Married in the Morning

Dan's 529

In April volunteers will start selling daffodils. It's a fundraising and awareness campaign for the Canadian Cancer Society. It's been a symbol of hope since it's inception in the 1950's. Well there's a new yellow flower of hope on the Cancer scene, actually it's a weed. The dandilion. Imagine that?  A biochemist and an oncologist working in Windsor stumbled onto the idea after a few leukemia patients started drinking dandilion root tea as an alternate therapy after their chemotherapy stopped working. They are getting ready to take their idea to clincial trials. The research could lead to a non toxic cancer treatment, something not derived from synthetic chemicals. Apparently it makes cancer cells committ suicide, but has no affect on normal healthy cells, and no side effects. The research also shows the same result when applied to various other cancers, including bone, pancreatic, colon, and melanoma. It sounds to good to be true but Dr. Caroline Hamm of Windsor Regional Hospital and Dr. Siyaram Pandey at the University of Windsor are about to meet with Health Canada to get approval for a Stage 1 clinical trial. Imagine the consequences, and not from some rare plant in a rain forest half way around the world, or in some million dollar pharmaceutical lab, but something that grows on everyone's front lawn. It sounds so implausible, so improbable, so inconceivable. Then again Penicillin sounded pretty outrageous at first.