Charles,
I can give some insight. Believe it or not, the idea that the staff
of Paracelsian had for screening Chinese herbal medicines for drugs
that would have either antiviral or anticancer properties is solid.
Chinese medicine has been around for thousands of years and one can
bet that some of those crude herbal medicines have some positive
effects. However, the problem is that modern medical science is a
very slow investigation. It is also extremely expensive. There was
a seminar speaker here at UCSB not too long ago that said it now can
cost as much as ********** million dollars (I am sorry but I just
cannot print the number because I still cannot believe it myself) to
discover, develop, get FDA approval, and bring a new drug to market.
If I ran the FDA, I would have approved AndroVir based upon what data
I saw in the prospectus. It has an extremely high LD-50, and it
appears to have strong antiviral properties in AIDS patients who are
taking AZT as well. However, the troglodytes in the FDA will not
approve the drug without several more years of costly investigation.
Of course, our small little biotech cannot afford to conduct this
trial. So we are finished. You have to wonder how many magical drugs
are waiting in the Chinese herbal library just waiting to be discovered.
In defense of Paracelsian, they did the right thing, they just never
had enough capital to see it through...
-John |
