Biggles of 266
1st Level Red Feather
- Joined
- Apr 26, 2001
- Messages
- 1,126
- Points
- 36
FORGET the three wise men with their gold, frankincense and myrrh. Behold a wise man from Australia offering a Christmas present to the entire world - nothing less than a partial cure to the problems of population and AIDS. And rather than making pharmaceutical corporations even richer, it comes without a price tag.
A few weeks back I got a phone call from Roger V. Short, from the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Melbourne. Roger also runs a lab at the Royal Women's Hospital and what he told me was so astonishing that, even for a lifelong sceptic, the word miraculous came to mind.
Roger began by reminding me that the world population has tripled during his lifetime, officially reaching 6 billion on October 12, 1999. The way things are shaping up, even factoring in war and HIV, it may double again before the end of the century, though some demographers suggest it's more likely to plateau at about 11 billion.
The condom is a pretty effective form of contraception and dramatically reduces the transmission of AIDS. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church doesn't approve of the condom, thus condemning countless millions of its followers, particularly in Africa, to appalling lives and dreadful deaths. So Roger has been looking for alternatives and seems to have come up with something that the Vatican will find it hard (though not impossible) to oppose. It's a piece of fruit _ and it promises to be as significant as Eden's apple. It's a lemon.
Roger recalled a recent lecture he gave about Marie Stopes while standing beneath a painting of that formidable woman at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The audience was largely made up of elderly women who'd been admirers of Stopes, that great crusader for contraception. Roger mentioned, in passing, her recommendation of a slice of lemon as a pre-coital spermicide. There was a murmur of assent from the audience, many of whom later told him that they'd used the lemon for that purpose. "It was all we had back then.''
Historical evidence abounds that lemon juice in the vagina was once widely used in the Mediterranean region as a contraceptive. Casanova advocated the use of half a lemon as a forerunner of today's cervical caps and diaphragms. And in his 1963 Medical History of Contraception, Norman Hinds stated that "Soaking a sponge in diluted lemon juice and using it as a vaginal tampon is theoretically not surpassed in reliability by any modern clinical contraceptive.''
Roger and his associates decided to check the efficacy of the lemon and found that a 20 per cent concentration of juice in fresh human ejaculate irreversibly immobilised 100 per cent of spermatozoa in less than 30 seconds. There was even better news to follow. It's well known that low pH kills HIV, and Roger and his associates wondered whether fresh lemon juice could do that job as well. They speculated that a sponge soaked in lemon juice or a very thin slice of lemon placed in the vagina might kill the virus as well as the tadpoles. And they discovered it did. A 10per cent concentration of lemon juice was enough to quickly kill HIV.
As Roger explained: "The dual spermicidal and virucidal effect of lemon juice cannot be patented and hence controlled by pharmaceutical companies. Since this is using a natural product to protect women, it should be culturally acceptable. Lemon juice might also be very useful for post-coital washing of the penis to protect men from HIV infection.'' (In a proud scientific tradition, Roger and a female colleague tried lemon juice on and in themselves and confirmed that neat juice applied to the vagina or the penis and foreskin is in no way painful to the user "if no lesions are present''.)
Think of it. Lemons are grown just about everywhere. They're indigenous to South-East Asia, which happens to be one of the regions most threatened by HIV infection. It has been estimated that a microbicide, with only 40 per cent efficacy against HIV transmission, at 30 per cent coverage could avert more than 5.6million HIV infections and 4 million infections at 20 per cent coverage. So there's every possibility that vaginal lemon juice could go a long way to saving the planet. If the Pope could see his way to approve of lemons, multitudes may be saved.
Roger and his colleagues don't want to make a quid out of this. "The challenge is to find the most effective way of disseminating this information, especially to young people in developing countries, once we've completed ongoing research in primates to see if repeated vaginal administration of the juice damages the vaginal epithelium. We also need to establish that lemon juice will kill all the HIV present in the semen of an HIV-positive man.''
Roger acknowledges that it will require large numbers of volunteers who can be found only in developing countries and several years to demonstrate any effects of lemon juice. "But surely it is unethical to withhold this information about the spermicidal and virucidal effects of lemon juice pending such a trial while millions more people become infected with HIV? We need to find alternative ways of evaluating the safety, efficacy and acceptability of this old yet new contraceptive.''
Roger has taken his message to the XIV International AIDS Conference in Barcelona and to an AIDS conference in Cape Town. In Bangkok, Population and Community Development Association founder Mechai Viravaidya is immensely enthusiastic about "using a cheap, readily available natural product that originated in Thailand''.
Although the Melbourne medical establishment seems pretty lukewarm (it has little concept of primary health care and disease prevention in developing countries, says Roger) a group calling themselves the LemonAIDS has been formed, headed by Rob Moody, director of Victorian Health, who has first-hand experience of HIV prevention in Uganda. Also supporting the research, UNAIDS, the UN program on HIV-AIDS based in Geneva.
You don't get many phone calls that interesting. Here's a chance of bringing the world's most ominous disease - and the world's population - under control. So it looks like they'll have to award a Nobel prize for fruit juice.
