A widely used new blood thinner that is routinely given to heart patients after angioplasty appears in rare cases to trigger a deadly blood disease. The drug, called Plavix, prevents blood clots and has been taken by more than 3 million people worldwide since its introudction two years ago. For …
Patients carrying hepatitis B virus (HbV) need not despair anymore. Doctors in Nepal have claimed that a herbal preparation Jaundicatrin has been successfully tested against jaundice caused by HbV and the hepatitis B surface antigen (HbSAg). The team conducted the tests on 23 patients with HbV and HbSAg carriers of …
Chinese herbs are facing extinction due to increasing demand for herbal medicines. According to the natural medicine marketing report, prepared as part of a Sino-British project, the lucrative market for these herbs has led to large-scale pillage of wild flora. Sales of Chinese traditional medicine shot up by 113 per …
A NEW herbal drug developed by scientists at the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR), could not have come a moment sooner for those trying to grapple with the menace of malaria. The drug, Arteether, has been derived from a Chinese herb, Artemisia annua, known as Quinghosou in Chinese. it …
Harish Gaonkar, a Danish International" Development Agency march scientist, has recently come up with unportant observations on P famall diversity of butterfly-ecol Vilm haillia. His research shows that ps, is mat a single butterfly 'host W Mw plant on which it feeds) a Is am used for medicinal pur w …
WHAT is the role of metals in human health? Ten-year-old Salman had blood cancer. Physicians at the New Delhi-based All India Institute of Medical Sciences, gave him not more than three days. In desperation, his parents took to him to an ayurvedic physician, who administered a concoction containing mercury, arsenic …
In July this year, a physician called Gary Pearce of the Multiple Sclerosis (MS) Society of New South Wales, wrote to Vaidya Baiendu Prakash asking him to immediately stop his metal therapy as it contained proven toxic substances like arsenic and mercury. He said it was folly to confuse the …
Tantric practitioners experimented with achieving physicl immortality. The by-products of these experiments were adopted into ayurvecia as medicines. Kaflali, the black sulphide of mercury which is the basis of a wide variety of Ayurvedic medicines! mentioned in the 7th century treatise Ashfanga Hrdaya by Vagabhata. By the time Sharngadhara wrote …
Metals to medicines is an elaborate affair- For the medicines to be effective. it is important to get the right material. First one has to ascertain the typo and geographical source of the Pro, scribed minerals and herbs. For Instance, an iron are found'in Rajasthan may be more 'potent' than …
THE Chinese may not have found a cure for treating cancer, but what they have is the patient's well-being in mind. The Western drug researchers have reached a plateau in their attempts to find a magic pellet, but the Chinese doctors have utilised their traditional knowledge of herbs to improve …
WANT to get vaccinated against malaria? Just chew a few tobacco leaves instead. Researcher Thomas H Turpen of the California-based Biosource Technologies Inc and his colleagues at the Naval Medical Research Institute in Bethesda, the US, have worked out a way to produce an experimental vaccine against malaria by genetically …
IN THE highland village of Paini, 7 km off Joshimath in the Garhwal Himalayas, the village Mahila Mangal Dal (MMD) -- the women's welfare group -- today has a sizeable treasury of money in its village fund. The fund not only helps the women during lean periods, but also meets …
Disappearing herbs SOME of Sri Lanka's natural wonders could be destroyed in the frantic race for industrialisation, says an article by Wijitha Nakkavita. A case in point is the beautiful Roomassala Hill, once the repository of over 500 rare herbal plants. Today, they have dwindled to about 150 rare species. …
• Nicolas Hayek, chairperson of SMH AG, is looking for a partner to introduce the automotive equivalent of the Swatch watch he made famous in the 1980s. Hayek's inexpensive, stylish and "environmentally correct" car is to have low pollution levels, thanks to a hybrid system of battery- and gasoline-powered motors. …
With the increasing importance of birth control in the national family welfare programme, contraceptive research in the country is bustling. A whole range of new contraceptives, from plant-based creams to surgical methods and vaccines, could make conventional birth-control practices such as sterilisation and condom-use obsolete. And, though they have yet …
DON'T scoff the next time you have a severe cold and your grandmother gives you an onion to eat at bedtime, because by morning, you will find the cold has disappeared. Onions contain not only flavonoids, but many other ingredients yet to be isolated by scientists. Onions are used for …
Scientists at the Jammu laboratory of the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) have found a Himalayan herb, which can considerably increase the absorption of tuberculosis (TB) drugs in the human bloodstream. Scientists Usha Zutshi and K L Bedi explain that because the human body can absorb less than …
SCIENTISTS the world over are agog at the discovery of flavonoids in tea by Michael Hertog of the National Institute of Public Health and Environmental Protection, at Bilthoven in the Netherlands. Hertog's discovery supports the belief held by most Chinese that tea is good for health. The East abounds with …
WITH PREDICTIONS by World Health Organisation officials that 40 million people will be infected by HIV by 2000 and six million of them will go on to contract AIDS and die, a cure for the disease holds out promise for vast profits -- and the Australians, at least, are determined …
CULTS are dangerous and the world has never been free of them. But they are not all necessarily religious in nature. The latest in the bandwagon is the herbal cult The herbal cult was born in America -- aren't they all? -- out of a call to return to one's …
SUFFERING from chronic asthma? Try swallowing a live fish and you may never wheeze again. For more than 150 years now, thousands of people have been gathering once every year in a bylane in the old city of Hyderabad, to avail of a secret herbal medicine that is placed inside …
