Yew Bark Extract Collected for Tests : Logger Is Soldier in the War on Cancer
With a cigarette in one hand and a chain saw in the other, logger Bob Eller is an unlikely looking soldier in the war on cancer.
But Eller, 61, is busy supplying the National Cancer Institute with 60,000 pounds of bark from yew trees which he collects from the forest near Cottage Grove.
The Pacific yew is also an unlikely candidate for the job. Loggers treat the squatty, slow-growing evergreen as a nuisance and usually burn it with the rest of the slash after a clear-cutting operation.
But the Cancer Institute needs 60,000 pounds of the bark to make an experimental cancer treatment called Taxol. In early trials it has proved effective in treating melanoma, or skin cancers. Researchers want to produce enough Taxol extract for a second round of human testing.
Doubtful at First
“When I first heard about it, I said, ‘This sounds like a crock of bull,’ ” said Eller, who has a crew of men peeling the bark and packing it into plastic bags.
“But the doctors were telling me that it just may work . . . and if they are going to pay me, I’ll do it.”
Eller has another personal stake in the experiment. His wife recently had a bout with cancer.
But the scale of cutting worries environmentalists because the yew is such a slow-growing tree. Many of the trees are 300 or 400 years old.
“If we just start whacking it all down, where will we be?” asked Jerry Rust, a Lane County commissioner.
Rust believes Eller should concentrate on salvaging those yew trees left behind in clear-cutting.
“We also have to start trying to synthesize the extract,” he said.
No Luck in Lab
Scientists have been trying for 15 years to produce Taxol in the laboratory synthetically, but without luck.
“We’re concerned about the environment too, but we may be on the verge of finding a very effective treatment here,” said Gordon Cragg, a chemist with the drug discovery arm of the cancer institute in Bethesda, Md.
The yew bark is dried, then ground up and dissolved into a solution and injected into the patient.
“We have been looking at plant sources for cancer treatments for about 30 years,” Cragg said. “The extract of Taxis brevifolia (Pacific yew) is one of the more promising plant sources we’ve seen yet.”
Cragg said the first human trials showed that Taxol is not only effective in treating melanoma, but helps reduce the size of other types of tumors.
More Research Needed
He said several hundred people have been involved in the tests, but more research is needed.
“We just need more time to test it,” he said.
Eller, who has a contract that pays him $3.58 a pound for the bark, doesn’t like to see the trees disappear either.
“I hate to see old growth and the yew wood cut down,” he said. “But if it was your wife or your mother that was dying of cancer, would you say ‘Strip that tree, or let her die?’ ”
“I know what I’d do. The life of a tree isn’t worth nothin’ compared to a human life.”
