Bush Signs Bill Ensuring Supply of Yew Bark Used in Cancer Drug

President Bush signed legislation Friday to ensure a continuing supply of the Pacific yew, a tree whose bark is an important source of an experimental drug to treat ovarian and other cancers.

The Pacific Yew Act, the President said, ensures that the bark is made available to companies to produce taxol, considered by the National Cancer Institute to be “the most important new cancer treatment drug discovered in the past decade.”

The law provides for the management of the Pacific yew on federal lands, covering both the harvesting and the conservation of the tree.

Taxol’s value in treating cancers was discovered in 1989. By September, 1991, 900,000 pounds of its bark had been collected on federal land, yielding enough taxol to treat more than 12,000 patients--about the same number of women who die from ovarian cancer each year.

“As the demand for Pacific yew bark increases, we realize that we have to ensure a continuing supply of Pacific yew, while not threatening that resource’s long-term existence,” Bush said in a statement.

He said the taxol program has made it possible for the federal government and private industry to work cooperatively for the public good and that it has brought jobs and millions of dollars to local economies.