The Saudi Gazette has announced the exciting news that a cure for Cancer has been discovered by Dr. Faten Abdel-Rahman Khorshid.
She … yes, it’s a woman and not a man who has made … “one of the Kingdom’s greatest national achievements in the field of science“. This i
s truly exciting stuff, and it is fantastic that this breakthrough has been made.
So anyway, what is this new exciting cure for Cancer?
Is is Camel Piss.
Seriously?
Yep, apparently we are supposed to “believe” that this amazing breakthrough consists of the urine of camels.
Why oh why on earth would anybody ever be inspired to seriously consider camel piss to be a cure for Cancer?
One word … “religion”.
Speaking to the Saudi Gazette, Dr. Khorshid claimed that she was inspired by Prophet Muhammad’s (pbuh) medical advice and that camel urine consists of natural substances that work to eradicate malignant cells and maintain the number of healthy cells in a cancer patient.
“This treatment is not an invention, but rather, taken from our Prophet’s legacy,” she remarked. A Hadith narrated by Al-Bukhari (2855) and Muslim (1671) claims that some people came to Madina and fell ill with bloated abdomens. The Prophet (pbuh) told them to combine the milk and urine of a camel and drink that, after which they recovered. A swollen abdomen may indicate edema, liver disease or cancer. Dr. Khorshid added that she is not a medial doctor but a scientist and her job involves the preparation and testing of a drug in the lab and supervising the manufacture, testing and application of the drug.
So she spent seven years testing Camel piss by mixing it with Camel Milk and testing it on patents [here would be about the right place for you to face-palm].
And apparently these tests are still on-going. Number of patients actually cured so far … zero. But it just must be true because an ancient text says so, and so she gets a Saudi gold medal for “innovation”. As for the state of science in the Islamic world, well apparently this was chosen as one of the six best innovations out of 600 entrants at the International Innovation and Technology Exhibition (ITEX) in Malaysia.
Now here is where you might ask if I’m taking the piss and that this is really a joke. I truly wish it was but sadly I’m not taking the piss, they really are promoting Camel piss as a Cancer cure and well gosh it just must be true because Mohammed said it was.
Oh and least you wonder … the published paper is here, and no it does not demonstrate a cure for Cancer at all. Basically the paper describes how they fed Camel Piss (they call it PM701) to 14 healthy volunteers and at the end since they all managed to tolerate this gunk, they declared it to be safe. That’s it, that is their great breakthrough. Oh and I note that some of the patients taking Camel Piss did in fact experience “some gastrointestinal disturbance“, (no kidding) but they simply ignored that.
“There is no evidence here that this new treatment does anything to the natural history of human cancers.” – Dr. Edzard Ernst, Emeritus Professor in Complementary Medicine from the University of Exeter (UK)
Hi, It will be good enough to do some research and then criticize a matter because it actually does and has cured cancer!
In which case it should be dead easy to cite a credible reference that verifies that. You can do that … right?
Hi, There are multiple references; please see below (you may want to focus on the third last reference by a UK Journalist)
Besides Saudi Arabia, doctors from Sudan have also researched regarding the same :
https://islamqa.info/en/answers/83423/the-benefits-of-drinking-camel-urine
Please note that Camel’s milk is very nutritious and is three times higher in vitamin C than cow’s milk and 10 times higher in iron (Camel’s milk also has the ability to cure certain diseases). Please see the reference below from a journal that has been published in US National Library of Medicine.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3865381/
Other Supporting Articles :
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1658361216000238
http://www.ishim.net/ishimj/JISHIM15_16_17_18.pdf
Below is the link by a UK-based freelance journalist and former reporter at The National in which it is clearly stated the European Union approving of Camel’s Milk (at first refusing and later approving)
https://www.thenational.ae/uae/europe-approves-camel-milk-1.370353
The below article emphasizes on the health benefits and the anti-cancer molecule that is contained in the camel milk (dates to 2016)
https://www.thenational.ae/uae/how-camel-milk-could-be-better-for-you-than-anyone-imagined-1.141543
Please also see the below articles :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3359759/
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/26434890
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/24320686
Kindly note that most of the above articles have been published atleast a few years back and we do not doubt the medicinal and health benefits of Consuming Camel’s Milk and It’s Urine!