If you'd like to contact Roger, send me an email and I'll pass it on.
Happy Christmas.
[email protected]
A few weeks back I got a phone call from Roger V. Short, from the department of obstetrics and gynaecology at the University of Melbourne. Roger also runs a lab at the Royal Women's Hospital and what he told me was so astonishing that, even for a lifelong sceptic, the word miraculous came to mind.
Roger began by reminding me that the world population has tripled during his lifetime, officially reaching 6 billion on October 12, 1999. The way things are shaping up, even factoring in war and HIV, it may double again before the end of the century, though some demographers suggest it's more likely to plateau at about 11 billion.
The condom is a pretty effective form of contraception and dramatically reduces the transmission of AIDS. Unfortunately, the Catholic Church doesn't approve of the condom, thus condemning countless millions of its followers, particularly in Africa, to appalling lives and dreadful deaths. So Roger has been looking for alternatives and seems to have come up with something that the Vatican will find it hard (though not impossible) to oppose. It's a piece of fruit _ and it promises to be as significant as Eden's apple. It's a lemon.
Roger recalled a recent lecture he gave about Marie Stopes while standing beneath a painting of that formidable woman at the National Portrait Gallery in London. The audience was largely made up of elderly women who'd been admirers of Stopes, that great crusader for contraception. Roger mentioned, in passing, her recommendation of a slice of lemon as a pre-coital spermicide. There was a murmur of assent from the audience, many of whom later told him that they'd used the lemon for that purpose. "It was all we had back then.''
Historical evidence abounds that lemon juice in the vagina was once widely used in the Mediterranean region as a contraceptive. Casanova advocated the use of half a lemon as a forerunner of today's cervical caps and diaphragms. And in his 1963 Medical History of Contraception, Norman Hinds stated that "Soaking a sponge in diluted lemon juice and using it as a vaginal tampon is theoretically not surpassed in reliability by any modern clinical contraceptive.''
Roger and his associates decided to check the efficacy of the lemon and found that a 20 per cent concentration of juice in fresh human ejaculate irreversibly immobilised 100 per cent of spermatozoa in less than 30 seconds. There was even better news to follow. It's well known that low pH kills HIV, and Roger and his associates wondered whether fresh lemon juice could do that job as well. They speculated that a sponge soaked in lemon juice or a very thin slice of lemon placed in the vagina might kill the virus as well as the tadpoles. And they discovered it did. A 10per cent concentration of lemon juice was enough to quickly kill HIV.
As Roger explained: "The dual spermicidal and virucidal effect of lemon juice cannot be patented and hence controlled by pharmaceutical companies. Since this is using a natural product to protect women, it should be culturally acceptable. Lemon juice might also be very useful for post-coital washing of the penis to protect men from HIV infection.'' (In a proud scientific tradition, Roger and a female colleague tried lemon juice on and in themselves and confirmed that neat juice applied to the vagina or the penis and foreskin is in no way painful to the user "if no lesions are present''.)
Think of it. Lemons are grown just about everywhere. They're indigenous to South-East Asia, which happens to be one of the regions most threatened by HIV infection. It has been estimated that a microbicide, with only 40 per cent efficacy against HIV transmission, at 30 per cent coverage could avert more than 5.6million HIV infections and 4 million infections at 20 per cent coverage. So there's every possibility that vaginal lemon juice could go a long way to saving the planet. If the Pope could see his way to approve of lemons, multitudes may be saved.
Roger and his colleagues don't want to make a quid out of this. "The challenge is to find the most effective way of disseminating this information, especially to young people in developing countries, once we've completed ongoing research in primates to see if repeated vaginal administration of the juice damages the vaginal epithelium. We also need to establish that lemon juice will kill all the HIV present in the semen of an HIV-positive man.''
Roger acknowledges that it will require large numbers of volunteers who can be found only in developing countries and several years to demonstrate any effects of lemon juice. "But surely it is unethical to withhold this information about the spermicidal and virucidal effects of lemon juice pending such a trial while millions more people become infected with HIV? We need to find alternative ways of evaluating the safety, efficacy and acceptability of this old yet new contraceptive.''
Roger has taken his message to the XIV International AIDS Conference in Barcelona and to an AIDS conference in Cape Town. In Bangkok, Population and Community Development Association founder Mechai Viravaidya is immensely enthusiastic about "using a cheap, readily available natural product that originated in Thailand''.
Although the Melbourne medical establishment seems pretty lukewarm (it has little concept of primary health care and disease prevention in developing countries, says Roger) a group calling themselves the LemonAIDS has been formed, headed by Rob Moody, director of Victorian Health, who has first-hand experience of HIV prevention in Uganda. Also supporting the research, UNAIDS, the UN program on HIV-AIDS based in Geneva.
You don't get many phone calls that interesting. Here's a chance of bringing the world's most ominous disease - and the world's population - under control. So it looks like they'll have to award a Nobel prize for fruit juice.
If you'd like to contact Roger, send me an email and I'll pass it on.
Happy Christmas.
[email protected]
