ache in center of head for 11 and 1/2 years constant day and night. Had that damn pain while asleep, while awake. I laughed with it and cried with it.
When I drank the drink I felt a drainage pouring,oozing, and dripping from top of my head and I knew that the pain had left me.
Guess what? That pain has never returned. It has been 1 and 1/2 years. I still drink it every month at least.
Do you think I had babs?
I never imagined that that pain would ever go away. Husband and I thought that a brain tumor was missed on tests.
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