Hope the above has been clarified!
Thanks for sending the links.
A very important key point is this: drinking milk is not the scope of the criticism, instead the precise claim under scrutiny is that camel urine will cure cancer.
A second point is this: interesting as all the links are, none of them are sufficiently strong enough to truly backup the claim the camel urine will actually cure cancer. Some do quote some doctors claiming it works, but in the medical area that is never enough, you need rock solid objective evidence that is robust, for example double-blinded clinical trails, to ensure that you have removed human bias.
Third point. The concept is not specifically Islamic, nor is it just Camel Urine. The use of urine (a waste product) as a cure is generally a big bold red flag that more or less announces “Here be quackery”. To give you a non-islamic non-camel example, the rather famous, or to be more accurate infamous illustration is the Burzynski Clinic in Texas in the US. They dress it up in sciency sounding words and don’t tell the patients that their “antineoplaston therapy” is basically urine. They claim it can and will cure cancer, but it does not, it is pure grade-1 gold plated quackery. It continues unlicensed because they claim they are conducting “clinical trials”, since the 1970s, so far without any objective demonstration that it works. If curious, you can read more concerning this here. I can also, if you want the details, provide you with very extensive writeups by a highly respected oncologist (a doctor who specializes in treating cancer) that is very critical regarding this scam. (They basically charge huge sums of money to desperate people who hope for a cure).
Final point. Drinking the urine of humans, camels, cows, etc… is a very old folk remedy. Some folk remedies do work and many don’t. The ones that do are called medicine. There is no scientific evidence that validates any variation urine as a cure. It has been researched, and will no doubt continue to pop up again and again because it is a popular folk remedy.
In the end we are all faced with a decision. Do we start with an assumption that things are true until proved false, or do we strive to believe as many true things as possible?
In the context of urine, what we have is a waste product. It is not medicine, and certainly not a cure for cancer. If somebody pops up, with “No you are wrong, and here is the conclusive clinical trial that verifies it”, I’ll change my mind and would also perhaps desire to understand exactly how it works. So far, as best as I’m aware, this has not actually happened, and to be honest, knowing what is in urine, I honestly don’t anticipate it happening.
Yes I’m aware there are claims, and yes I’m aware that there is a cultural tradition within multiple cultures, and yes you will find doctors who claim it works. In a medical context, that is quite literally life and death, that simply does not cut it, you really do need something truly robust.
In the end, if you truly do strive to believe as many true things as possible, you will find that urine as a cancer cure does not make the list.
I did a case control study on patients with ascites ( due to cirrhosis and/or periportal fibrosis. One group, the study group, was given camel urine + milk and the control group was given furosemide (Lasix). A baseline of body weight, LFTs,R FTs, abdominal US, 24 hr urine output and abdominal girth at the umbilicus was done initially and every day for 2 weeks. Results were amazing and the study group did very well and 4 of them were available for follow-up for 18 months and they were healthy with ascites. This study was publishes in the Journal of the Arab Board for Medical Specialization and since then thousands of persons benefitted from this therapy.
before jumping to accusation or undermining a society , disrespecting religion, or nonsense criticism without any facts. CHECK ur facts first.
here is some small evidence for you to off with it:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22922085
I don’t think that “The National Center for Biotechnology Information ” would publish some meaningless and unproven facts. would you?
Well, inspiration of research could come from anything. The main goal of the paper that you mentioned above is to evaluate the safety of the therapy on healthy volunteer. This is called ‘Phase I Clinical Trial’. In drug discovery process, it’s an important thing to do. You don’t want to take a pill that supposed to be a cure but in the end it just kill you, do you? This page explain briefly about the process (“www.sussex.ac.uk/lifesci/drugdiscovery/process”). Prior to Clinical Trial, there are preclinical trial that should be conducted (read more: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phases_of_clinical_research). here is the paper of Dr. Khorshid’s in-vitro test (http://scialert.net/fulltext/?doi=ajdd.2011.200.208&org=10).
Well, I also don’t know whether camel urine could become an anti-cancer therapy, but as long as the research done according to the guideline, we have to respect their ideas, hard works, time and money they spent. Please read more before you give comments that belittle them. This issue has nothing to do with whatever your religion is. Thank you :)