Egyptian Mummies, Drugs and Cancer

One of Egypt’s most prolific rulers was Ramses II, also known as “Ramses the Great”, who reigned for 67 years during the 19th dynasty of the 12th century BC.  He lived to be over 90 years old.

His glories surpassed all other Pharaohs, and Egypt reached an overwhelming state of prosperity during his reign. Not only is he known as one of Egypt’s greatest warriors, but also as a peace-maker.  He was the first king in history to sign a peace treaty with his enemies, the Hittites, ending long years of wars and hostility.(1)

When the mummified remains of the Pharaoh were brought to Paris in 1976, a team of scientists went to the Museum of Mankind to study the corpse.

Initial analysis had revealed Ramses was suffering from severe dental problems and was plagued by arthritis and hardening of the arteries. But one scientist, Dr Michele Lescott, discovered what looked like specks of tobacco clinging to the fibers of the Royal burial wrapping (linen). However, many scientists dismissed this find to be “contamination from modern sources” because tobacco, it was said, would not even arrive in Egypt for another 2700 years.(2)

Dr Svelta Balabanova, a forensic toxicologist, was called in to investigate.  She obtained samples of intestinal tissue from deep inside the body and declared that she had discovered the presence of cannabis, coca and tobacco, laid down in the body cells like rings on a tree.(3)

In Munich a decade later, seven ancient Egyptian mummies were flown from the Cairo Museum and samples sent to a list of qualified investigators. Again Dr Balabanova was called in and conducted a series of gas chromatography tests that revealed the presence of nicotine and cocaine in all seven mummies.

Rosalie David, curator of Egyptology at the Manchester Museum, examined the mummies and Dr Balabanova’s analysis.  David explained;

drugs in prehistory

“The ancient Egyptians certainly used drugs.  As well as lotus (eating blue lotus can act as a mild sedative), they had mandrake (which contains hallucinogenic tropane alkaloids), and cannabis. There is a strong suggestion that they also used opium (which contains up to 12% morphine).”

Meanwhile, Dr Balabanova continued her work analyzing tissue from ancient humans from around the world.  She examined hundreds of subjects, prepared over 3000 samples for drug analysis, and found evidence of  “divine plants” residuals in a vast majority of the bodies. (4)

Cancer Rare in Ancient Times

Another team of scientists has recently been conducting studies on mummies that has revealed conclusions of a very different nature. It suggests cancer is a man-made disease caused by modern day environmental factors.

After analyzing the remains of hundreds of Egyptian mummies, researchers at the University of Manchester concluded that cancer was extremely rare in ancient times.

Cancer rates have risen massively since the Industrial Revolution, in particular childhood cancer, suggesting that the rise is not simply due to people living longer.

Professor Rosalie David, an expert in biomedical Egyptology said;

“In industrialized societies, cancer is second only to cardiovascular disease as a cause of death. But in ancient times, it was extremely rare. Where there are cases of cancer in ancient Egyptian remains, we are not sure what caused them.

They did heat their homes with fires, which gave off smoke, and temples burned incense, but sometimes illnesses are just thrown up.

Yet again extensive ancient Egyptian data, along with other data from across the millennia, has given modern society a clear message – cancer is man-made and something that we can and should address.”

Maybe the issue can be addressed by The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI).   On Oct. 27, 2010, a $180 million 12-story, 440,000 square foot research facility was opened dedicated solely to research and equipped with the world’s most advanced technology to help research scientists, physicians and engineers cure diseases that afflict today’s patients.

Technology includes the Genomic Medicine Program run by Dr. John Baxter, director of the Research Institute in Houston and  founder of Karo Bio, a Swedish pharmaceutical company.

“The new building is simply extraordinary,” said Dr. Mauro Ferrari, president and CEO of  The Methodist Hospital Research Institute.

“I believe it is where many of the hardest challenges faced by patients and their doctors will be solved, just steps from the patients and clinics at The Methodist Hospital in the Texas Medical Center.”

The Research Institute’s proximity to the 1,000-bed hospital brings researchers in direct contact with the patients they ultimately serve.

“The fact that the building is seamlessly integrated into the hospital represents the physical manifestation of our vision for research. We believe that research has a responsibility to improve patient care. We never want to lose sight of why we’re here, to cure the diseases that affect our patients,” said Ferrari.

It’s a pity many doctors from North Carolina have lost sight of this point.

Duke University and University of North Carolina (UNC) researchers report in the November issue of Arthritis Care & Research that narcotics and diagnostic testing are overused in treating chronic neck pain. Their findings indicate clinicians may overlook more effective treatments for neck pain, such as therapeutic exercise.

According to reviews cited in the study, evidence to support the effectiveness of therapeutic exercise in treating chronic neck pain is good, yet only 53% of subjects were prescribed such exercise. This information was based upon reported data from a representative sample of North Carolina residents.(5)

The study reported that participants received diagnostic tests such as spinal radiographs (45%), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI-30%), and computed tomography (CT-24%) scans. In the prior year, subjects who received X-rays of the spine had an average of two different sets taken which the authors noted to be inconsistent with clinical decision-making guidelines for diagnostic imaging.

It was also found more than 56% of subjects in the study used over-the-counter medications (non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs), 29% reported taking strong narcotics (MS contin, oxycodone), and 23% used weak narcotics (codeine, propoxyphene) for their chronic neck pain.

