Let me move briefly to a second herbal product to talk about a different research strategy, and this is an herbal mixture known as PC SPES, which stands for Prostate Cancer, and “spes,” I’m told, in Latin means “hope.” This is a cocktail of eight herbs: chrysanthemum, licorice, ginseng, saw palmetto and others, and it’s being used today by over 10,000 American men with advanced prostate cancer, many of whom are hormone refractory.

There have been four or five small studies, all of which have not been blinded, suggesting that this herbal remedy reduces pain, improves quality of life, and statistically significantly reduces prostate specific antigen levels in the blood. If true, this would be remarkable.

Note: Please see http://nccam.nih.gov/health/alerts/spes/ for information about PC SPES contamination and recall. In short, PC SPES was found to contain undeclared prescription drug ingredients that could cause serious health effects. The manufacturer recalled PC SPES and subsequently ceased business.