Indigenous Traditional Medicines for Cancer, Diabetes, Etc.
Question from: Ned T. Paschene
Posted on: January 08, 2005 Answered by: Conrad Richter
This important information concerns a situation that was first brought to my attention number of years ago when I met and listened to an Ojibway spiritual healer, spiritual Indigenous named "NIM-KEE BEN-NESHE" (thunder bird) known as Randel Proulx, from Cape Croker, Ontario explains that he has passed on to him by a grandparent, a medicinal plant of tremendous importance. Along with his special spiritual gifts, Mr. Proulx uses this medicine plants and can cure any kind of cancer, HIV/AIDS, arthritis, asthma, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease etc. The plants available in May, June and July and is at its peak of potency for two weeks in mid-June. Back in the summer of 2001, Randel spoke of his numerous exhaustive and futile attempts to bring this gift to the attention of members of the mainstream scientific and medical professions.
This Elder carries knowledge and wisdom of traditional medicine plants. For the past ten (10) years, he has been trying to share this gift with the mainstream medical community to no avail. He wishes it to be known that Indigenous Peoples and all people who are diagnosed with cancer and HIV/AIDS need not feel so fearful, there is a cure, in the form of a North American plant. This Sacred Gift, when harvested and administered in the proper way, will cure the world and them of these diseases immediately. Randel calls this medicine “the gift for a second life,” and say “Common Sense is where this medicine comes from.”
Although he has been using this gift to help people for many years, he feels it is time to bring it to many more people - all people – to cure them of these terrible diseases. He wants these medicines to be made available to the all Indigenous Peoples of the world including the Turtle Island (North America) for free, because these medicines came first from the Indigenous Peoples for the Indigenous Peoples. He wishes to make it available to them now and to all others as well from the Four (4) Directions of the world. Part of his sharing and demonstration will be to raise the questions “how to protect this medicinal gift? How deal with medicinal patents, analysis, production and distributions.
Randel was a guest at my house again last few years, and restated his great pain and frustration at being unable to convince doctors and scientists to take note and act upon this life-saving medicine.
Just recently, I heard on CBC Radio, a documentary about a Traditional medicine plant which grows in Africa and is now being used to treat and cure AIDS. So I am not at all surprised to learn that there is one that grows in North America too.
I am very aware of your respect for Native American Culture and Traditional Medicines. Do you have any suggestions where Mr. Proulx may be able to establish credibility for the healing properties of these plants of Traditional Medicines, your advice would be most welcome and contacting you was the only new avenue I could think of. Mr. Proulx, now an Ontario resident, used his healing powers and medicine for a local Member of Provincial Parliament (MPP), whose cancer has been in remission ever since. Following his own experience, this patient tried to obtain funding through the Minister of Health to bring Indigenous medicines into broader use. His attempts were also unsuccessful.
Mr. Proulx is wishing to conduct demonstrate to cure four (4) directions of peoples to show the world with media that the Indigenous Peoples was gifted and has four (4) directions traditional medicines powers of the plants. He feels that exposure during this demonstration will speed the delivery of this sacred gifts to the people of the world who are afflicted by these any terrible disease.
Would your experiences be willing to explore or support a way to make this treatment more widely known and available? Can you think of anyone Mr. Proulx could contact about this? A response from you would be most gratefully received. Mr. Proulx can be reached by me. Thank you so much for your time and all you have done to enlighten and inform the public on so many issues “congratulations.”
There are hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of herbal remedies that face the same challenges that Mr. Proulx’s formula faces. In Canada remedies purporting to cure diseases such as cancer, diabetes, heart disease, etc., are up against the notorious Schedule A, a list of serious diseases for which herbal products cannot be sold without going through the same multi-million dollar studies that new drugs must go through to get approved. Without the possibility of patent protection, it is virtually impossible to imagine how a herbal remedy for Schedule A diseases would ever get approved by the regulator, Health Canada. Although Health Canada’s new regulations for natural health products are designed to allow herbal remedies on the market, those claiming to cure Schedule A diseases are excluded. The situation is similar in the United States and in most other industralized countries.
Traditional remedies cannot be patented because patent rules require that a) the remedy be new, and b) this same remedy not already be in the marketplace for more than a year. So, the prospects of selling Mr. Proulx’s formula as a ready-to-use product that might, for example, sell on the shelves of a herb shop or health food store is next to nil.
Pharmaceutical companies could conceivably take an interest in the product and through research find new phytochemicals in it that can be patented. But this is an extreme long shot; drug companies are doing very little work on new drugs from herbs these days because of the costs involved.
There are two alternatives. Despite Health Canada’s best efforts to regulate all herbal products with the introduction of the new natural health products regulations in 2004, there will still be an unlicensed underground business of herbal remedies sold via alternative channels such as herbalists, naturopaths, some health food stores, and some multi-level marketing schemes. This business is not insignificant, but it is by its very nature a risky and unstable market, and we have seen a lot of products in this market come and go. Health Canada’s Natural Health Products Directorate has vowed to enforce the regulations beginning in 2005, so the players in this market could face confiscation and severe penalties.
The other alternative is to sell the recipe and directions for taking the formula. Customers can prepare and administer the formula themselves. The right to free speech protects the right to tell people about the formula. But once the information is out in the public domain Mr. Proulx will have little control over the remedy except for the copyrighted material that he prepares with the recipe and directions. It is important to note that a package can include a book or pamphlet but cannot include the ingredients used in the formula, otherwise the whole package will be considered a "drug" by Health Canada even if the customer must do the work to prepare the remedy from the raw ingredients.
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