By Elizabeth (Liz) White
Managing Director of Riverside Equestrian Centre
riversideequestriancentre.com.au
The first person to tell me about the effectiveness of the white sap of Euphorbia peplus was my late father-in-law, the well known plant pathologist Professor Neville White. At the time I was applying the sap of a milk thistle to warts on the nose of one on my horses and Neville commented that the sap of Euphorbia peplus would be far more effective against warts and cancers. Neville and I unsuccessfully searched our South Australian garden for E.peplus, or “cancer weed”.as I call it. I have since seen it growing as a weed in South Australia and in many other places around the world including Beijing, West Croydon, San Francisco and Sydney. More information on Euphorbia peplus can be found on the web in wikipedia and other articles including an interview titled Milk Weed and Skin Cancer on the ABC (22/5/2009).
Euphorbia peplus grows throughout south east Queensland and northern New South Wales. Its common names include cancer weed, petty spurge, milk weed and radium plant. For about 100 years, people in Australia have been using cancer weed to remove skin cancers .There is also a story about cancer weed being introduced to Australia in the 1880”s by a “good witch” for the treatment of warts and skin cancers. In more recent years the molecule in cancer weed that is the active cancer-fighting agent has been isolated by researchers in Brisbane. On 26/1/2012 Leo Pharma announced that Picato Gel®, the medication made from the molecule had been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration for use against skin cancers. An applicatiom for marketing Picato Gel® in Australia was submitted by Leo Pharma on 14/11/2011.
Cancer weed is still a prolific weed in our area, however it should be remembered that the plants of the Euphorbia genus are nearly all poisonous and the very word Euphorbia means poison in Africa so handle them with care and take special care not to get the sap in your eyes or in the eyes of your horses. I recently got some very diluted sap in my eyes when I was caught in a rain shower after applying the sap to a lesion above my left eyebrow. The pain was excruciating and it took me nearly a week of constant bathing with alternate salt water and milk before the pain subsided, my sight improved and the whites of my eyes were no longer red!
My use of cancer weed to treat cancers on horses dates back 21 years to when our vet came to look at a swamp cancer at the top of a mare’s left hind leg. The cancer was about 20 cm below the tail and about the size of a 20cent piece. The vet didn’t like the look of it and neither did he like the thought of operating on it as he had recently been called in to cut a cancer out of another horse’s rump. The wound would not heal and was growing in size. He had noticed cancer weed growing on our current property at Moggill, an outer suburb of Brisbane, and suggested we might like to try it on the cancer. He stressed that it hadn’t been officially tested and that he as a vet could not have anything to do with the treatment but added that he would like to know whether or not it worked. He also gave us a copy of a couple of articles on Euphorbia peplus. The treatment was completely successful with the lump actually “popping out” about 6 months later – it looked like a large, white fibrous marble.
To treat the cancer we pulled up some cancer weed, broke off pieces of it and smeared the white sap all over the lump. We were worried when we saw that the whole area was very swollen the next day and surprised that the swelling extended down the leg and even across to the other leg. However the mare didn’t seem to be stressed nor to be in pain. The actual lump looked much bigger and was starting to seep. We assumed that the swelling marked the extent of the cancerous material which would explain why removing just the lump did not get rid of the cancer and why the wound would not heal. We reported back to the vet and decided to continue to apply the sap for at least three days. The second and third applications were not marked by any extension of the original swelling, in fact most of the swelling had subsided by the end of the third day and was isolated to the area immediately adjacent to the original lump. We continued to apply the cancer weed occasionally over the next few months with very little or no obvious reaction until the dead cancer just came out.
Some years later, we found another lump on the mare’s chest but this one was not as large as the original lump. Again we applied cancer weed sap for three days and the treatment resulted in swelling which extended right across the chest and down the inside of the leg. Once again the cancer healed up completely after a few treatments and the mare has had no further cancers. The only evidence of the cancer weed treatments is a little indentation like a minor stake wound on her rump but no scarring.
After treating the mare successfully with cancer weed, we applied the sap to a number of scaly skin cancer patches on various horses all of which healed up completely, though some did have re occurrences but these were never as bad as the original case and healed rapidly with re-applications of cancer weed sap. In each case the initial application of the cancer weed sap caused swelling round the cancer area and usually scabbing and weeping of lymph-like fluid from the actual cancer . Following treatment with the sap, some of these skin cancers showed the classic cancer legs going out from the central lump or scaly patch.
