|
A chemist, Wall and colleague Mansukh C. Wani studied extracts from thousands of plants and animals looking for ways to cure cancer. Among their findings were paclitaxel (better known as Taxol, discovered in 1966 in the Pacific Yew tree) and camptothecin. The two anti-tumor drugs are now commonly used to fight multiple types of cancer. "Taxol is considered one of the most important anticancer drugs of the past three decades," said a spokesman for the General Motors Cancer Research Foundation. "It is used to treat a wide variety of solid tumors but is best known for its effectiveness on ovarian carcinoma, a tumor that is very difficult to treat." Wall died July 9 in Chapel Hill, N.C., from heart and kidney failure. He was 85. From This is True for 7 July 2002 Suggestions for further reading:
 By: Jordan GoodmanVivien Walsh List Price: $55.00 Amazon Price: $41.25 Editorial Review: Environmentalists have long urged that threatened habitats--the old-growth forests of Appalachia, for instance, or the Amazonian rainforest--be preserved on the off chance that the plants within them may contain natural cures for a host of ailments. Such proved to be true of the Pacific yew, a tree found in higher elevations here and there throughout the Pacific Northwest. In its bark resides a chemical compound that has proved effective in battling certain kinds of cancers and leukemia. When the discovery of the compound was made in the early 1960s, write English researchers Jordan Goodman and Vivien Walsh, pharmaceutical companies raced to corner the market in Taxus brevifolia bark, formerly considered a kind of natural rubbish, while at the same time working to synthesize the compound artificially. For their part, environmentalists, arguing that yew forests sheltered endangered populations of plants and animals, including the Pacific Northwest spotted owl, fought to protect the tree from development. In the middle stood federal and state forestry agencies, which had to wrestle with the doctrine of multiple use of public resources. By the early 1990s, according to the authors, the yew had become "an important symbol for the fate of the American temperate rainforest in particular and the planet's ecosystem in general," caught in the utilitarian debate over human benefit and the needs of the environment. The debate died down only when the chief pharmaceutical company involved announced that it would develop Taxol through a semi-synthetic process using raw materials from a more abundant species of yew. An illuminating case study in ecopolitics, Goodman and Walsh's book is useful reading for anyone with an interest in habitat preservation and science policy. --Gregory McNameeTaxol is arguably the most celebrated, talked about, and controversial natural product in recent years. Celebrated because of its efficacy as an anticancer drug and because its discovery has provided powerful support for policies concerned with biodiversity. Talked about because in the early 1990s the American public was bombarded with news reports about the molecule and its host, the slow-growing Pacific yew tree. Controversial because the drug and the yew tree became embroiled in several sensitive political issues with broad public policy implications. Taxol has revolutionized the treatment options for patients with advanced forms of breast and ovarian cancers and some types of leukemia; it shows promise for treating AIDS-related Kaposi's sarcoma. It is the best-selling anticancer drug ever, with world sales of $1.2 billion in 1998 and expected to grow. Goodman and Walsh's careful study of how taxol was discovered, researched, and brought to market documents the complexities and conflicting interests in the ongoing process to find effective treatments. From a broader perspective, The Story of Taxol uses the discovery and development of taxol as a paradigm to address current issues in the history and sociology of science and medicine. Jordan Goodman is a Senior Lecturer in History at the Manchester School of Management, University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology. He has written on subjects as varied as the history of medicine and economic history for journal articles and in edited volumes. Goodman's previous books include Tobacco in History (Routledge, 1994) and Consuming Habits: Drugs in History and Anthropology (Routledge, 1995). Vivien Walsh is Reader in Technology Management at the Manchester School of Management, University of Manchester Institute of Science & Technology. She has been researching the pharmaceutical and chemical industry for years and is currently working on globalization of innovative activity in the face of technological and organizational changes in the chemical, pharmaceutical, and agro-food industries. Walsh has been a consultant to the European Commission and to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development.Taxol is arguably the most celebrated, talked about and controversial natural product in recent years: celebrated because of its efficacy as an anticancer drug and because its discovery has provided powerful support for policies concerned with biodiversity; talked about because in the early 1990s, the American public was bombarded with news reports about the molecule and its host; and controversial because the drug and the tree became embroiled in a number of sensitive political issues with wide implications for the conduct of public policy. Taxol: Nature, Science, and Politics tells this story.  List Price: $179.95 Amazon Price: $179.95 Editorial Review: This volume brings together all aspects of TAXOLŽ research, development, and clinical use. It provides comprehensive knowledge of the compound and a perspective of the complex interrelationships needed for its development and production. Each chapter is written by an authority in the field. Chapters are carefully coordinated to maximize information on key topics while avoiding overlap and duplication. Previously unpublished material is presented along with thorough reviews of each topic. Technology Transfer: NIH-Private Sector Partnership in the Development of Tax... List Price: $5.95 Amazon Price: $5.95 Editorial Review: This digital document is an article from General Accounting Office Reports & Testimony, published by Stonehenge International on July 1, 2003. The length of the article is 713 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser. Citation Details Title: Technology Transfer: NIH-Private Sector Partnership in the Development of Taxol. Publication: General Accounting Office Reports & Testimony (Newsletter) Date: July 1, 2003 Publisher: Stonehenge International Volume: 2003 Issue: 7 Page: NA Distributed by Thomson Gale Ovarian cancer vs. the spotted owl. (using taxol in Pacific yew trees as canc... List Price: $5.95 Amazon Price: $5.95 Editorial Review: This digital document is an article from Medical Update, published by Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc. on August 1, 1991. The length of the article is 662 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser. Citation Details Title: Ovarian cancer vs. the spotted owl. (using taxol in Pacific yew trees as cancer treatment also poses threat to endangered species) Publication: Medical Update (Newsletter) Date: August 1, 1991 Publisher: Benjamin Franklin Literary & Medical Society, Inc. Volume: v15 Issue: n2 Page: p1(2) Distributed by Thomson Gale  By: V. WalshM. Le Roux List Price: $8.95 Amazon Price: $8.95 Editorial Review: This digital document is a journal article from Research Policy, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser. Description: A very rich collection of archival material is used to compare two anticancer drugs commercialised by multinationals collaborating with public sector research, one in the USA and one in France. The framework of national innovation systems is used to compare the innovative environments for each development (different institutional structures, research programmes, financing, industry-academic-government relationships, environmental concern, and intellectual property regimes). The empirical work was able to bring out the nuances and subtleties of each environment, the way in which innovation took place in practice, and some striking differences from what stereotypical accounts of innovation in each country would have suggested. |
About the HUs
About This is True
Prev: Football great John "Jay" Berwanger Next: Photographer Yousuf Karsh |