“Our sample population had a high degree of disability, despite using a number of diagnostics and treatments. Based on current evidence, several treatments were over-used, and some effective treatments were under-used,” concluded Dr. Goode.

Should we worry about over-use of certain treatments and diagnostic testing?

X-Rays Increase Risk of Cancer

Exposure to X-rays, even at low-dose levels, increases risk of cancer. That is the bottom line of a comprehensive five-year study by a National Research Council (NRC) committee that presented the landmark 700-page advisory report to the U.S. government, titled “Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation (BEIR) VII,” in July 2005.(6)

“There appears to be no threshold below which exposure can be viewed as harmless,” said Abrams, professor emeritus of radiology at Stanford and Harvard universities.

Progressive exposure to such radiation causes DNA damage, Abrams said, which correlates with an increased risk of developing a variety of cancers. For women, the risks of developing cancer after exposure to radiation were 37.5 percent higher than for men. The risks for all solid tumors, such as lung and breast tumors, when added together, were almost 50 percent greater for women than for men. But for a few specific cancers, such as leukemia, the radiation-induced risk estimates were higher for men.

More recently, in 2010, a collaborative study by scientists from the UK and Kuwait has also found that the risk of the cancer rose with increasing numbers of X-rays.

What about over use of over-the-counter medications?

MS Contin® is a time-released formulation of morphine, usually taken every eight hours for chronic pain. It is the brand name for morphine sulfate marketed by Purdue Pharma. (7)

It is available in tablet and liquid formulas in doses of 15mg, 30mg, 60mg, 100mg and 200mg. Due to its strength, it’s typically prescribed to cancer patients and victims of severe but non-cognitive-damaging trauma.

Like its more potent relative OxyContin (2001 sales of the drug had reached nearly $3 billion), MS Contin has been the subject of pharmacy robberies.  It is considered particularly dangerous to recreational drug users who are unaware that “contin” is a pharmaceutical industry buzzword for “time-release” or “continuous”.   Such users are likely to crush and insufflate the pills, which contain a time-release mechanism; insufflation delivers the entire dose of the pill at once instead of gradually, as with the time-release mechanism. This leads to a high rate of overdose among such users.

According to the US Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s National Survey on Drug Use and Health, approximately 500,000 people abused oxycodone for the first time in 2008.(8)

According to a study published in the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, the number of hospitalizations due to overdoses of opioids and sedatives increased by 65% from 1999 to 2006 in the USA.(9)

In 2007, Purdue Pharma agreed to pay $600 million in fines and other payments to resolve the charge that the company had misled doctors and patients by claiming that the drug’s long-acting quality made it less likely to be abused than traditional narcotics.(10)

With these concerns in mind, is there much likelihood that The Methodist Hospital Research Institute (TMHRI)  research facility will find a medical solution that actually cures our ailments?

John Ioannidis, a professor and chairman at the Department of Hygiene and Epidemiology, University of IoanninaSchool of Medicine, thinks not.

Ioannidis, in a published report Why Most Published Research Findings Are False, laid out detailed mathematical proof that typically imperfect research techniques, and the well-known tendency to focus on exciting rather than highly plausible theories, researchers will come up with wrong findings most of the time.(11)

“At every step in the process, there is room to distort results, a way to make a stronger claim or to select what is going to be concluded.

There is an intellectual conflict of interest that pressures researchers to find whatever it is that is most likely to get them funded.  The odds that anything useful will survive from any of these studies are poor—dismissing research into which we sink about $100 billion a year in the United States.”  (12)

Lies, Damned Lies

In a recent article, Lies, Damned Lies and Medical Science it was reported;

The exciting links between genes and various diseases and traits that are relentlessly hyped in the press for heralding miraculous around-the-corner treatments for everything from colon cancer to schizophrenia have in the past proved so vulnerable to error and distortion, Ioannidis has found, that in some cases you’d have done about as well by throwing darts at a chart of the genome.

Ioannidis adds:

“Doctors need to rely on instinct and judgment to make choices. But these choices should be as informed as possible by the evidence. And if the evidence isn’t good, doctors should know that, too. And so should patients.”

“If we don’t tell the public about these problems, then we’re no better than non-scientists who falsely claim they can heal,” he says.

“If the drugs don’t work and we’re not sure how to treat something, why should we claim differently? Some fear that there may be less funding because we stop claiming we can prove we have miraculous treatments. But if we can’t really provide those miracles, how long will we be able to fool the public anyway? The scientific enterprise is probably the most fantastic achievement in human history, but that doesn’t mean we have a right to overstate what we’re accomplishing.”

Or understate what they are accomplishing.

For example, The California Society of Addiction Medicine has taken no official position on Proposition 19, a ballot initiative that would allow the general public in the State to grow marijuana at a private residence in a space of up to 25 square feet (2.3 m²) for personal use.  However, the doctors’ group strongly urged voters Wednesday, Nov 3, 2010, to consider the ‘collateral damage’ caused by the measure’s passage – namely, the impact on young people.

It’s a pity the same doctors don’t consider and inform the public of the ‘collateral damage’ caused by prescription drugs and possible initiation of cancer through unnecessary exposure to X-rays.

Perhaps we should all be able to choose whether to enjoy the lifestyle of the ancient Egyptians, and be at peace with ourselves, our neighbors and the environment.

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