Prostate cancer cure?
I watched with some incredulity as the news last night portrayed a ‘Ginger drink’ whose manufacturers claimed actually killed prostate cancer cells. And I guess that was what Dr Dong MD, phD at Sydney University Australia thought too when he was sent a ginger punch drink and was asked if he would test it on prostate cancer cells to see if it did what it claimed it would do. So with a healthy dose of skepticism and a sense of humour, Dr Dong obliged (he kept an open mind). Trials started in Christmas 2004 and by May 2005 he had completed the study. The results startled him and his colleagues…the drink had a near perfect 100% kill rate on the cancer cells.
This ginger punch was no snake oil concoction whipped up by some backyard wannabe famous. It was the baby of biochemist Greg Jardine. Reaping the anti-oxidants that grapes offered in wine, Greg optimized the concentration of them in the beverage that he produced (red wine only offers 1/3 of the anti-oxidants available in grapes, Greg Jardine and his team of scientists purified the mixture to ensure that 100% of the anti-oxidants remained in the beverage that he produced). Then ginger and lime which also had well documented anti-oxidative capacities were added to the mix that the perfect killer cancer cell mix was produced. This drink was the non-alcoholic ginger punch that was sent to Dr Dong for testing with prostate cancer cells.
With the outstanding preliminary results under his arm, Dr Dong is now proceeding to animal trials and it is predicted that these studies will be completed by the end of this year. Other cancer cell lines eg breast cancer would also be tested. Great news indeed and if it does eventually become mainstream treatment, it would be a toast of the town!