New Cancer Drug of Great Promise

This story appears, oddly at first glance, in Zenit.
But there is nothing odd about its presence there, for it is a story of the Faith.

...a medicine that has a staggering 75% success rate in treating cancer, and yet is a natural and ethical product, owned by a nonprofit company headed by devout Catholics... this little-known product, which works by rebuilding the body's own adult stem cells and destroying tumour cells, already has a 25-year track record as a highly effective cancer treatment. Called CellAdam, it is most effective in preventing the early stages of cancer. But it also impedes the malignant process, and has an analgesic effect in the hopeless stage of an advanced tumour. Because of its natural composition, it has none of the hallucinogenic effects you get with morphine. The ingredients simply include a fatty acid complex extracted from soy and sunflower.

"This is a totally unusual and huge breakthrough," says Dr. Thomas Janossy, president of Biostemworld, the company producing the drug internationally. "In the next two to three years, it will become the first anti-cancer prescription drug in the world that is nature-based."

The developers of this are a perfect example of how, if we live our lives as God measn us to, everything we do is to His glory, every task we undertake is a sacramental, a means of living the Gospel.

They were staying... at the modest Generalate of the Sons of the Immaculate Conception. Their purpose was to meet members of a Catholic hospital run by a religious order whose charism is to help the sick.

The company wants the order, which has 400 cancer researchers in Italy, to carry out human and animal research on the medicine. ...

The Catholic factor in this is significant. Rather than make large profits from CellAdam, the company wants to plough all revenues made from the drug back into research, or to help Church missions. ... "the inventor, who is a Christian, was looking for people who spoke Hungarian, were Christian-Catholic, and who had scientific and business backgrounds. ...

the company steered clear of the United States because of its heavily profit-oriented pharmaceutical industry, and instead looked toward this Italian Catholic hospital. "Their whole approach to healing is so different," Janossy says. "The president is a priest who's not picking up a salary. All the profit goes back to research or is sent to the missions. That is extremely unique. So we said, 'OK we will share this product and the potential it has.'"...

"We feel in a lot of ways that Our Lady has really inspired us," says [theri public relations person] who is also a member of the Catholic movement Focolare. "[Governments] know the system can't manage it -- they've said it. There's no way they can take care of all those people."

She pointed to the growth of euthanasia, which is gaining popularity in the West as demand for health care for the elderly increases. "My first thought when this company was forming was: bingo, this had to come because the medical establishment is saying: 'What are we going to do with all these old people?'"

Dalgarno felt it was "truly God's work," not only because it could help counter the push toward euthanasia, but also because their products are less expensive, less dangerous and more ethical. Embryonic stem cell research plays no part in this medicine.

"We put our work daily under the protection of Our Lady," says Dalgarno, "knowing she is guiding our work and the 'mission in the health field' that we feel called to."