Posted on 12/26/2011 3:46:18 PM PST by Eleutheria5
It sounds like one of those diseases that should have been wiped out long ago, but malaria, unfortunately, is alive and well, especially in Africa and other tropical, third world locations. Battling malaria is complicated for numerous reasons, among them the difficulty of creating drugs to battle the disease. Now, however, Hebrew University researchers have come up with a novel method of producing the medicine that can treat malaria – using common, everyday tobacco plants.
Malaria is caused by a parasite called Plasmodium, which is transmitted via mosquitoes. Symptoms of malaria include fever, headache, and vomiting, and usually appear between 10 and 15 days after the mosquito bite. If not treated, malaria can quickly become life-threatening by disrupting the blood supply to vital organs. Over 3 billion people are at risk of malaria. Every year, this leads to about 250 million malaria cases and nearly one million deaths. People living in the poorest countries are the most vulnerable. Malaria is especially a serious problem in Africa, where 20% of childhood deaths are due to the effects of the disease and every 30 seconds a child dies from malaria.
The main source of anti-Malarial drugs is based on a substance called artemisinin, a natural compound from Artemisia annua (sweet wormwood) plants, which is difficult to synthesize and expensive to obtain. Scientists have tried hard to artificially synthesize this substance, but despite extensive efforts invested in the last decade in metabolic engineering of the drug in both microbial and heterologous plant systems, production of artemisinin itself has never been achieved.
Now, Yissum Research Development Company of the Hebrew University., the technology transfer arm of the University, introduces a novel method allowing artemisinin production in a heterologous (that is, other than A. annua) plant system, such as tobacco. The method was developed by....
(Excerpt) Read more at israelnationalnews.com ...
I think it was Pall Mall (but not sure now) that’s working on putting vitamins in the tobacco mix.
I have been smoking cigars for years and I have never ONCE gotten malaria.
I remember reading about instances during WW II in the
Pacific, where Malaria prevented people from getting
Cholera. Never heard of any further research though,
just mentioned in a British POW Doctors story.
People tend to chew on cigars. Bet you don’t have worms either.
Tobacco has a bad name for one reason- They wee HEAVE Republican donors.
I am not saying it is healthy, too much of anything can hurt you. But I do know people who smoked for 50 years with no bad health... so, its not ALWAYS harmful, in the way that ingesting poison is supposed to be
If Tobacco Companies were big Democrap campaign donors we would be hearing about the healthful benefits of bathing your lungs in healthful, cleansing smoke.
The demand for such genetically modified plants will be limited and none will be diverted into traditional tobacco products.
250 million cases a year. One million deaths. No tobacco taxes on the medicinal use. Stop subsidizing it, start contracting for it. Let the market take over.
It’s those Jooz again!
I have been smoking cigars for years and I have never ONCE gotten malaria.
They help keep the mosquitos (and my wife) away.
Robinson Crusoe used boiled tobacco juice to help cure fever(did he mean malaria?). Ironic that Marijuana is being touted for its medicinal purposes, and here we have tobacco.
Among them, those pesky American leftists that outlawed DDT all those millions of lives ago.
Josey Wales can show you how it’s done.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-MfbYnz8ucc
In Cuba, one of the great tobacco countries of the world, they have been using tobacco leaves dipped in molasses as a home remedy for more than a hundred years.
Could infecting a relative with Malaria cure said relative’s choleric character?
I grew up working on my grandfather's tobacco farm in Maryland. It was commercially viable then, and a lot of farm kids went to college on the income from 5-10 acre farms. At one point in our colonial history, tobacco was used just like cash.
It is only the medical antitobacco jihad which has made tobacco less commercially viable, a phenomenon which has seriously reduced even seasonal work for those who have little education (although the wages I made cutting tobacco were 5 times minimum wage and augmented my college spending money quite well).
Do not attempt this remedy while wearing a white shirt. Therefore, white shirts cause malaria, by inhibiting tobacco spittle on mosquitoes. Big Formal Wear wants you all to die so they can reap their corporate profits. Even now, they are pushing their products throughout the third world, causing massive deaths by tobacco spittle deprivation.
And let’s not forget the disastrous effect of second-hand tobacco spittle deprivation. You probably won’t spit on a mosquito sucking the blood of your friend, for fear of ruining his tuxedo, thereby spreading disease and pestilence, all because of Big Formal Wear.
Just say no. Chew tobacco and wear camouflage fatigues to all weddings and bar mitzvahs. That way you can stop malaria in its tracks.
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