Toxic Substances Hold Hope for Chronic Diseases Such as Cancer and Diabetes

Since ancient times, humans have continuously sought effective medicines from naturally occurring toxic substances, and with considerable success. Today, the highly toxic arsenic trioxide is used to treat leukemia; vincristine, extracted from the toxic Madagascar periwinkle, and paclitaxel, extracted from the equally toxic yew, have become common chemotherapy drugs for cancer. The antihypertensive drug captopril was derived from the venom of the Brazilian pit viper. Exendin and Bydureon, new diabetes drugs, are extracted from the venom of the Gila monster — this poisonous lizard contains a toxin compound that deeply stimulates the pancreas and promotes insulin secretion. This new class of drugs has changed the history of daily insulin injections for diabetics; patients need only inject once a week. Moreover, these drugs may also treat neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's disease, so the market prospects are broad.

Any one of these drugs has generated enormous profits for large pharmaceutical companies; once a drug is brought to market, each one can earn billions to tens of billions of US dollars annually. But in modern society, the process of bringing a drug to market is extremely cumbersome. Drug inventors must first conduct experiments on rodents to prove efficacy and safety before they can persuade pharmaceutical companies to invest. Drug companies then spend three to five years completing clinical trials, and after clinical trials, they must obtain marketing authorization from drug regulatory agencies in various countries (such as the U.S. FDA, the European Medicines Agency, and China's drug regulatory authority). Only after passing countless hurdles can a drug finally be used clinically to treat various diseases.

Therefore, many patients cannot wait for regulatory approval and seek alternative therapies on their own. There is ongoing controversy over alternative therapies, and some strongly oppose the monopoly of modern pharmaceutical companies over the drug market, arguing that it slows drug innovation and deprives many patients of timely treatment. Cancer, diabetes, rheumatism, stroke, dementia, Alzheimer's disease, and neurodegenerative conditions remain unsolved world medical problems; we still have no specific drugs for these diseases, and alternative therapies have played a certain role in treating these intractable conditions. Moreover, some alternative therapies have directly led to the development of new drugs.

The use of arsenic trioxide to treat leukemia is one example. Initially, doctors at the Harbin Medical University Affiliated Hospital learned that a terminal esophageal cancer patient they had given up on had miraculously improved after taking an anti-cancer folk prescription from a folk TCM doctor. This outcome caught their attention, and they began visiting the folk doctor. However, due to the sensitivity of the "folk TCM doctor" identity, the practitioner did not dare directly admit that he had treated the patient. From then on, a team led by Professor Zhang Tingdong and other doctors at the Harbin Medical University Affiliated Hospital began this research. They eventually discovered that arsenic (arsenic trioxide) was likely the main active drug, then conducted clinical trials with purified arsenic trioxide and cured many children with leukemia. After this therapy drew attention from many domestic peers, other medical institutions launched corresponding clinical trials and obtained even better research results. This protocol is now internationally recognized.

In fact, this research should not be considered complete, because the folk doctor's prescription (whose main ingredients were highly toxic drugs such as arsenic and mercury compounds) was originally for esophageal cancer, not leukemia. Therefore, this anti-cancer protocol using the highly toxic arsenic trioxide actually has broad-spectrum anti-cancer effects, and many clinicians are still conducting deeper research on arsenic for cancer treatment.

American toxin scientist Christie Wilcox has studied toxin-based medicine for years. She believes that effective cancer treatments may be hidden in the venoms of bees, snakes, snails, scorpions, and even mammals. BLZ-100, a "tumor-staining substance" extracted from scorpion venom, has entered clinical trials in the United States; this compound can help identify cancerous tissue so that doctors can remove cancer cells more thoroughly.

These toxin scientists have also discovered that a major component of bee venom attacks and kills HIV; melittin can kill some spirochetes that antibiotics cannot; sea anemone toxin is good at treating autoimmune diseases; wolf spider toxin shows promise for treating muscular dystrophy; and centipede toxin can relieve intractable pain.

Toxinologists have also found that the venoms of different poisons sometimes share homology. For example, Australian toxinologist Gelen found through research that the venoms of arthropods (such as spiders, scorpions, and centipedes) are all neurotoxins with very similar actions; these venoms are filled with compounds that regulate ion channels, thereby acting on the nervous system. He is therefore researching the use of these arthropod venoms to treat nervous system diseases.

TCM has long treated centipede and scorpion as a medicinal pair, used together. TCM textbooks tell readers that using 10g of centipede alone or 10g of scorpion alone is not as effective as using 0.5g of centipede and 0.5g of scorpion together. Modern toxinologists have likewise found that different toxins with similar effects, blended together like a cocktail, are more effective at treating disease than using a single poison.

The toxic substances on Earth are so diverse, and our understanding of them is still only superficial. Over the past hundred-plus years, the development of biochemistry has given us an increasingly clear understanding of how toxins treat disease. TCM classics contain abundant records of toxic medicines treating diseases, but many records are not clear enough and lack the clinical trial data commonly used by modern pharmaceutical companies. Therefore, we need to draw experience from these classics and use modern science and technology to conduct more refined research on these toxic drugs for the benefit of patients.

Using toxins requires caution; doctors throughout history and around the world have been exceptionally careful when using poisons to treat disease. Shennong's Classic of Materia Medica requires starting with very small doses and gradually increasing if ineffective until the effect is achieved — this approach ensures medication safety. Modern toxinologists use the "median lethal dose" (LD50) to measure a toxin's "deadliness." LD50 is the dose required to kill half of the test animals, usually expressed in milligrams per kilogram (mg/kg), i.e., the milligrams of toxin per kilogram of body weight.

However, this LD50 value is only of reference value for humans and has no practical significance, because humans differ from experimental animals, and the route of administration also affects this data. Therefore, if humans use poisons to treat disease, they may refer to the LD50 value, but in practice it is best to follow the approach of starting with a small dose and gradually increasing it. My own personal doses of toxins are far below the LD50 value, generally not reaching even one percent of the LD50, because this ensures high safety. I also use multiple toxins simultaneously to treat disease, so in the process of applying toxins, each individual toxin is used in an even smaller amount. Only in this way can patient safety be guaranteed.

Some knowledge of modern biology and toxin science can help us master the techniques of using toxic drugs more safely and effectively. For example, poisons of the same class usually have similar toxicity: the venoms of Hymenoptera and arthropods are mostly neurotoxins, snake venoms are mostly metalloproteinases, and the venoms of blood-sucking animals mostly have anticoagulant effects. Mastering this knowledge, we can more clearly understand which types of disease they can treat and what side effects they may produce. By studying biology and toxin science, we can also encounter more toxins not recorded in TCM classics, understand their mechanisms of treating disease, and expand our range of medication.