Some of the horse cancers treated with cancer weed were not the normal scaly patches of horse “skin cancer” but were various shaped lumps. In these cases as well, we found that if they reacted to cancer weed they were cancerous and were healed by the three day applications of the cancer weed sap. A black pony gelding was actually bought with cancer on a couple of parts of its body because the new owner was sure she could cure the cancer with applications of cancer weed. She was right and the pony is now one of Queensland’s most successful junior dressage mounts.,
Recently a gelding was agisted at Riverside while his new owners prepared their property for horses. This horse had a shiny black lump the size of a small bird’s egg at the back of its left shoulder just under the saddle flap. When I asked about it I was advised that the previous owners told the vet doing the pre sale check that it was a birth mark so he hadn’t worried about it. I had my doubts about this as the lump seemed to be “growing”. In a matter of a few weeks it had doubled in size to that of a wild duck egg. Cancer weed was applied with the usual reaction including the “cancer” legs with the cancer supplying blood vessels radiating out from the lump. After three days the cancer started to decrease in size and the surrounding tissue returned to normal with just a scabby patch where the cancer had been.
Over the past twenty one years the only horse cancers which were treated with cancer weed but not cured by the treatment have been large melanomas in the tail where the treatment was stopped after only a couple of applications. In the first case the melanomas reacted strongly after the first application of the cancer weed sap and started secreting lymph like fluid. The owners of the pony were worried by the reaction and decided to discontinue the treatment. In the second case the melanoma or cauliflower cancer was under the pony’s tail and close to the anus and a vet was worried that the treatment might perforate the anal canal. However it is worth noting that the pony also had advanced Cushions disease with a very long shaggy coat and was quite listless when I started the treatment. In the first week after treatment I noticed numerous small lesions all over her body. These rapidly healed up and the pony not only seemed more lively but started to lose her long coat and look generally healthier. After this pony had been put down because of the growing cauliflower cancer, I discovered that she was 36 years old and that the melanoma under her tail had been operated on ten years earlier. Perhaps her immune system was no longer up to working with the cancer weed to eliminate the cancer or I didn’t persevere long enough with the cancer weed treatment because of my concern about the risk of perforating the anal passage.
Following my experiments with cancer weed on my own body I would no longer be worried that an anal passage would be perforated by “the treatment”. I believe that cancer weed works with the body’s immune system not only to kill and remove cells which are completely cancerous but also to restore slightly cancerous cells to their former useful roles within the body.
The molecule in the cancer weed which successfully fights cancer has been isolated and a gel, Picato®, has been produced which is effective against skin cancer. However, readers must be warned that the sap in the cancer weed, although effective against cancer, is much stronger than the synthetic version used in the gel and it is an alkali poison. If you decide to use it on yourself or your horses you do so, like I did, at your own risk but the results can be life saving.
A Brief History of my Experience with Cancer and Treating it with Cancer Weed
I was diagnosed with breast cancer nearly 26 years ago and after a few weeks of frantic reading of medical and non medical literature on cancer, I decided against operations or chemotherapy. Fortunately, my husband who has a science degree joined me in the reading and research into cancer treatments and supported me in my decision to learn to live with cancer by boosting my immune system, rather than subjecting my body to invasive treatments which could not cure cancer but were likely to hasten my death, or ruin my quality of life and maim my body.
For the first year after my cancer diagnosis, I had weekly visits to a specialist physician who supported my view that invasive cancer treatments were not advisable while there was no cure for cancer. This physician did remind me, that my cancer was malignant which meant that other lumps would appear in the future and that my only hope of recovery would be the finding of a cancer cure. I didn’t just wait for a cure to be found, I went looking for one by experimenting on myself and my horses with cancer weed which has a very long history of being an effective treatment at least for skin cancers.
Because of the success of the cancer weed treatment in curing cancers on horses I started using it on my own skin cancers which also vanished after a few treatments. When the cancer lumps associated with breast cancer did start appearing on various parts of my body about 16 years ago I was ready to also treat them with cancer weed. (It is interesting to note that Australian researchers have discovered that the immune system plays an important role in isolating and destroying the “cancer” blood vessels and the cancers once the cancer weed has “tagged” them). I also found that many of the substances used in skin creams and medications destroyed the molecule before it could attack the cancer. For instance I discovered that antiseptic creams tended to “heal and activate the cancers” rather than healing me and protecting my sores from infection!
My cancer weed treatment has obviously been successful. I turn 72 in July and I am still actively working with and riding my horses I now feel qualified to write about living with cancer, which I have done for the past twenty five years. During these years me and my immune system have been actively working against cancer with welcome help from cancer weed.
