By ASHLEY KINDERGAN THE GAZETTE
Sandra Hunter of Pueblo accepted that her husband, Edward Moya, was going to die. What she wouldn’t accept was the doctors’ prediction that endstage pancreatic cancer would kill him three weeks to a month after his diagnosis in May 2002.
Desperate, Hunter researched cancer remedies online. She added supplements to her husband’s chemotherapy treatments, including an herbal tea called Essiac. That tea, she thinks, was one of the most important reasons her husband lived 19 months longer than doctors expected, though she has no way to know for sure.
“I knew it wouldn’t hurt him,” she said of the tea. “There is a point where you say, what do you have to lose?”
Studies suggest that a growing number of cancer patients supplement their treatment with alternative remedies, and Essiac is high on the list. In a study at the M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Texas, 4.9 percent of participants said they used the tea in addition to their traditional treatment. In a similar study at the Mayo Clinic Comprehensive Cancer Center, nearly 10 percent of cancer patients involved in a chemotherapy trial said they were using Essiac as well.
Only one Canadian company can use the trademarked name Essiac, but a four-herb formula for the tea has been widely published in books and on the Internet. Local stores such as Wild Oats, Mountain Mama Natural Foods, Rocky Mountain Nature Store, Whole Foods and Vitamin Cottage carry one or more brands of the tea.
“We don’t know how many people take it. If you take 500 cancer patients, and only one of them is taking Essiac, that’s still a lot of people taking Essiac,” said Dr. Andrew Vickers, a researcher at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City.
For cancer patients and families searching for answers in unlikely places, wading through claims amid a relative paucity of scientific data can be daunting. That’s why the Federal Trade Commission fined Michael D. Miller of Crestone, who was making an Essiac tea, $17,500 in 2000. The Federal Trade Commission, which regulates the advertising of herbal remedies, prohibits claims that such products can treat, fight or cure cancer. Miller claimed on his company Web site that Essiac could cure cancer and HIV/AIDS.
Although Essiac has at least an 80-year history, there have been only a few controlled studies of its effects, and their results have not conclusively proven or disproven the claims of proponents and users that the herbal mixture works as a detoxifier and natural immune stimulant.
“There’s no particular reason to believe it’s harmful,” Vickers, the Sloan-Kettering researcher, said. “There’s no reason to believe it’s going to be helpful.”
Although recent research has found some evidence that the tea can inhibit cancer growth in certain kinds of cancer in cell cultures, one animal study suggested that certain kinds of estrogen-positive cancers, including some breast cancers, might get worse when treated with one brand of Essiac. Scientists are hindered by the fact that they do not understand how the human body metabolizes the substance. The concentrations that cause an effect in a test tube may be higher than what a person taking the recommended dose of the tea actually consumes.
Vickers put it more bluntly: “The fact that you can take an herb that’s found in Essiac, and mix it with cancer cells, and mix it in a test tube and show that it kills some cancer cells is completely unsurprising.”
That’s because test tube, or in-vitro, testing is the first stage of medical testing. The second step tests on animals, but those tests give scientists only clues about how a substance may act in humans. The real test, clinical trials on human subjects, is always the last stage to determining a product’s efficacy and safety.
Because the Food and Drug Administration classifies Essiac as a dietary supplement, manufacturers do not have to show the tea effectively fights cancer — only that it’s safe.
The history of the tea began in 1922. A Canadian nurse named Rene Caisse encountered an elderly female patient who said she had cured her breast cancer with an herbal tea recipe given to her by an Indian chief. Caisse experimented with the herbs, and soon established a clinic to treat cancer patients with a four-herb version of Essiac — Caisse spelled backward.
Some books and Internet sites point to Caisse’s results as proof that the tea works, but many details from the time are difficult to verify. In an article she wrote before her death in 1978, Caisse claimed that her personal files contained “hundreds of documented cases concerning the proven efficacy of ESSIAC with cancer patients.” Internet accounts say those files were burned — some say by family members, who didn’t realize what the papers contained.
Even the original composition of the formula remains uncertain. Caisse kept the formula secret for most of her life, and stories conflict regarding with whom she shared it. Caisse sold the recipe to the Canadian firm Resperin Corp., now Essiac Canada International, which sells a trademarked product called Essiac.
