Tobacco, the source of a major regressive tax in many cities, is under study for its medicinal properties to treat ailments as varied as Ebola and joint pain, according to Indian Country Today, a publication for American Indian news:
Tobacco is one plant researched by biopharmaceutical companies around the world in biopharming – the use of genetic engineering techniques on plants to produce pharmaceuticals. …
The University of Louisville, Kentucky’s Owensboro Cancer Research Program under Kenneth Palmer is a leader in researching medical uses for tobacco and its relative, nicotiana benthamiana. Palmer’s team, for instance, has had some success with a microbicide, based on a protein in red algae, that inhibits transmission of the HIV virus during intercourse. Tobacco is used to create a gel with the protein.
Tobacco may actually be safer than food-based cures because there’s no cross-pollination concern:
Experiments have and do use crops such as corn, carrots or tomatoes, but with intense concern from environmental activists and food industry groups.
Problems have arisen with food crops. In 2002, ProdiGene, a Texas-based biopharmaceutical company was fined $3 million after two incidents involving contamination of food – soybeans in Nebraska and corn in Iowa. In the Nebraska case, soybeans were planted on a plot used the year before to grow corn altered for a vaccine. When corn sprouted alongside the soybeans, it was harvested and eventually ended up among 500,000 bushels of soybeans, all of which had to be destroyed.
Read the Indian Country Today story.
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