Heidi Stevenson | GAIA-HEALTH

The FDA has taken a freely-available herbal product, sap of the dragon’s blood tree, defined it as the drug Fulyzac, & handed it to Big Pharma. Nature’s gift is being polluted. What you get after Big Pharma and & the FDA get their hands on it has lost much of its value and often been rendered into a poison, the very nature of a drug.

An extract from a South American tree known as dragon’s blood is now classed as a drug and the FDA has handed sole rights to a single pharmaceutical corporation. The drug, which is made by Salix Pharmaceuticals, will be sold by Napo Pharmaceuticals of San Francisco under the brand name of Fulyzac. The generic term for it is crofelemer. It will be sold as a treatment for the diarrhea that’s a common adverse effect of harsh HIV drugs.

The tree is botanically named Croton lechleri and called sangre de grado in Spanish and Portuguese, long known to have several health benefits, extract from the tree is commonly available in health food stores around the world. This, though, is likely to change in the face of the FDA’s action. It signals their role in facilitating Big Pharma’s takeover of the natural world’s largesse. Piece by piece, anything that holds any health value is being declared a drug. Exclusive rights to that drug are then handed over to a private corporation.

That’s what happened to pregnenolone, a natural hormone that was routinely and inexpensively produced by compounding pharmacies, which provided it to pregnant women to prevent miscarriages. The FDA first targeted the compounding pharmacies, ordering them to stop producing it. Then, they handed exclusive rights to pregnenolone to a single corporation, which then turned around and raised the price 15,000 percent! That increase has taken it out of the reach of most women, making it available only to those of wealth or good insurance.

Sangre de Grado

Red Sap from Sangre de Drago Tree, Photo by J Davis Rorer

The name sangre de grado means dragon’s blood. The trees are given that name for their red sap, as shown in the photo to the right. The sap has been used since time immemorial by residents of South America. As the photographer of the photo stated, it “seems to cure many things, including herpes simplex in my experience.”

The sap of dragon’s blood is traditionally used externally as a liquid bandage for wounds to staunch bleeding and promote healing. It’s used internally for both stomach and intestinal ulcers. Other native uses include hemorrhoids, infected gums, skin disorders, and hemorrhage after childbirth.

Chemical constituents include

Alkaloids: Taspine is an alkaloid that has been found to have cancer-inhibiting capabilities.
Lignans: Have both pro-estrogenic and anti-estrogenic activities and are noted for their ability to aid in cardiovascular disease, breast, endometrial, and prostate cancers, and osteoporosis.
Proanthocyanidins: Types of flavonoids, which are antioxidants noted for a range of effects, including promoting excretion of toxins; preserving normal cell cycle regulation; inhibiting proliferation and inducing apoptosis (normal cell death) in cancer; inhibiting tumor invasion and development of blood vessels that feed tumors, decreasing inflammation; increasing nitric oxide synthase, which relaxes arteries; and decreasing clot development in arteries.

By whatever name you wish to call it, Croton lechleri, dragon’s blood, or sangre de grado, it is a genuine gift of nature.

Theft of Nature’s Bounty

However, nature’s gifts are now being treated as if they were private property. The medical lore of centuries that’s been based on nature is now being stolen. It’s purified, which often destroys its value, separated into its elements so that their symbiotic action is lost, and relabeled as something that, in their natural state, they aren’t: drugs.

That’s the primary trick used by the FDA and governments in other countries. Nature’s medicinal gifts, which have been freely available to everyone as a birthright, are relabeled. They’re called drugs. As drugs, only those who have been granted prescription rights, medical doctors and a limited group of hangers-on, are allowed access. They’re the gatekeepers. Anyone else must go to them to gain access to what had been their inborn right. That means paying the fees demanded and jumping through the hoops required. It means handing over your independence, being forced to provide whatever information is demanded. And it means paying exhorbitant prices for what had been free or inexpensive.

And you aren’t even given access to the real thing. The gift of nature has been polluted, so that what you get has lost much of its value and often been rendered into a poison, the very nature of a drug.