Today, more than 25 products purport to derive from the original Essiac formula, including ready-made brewed tea, powdered tea, tinctures, salves, capsules and tea bags. The products are available online and from local naturopaths and health food stores.
Buying a year’s supply of the tea in powdered form can cost up to $1,000. A year’s supply of ready-brewed liquid Flor-Essence, a popular brand produced by Flora Inc., from Whole Foods costs more than $4,800. Others buy herbs and, following the published recipe, make their own tea.
For those who believe in the tea, a few inconclusive studies do not tell the whole story.
“If I was told, ‘You can only do one thing in the complementary arena,’ I would do the tea,” said Sandra Hunter, looking back on her decision to administer Essiac to her husband. If she were given the choice between the tea and chemotherapy, however, she said she would choose chemotherapy.
The tea’s most passionate endorsements come from naturopaths and herbalists such as Michelle Kelavik, also known as “The Tea Lady,” for her four-herb brew of Essiaclike tea, Ojibwa Tea of Life. Kelavik, of Denver, credits Essiac with her own recovery from a urethral growth in 1994.
Kelavik said she spent four years studying herbs with Ojibwa Indian tribal elders and in the library of Bastyr University, a college in Washington state specializing in natural medicine. The facility in which she processes herbs is an FDAinspected clean room.
For her, the tea must be part of a holistic, spiritual approach to health, and believing in it is as important as drinking it. She makes no promises and wants people to make their own decisions.
“You never, ever, say the word ‘cure,'” Kelavik said. “It’s against the law to use the word ‘cure.’ Doctors are legally allowed to use the word cure, but doctors don’t cure anybody either. God, nature, spirit is what cures.”
According to naturopaths and herbalists, the restrictions on the tea and the lack of research are part of a conspiracy meant to protect pharmaceutical companies. Because herbal remedies can be difficult to patent, some claim, pharmaceutical companies don’t want to waste time researching a remedy that can’t earn money.
“When people are getting well by using nature — they can’t patent these things, so it’s taking away from the mega money coming from the drug companies,” said Sharon Schulman, a local naturopath and herbalist who treated her breast cancer with Essiac tea.
She tells clients her story and that the tea is thought to stimulate the immune system and aid in general detoxification, but does not explicitly recommend the tea.
Generally, oncologists advise patients to talk to their physicians before trying any herbal remedy, and some recommend discontinuing herbs while receiving radiation or chemotherapy, or before surgery. Herbs with antioxidant properties can interfere with the oxidative reactions that kill cells during chemotherapy.
Dr. James Young of Penrose Cancer Center said he doesn’t discourage patients from taking alternative or complementary medicines like Essiac unless he has good reason to think them unsafe.
“What I’ve come to realize in my maturity is that some of these things can empower patients to feel like they’re doing something for themselves — that they’re not so out of control in the process,” he said.
OTHER OPTIONS
Complementary and alternative medicine, defined as any nontraditional approach to treating a disease, includes several popular remedies for cancer.
The M.D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston lists some nonherbal approaches:
Homeopathy: Medicines designed to help the body start healing, not to eliminate symptoms.
Tai chi and qigong: Chinese exercises.
Massage therapies: These include reiki massage, healing touch and therapeutic touch, which claim to channel a healing energy through the practitioner’s hands onto the patient.
Mind-body approaches:
These include support groups, storytelling, expressive writing, meditation and guided imagery, in which patients picture positive or healing images. These approaches are based on the theory that the mind influences the recovery of the body.
DETAILS
No large-scale human tests of any brand of Essiac tea have been performed. Thomas Geither, owner of Flora Inc., which manufactures Flor-Essence, said the company is planning a human trial of cancer patients in Mexico City and is negotiating a second trial at the University of Kentucky.
In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in New York City and the National Cancer Institute tested two samples from Rene Caisse and two from Resperin Corp. on sarcoma, leukemia and other cancer cells. They found no evidence that Essiac caused tumors to regress or grow more slowly. Here are some sites with information about Essiac and other herbal remedies:
The National Cancer Institute: www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/pdq/ cam/essiac/healthprofes sional/allpages
M.D. Anderson Cancer Center: www.mdanderson.org/depart ments/ CIMER
Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center’s About Herbs database: www.mskcc.org/mskcc/html/11571.cfm? RecodID=441&tab=HC
National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine: nccam.nih.gov
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