What do you expect the leading cancer-related European herbal remedy to be prescribed as an herbal tea, a capsule, an ointment, or as an ampule for injection? Welcome back again. In the following session, we will discuss the most frequently used European herbal remedies which are being used in cancer care, primarily with the goal of reducing the symptom load and improving quality of life during active oncology treatment or else as part of palliative care. Europe is one of the most important of the international centers where herbal medicine is being used for both general medical treatments and for cancer care. The richness of modern European herbal medicine stems from both the geographical-botanical and the medical-cultural diversity of the continent. The geographical landscape of each European member provides widely varying indigenous spectrum of herbs many of which can be dated back to ancient times. Herbs harvested and picked from the Mediterranean shores, to the alpine peaks, and meadows, and cold Northern Atlantic shores have all contributed to the European library of herbal medicinal products, creating a pharmacopoeia which has gradually been assembled under the auspices of European Union and other continental countries. Many of these medicinal plants have undergone rigorous research which has examined their effectiveness and safety, including for cancer care. A number of the medicinal European herbs use have been reviewed in journal monographs and have subsequently been recognized by official authorities, originally Commission E in Germany and later the Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products, which publishes the European Union monographs on herbal medicine. From a cross-cultural perspective, the central role played by European herbal medicine has corresponded with two geographical axis: the first, a vertical axis which extends from the southern shores of the Mediterranean, where the origins of herbal medicine can be traced back to ancient Greece and the Roman Empire. It was from here that the knowledge of the great herbal-oriented physicians, Dioscorides and Galen, spread northward. This southern, northern axis have played a central role in the evolution of today's European plant pharmacopoeia and still plays a prominent role in the German, French and British schools of herbal medicine. The second axis goes from east to west, through which history has seen the importing of Asian herbs, spices, and wisdoms of traditional Chinese, ayurverdic, and Islamic medicine from the far in Middle East to Europe. The eventual merging of these two axis is what can be seen today in modern European herbal medicine, which reflects a strong link to both of its axis, the ancient Greco-Roman school of medicine practice and a blend of Asian influences imported by merchants and teachers from the Middle East and Eastern Asia. Another major factor contributing to the richness of the European herbal medicine is the historical interactions between the great navies of Britain, Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, as well as other European countries. It is largely through their shipping abilities that these countries have over the centuries been able to import knowledge and culture of traditional herbal medicine plants from as far away as the African and American continents, as well as Australia and the Pacific. In addition to its diverse schools of herbal medicine, Europe is also known as the origin of two systematic approaches to health care, which are closely related to herbal medicine. The first of these is homeopathy, which was founded by the German physician, Samuel Hahnemann, at the beginning of the 19th century. Although many homeopathic remedies are herbal in origin, the high dilutions of these compounds, many beyond Avogadro's number of 6.02 times 10 to the power of minus 23, means that the remedy does not have even a single molecule of the original herb present. In some cases, however, homeopathic remedies may have lower degrees of dilutions, referred to as potencies reaching from one-twelfth to one-hundredths of the original compound. This low potency preparations will contain traceable materials, and they are frequently prescribed by practitioners from the French and Central European School of Clinical Homeopathy. Homeopathy is one of the most controversial modality from the field of complementary medicine with the scientific world barking at the concept of a remedy that contains nothing more than water or alcohol being able to impact health and cure disease. As a result of this controversy, many integrative oncology centers are reluctant to offer homeopathy as part of their repertoire of complimentary medicine therapies. Still, homeopathy is being practiced by several integrative clinicians as part of supportive cancer care in Italy, France, Austria, Germany and other European countries. I asked Professor Frenkel to explain how he perceives homeopathy and to talk about his clinical and research experience in using homeopathy within the context of integrative oncology. In oncology, I had the feeling that there's no role for homeopathy in oncology. I felt like it might help in functional situations, such as inflammatory bowel syndrome, or irritable bowel syndrome, or headaches, migraines, stress and things like that; but I didn't think that it would have any effect in oncology. When I got to MD Anderson, I had the luxury of sitting with patients for two hours and hearing what their main expectations, what their main things are, what their needs are, and I start hearing a lot of stories that none of the physicians in that Institute heard. One of the things that I started hearing is about an underground movement with brain tumor patients that they actually use homeopathy for brain tumors, and it came out as a real surprise for me because they had it some kind of a website that they use to transfer from one patient to another patient. It was like underground of patients. Doctors didn't know anything about it. I start looking into the websites that patients were utilizing, and one of those websites were a website that dealt with homeopathic remedies used in a homeopathic study done in MD Anderson. I was really surprised that somebody did an MD Anderson study on brain tumor cells here, and I invited the researcher that actually did the study and he says, "I want you to meet homeopathic physicians from India that is going to come here in two weeks, where he's going to tell you about his experience." This is, "Okay." So, I met this homeopathic physician, and this homeopathic physician says, "What you see is nothing to what I have in Calcutta, in India. Come and visit my practice, and you'll see something amazing," and I was scratching my head and I decided that I'm going to go there. They come to this Dr. Banerjee. Each day, there is a line of two miles of patients waiting to get into his clinic. He has about 15 other doctors working with him. The clinic sees about a thousand patients a day. Out of that, about 200-300 patients are cancer patients. Him and his son see all the cancer patients. So, I was sitting with him for two weeks, from morning till night, and I saw there were things that were completely strange. I didn't think that they exist, and when I went back, I took some of the remedies the he used for breast cancer, and I managed to convince the people in MD Anderson to actually do a study on those remedies, and this is how it started. We basically tested remedies, homeopathic remedies that he specifically used for breast cancer and compare it to regular breast cancers cells, and see what happens when you actually combine it with homeopathic remedies compared to chemotherapy. In vitro study with set out tools. In vitro study. We had to make sure that those remedies didn't carry chemotherapy in them. So, we actually tested them that there's no chemotherapy there inside the bottles. As a matter of fact, we ordered from a completely different company, the same remedies and we actually tested them one side-by-side, and it was an interesting revelation to see that there was some kind of effect which we didn't expect it to happen, and the effect was very similar to chemotherapy.
