"I read it in the paper"

Spud magic?                Updated August 2011

Professor Piet van Jaarsveld, head of Pharmacology at the University of Stellenbosch's Medical School, and a member of the research team, is quoted in an article in the popular magazine You (July 10, 1997), saying: 'It's the remedy of the future. People will take it to prevent colds and infections, the way they now take vitamins.' The headline on the front page of You reads SA's Miracle Muti for Deadly Diseases.

We have already featured a news report on research on Hypoxis rooperi - common European names, the African potato or sterretjie. That entry drew e-mail queries from as far away as Gabon.

The article deals with an unnamed preparation made from the plant, hailed as an important breakthrough in the fight against Aids. Sterols and sterolins isolated from the plant are credited with efficacy in treating Aids, cancer, TB, yuppie flu, arthritis and psoriasis.    

  You mentioned Professor Patrick Bouic of the University of Stellenbosch's Medical School, who is conducting trials on Hypoxis but, significantly perhaps, the article does not quote him. It states that the preparation 'increases the body's natural resistance to disease'.
The plant was discovered by 78- year-old Randburg businessman RW LieBenberg, 40 years ago, when a relative made a miraculous recovery from prostate cancer after drinking a brew made from the sterretjie.

In 1967, RW says, the plant was analyzed at the University of Natal. In the 1980s research started, and in 1992 a trial on 200 HIV positive patients began. The article claims that the preparation was successful in 'stabilising the CD4-T cell count in both HIV+ and full-blown Aids subjects.'

Another study, using cats with feline immune deficiency virus, points to the possibility that it could help prevent in utero transmission of the HIV virus. Professor Ben Smit, head of the Department of Oncology at Tygerberg, comes across as less enthusiastic saying only that the supplement does seem to slow down the growth of certain types of cancer.

Your patients and customers are bombarded with information from newspapers, magazines and television. Freelance writer WILLIAM BARKER reviews some recent articles of medical, pharmaceutical and scientific interest, which may help you anticipate some of their questions and concerns on health matters.

The article is spiked with a series of anecdotal accounts: of an (unnamed) HlV-positive woman who feels she has Benefited from treatment; a 72-year-old sufferer from cancer of the gall bladder who says he owes his life to Hypoxis; a woman with motor neuron disease, an arthritis sufferer, and others.

Perhaps to protect themselves from a flood of enquiries, You states that supplements containing sterols and sterolins are available over the counter. Pharmacists and possibly doctors might field increased requests for it.

THE SA RETAIL CHEMIST 1 AUGUST 1997

The following items contain Sterols and Steroline  Hypoxis and  Inmmune care.

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Free telephone consultation with Ben Ash 011-312 3393. Consultation in office would cost about R 300 including supplements.