Imagine this: an organic pill that kills the
appetite and attacks obesity.
It has no known side-effects, and contains a
molecule that fools your brain into believing you
are full.
Deep inside the African Kalahari desert, grows an
ugly cactus called the Hoodia. It thrives in
extremely high temperatures, and takes years to
mature.
The San Bushmen of the Kalahari, one of the
world's oldest and most primitive tribes, had been
eating the Hoodia for thousands of years, to stave
off hunger during long hunting trips.
When South African scientists were routinely
testing it, they discovered the plant contained a
previously unknown molecule, which has since been
christened P 57.
The license was sold to a Cambridgeshire
bio-pharmaceutical company, Phytopharm, who in
turn sold the development and marketing rights to
the giant Pfizer Corporation.
Fortune cactus:
A molecule in the cactus makes you feel full.
When I travelled to the Kalahari, I met families
of the San bushmen.
It is a sad, impoverished and displaced tribe,
still unaware they are sitting on top of a
goldmine.
But if the Hoodia works, the 100,000 San strung
along the edge of the Kalahari will become
overnight millionaires on royalties negotiated by
their South African lawyer Roger Chennells.
And they will need all the help they can to secure
the money.
Currently, many bushmen smoke large quantities of
marijuana, suffer from alcoholism, and have
neither possessions nor any sense of the value of
money.
The truth is no-one has fully grasped what the
magic molecule means for their counterparts in the
developed world.
Blood sugar:
According to the British Heart Foundation 17% of
men and 21% of women are obese, while 46% of men
and 32% of women are overweight.
So the drug's marketing potential speaks for
itself.
Phytopharm's Dr Richard Dixey explained how P.57
actually works:
"There is a part of your brain, the hypothalamus.
Within that mid-brain there are nerve cells that
sense glucose sugar.
"When you eat, blood sugar goes up because of the
food, these cells start firing and now you are
full.
"What the Hoodia seems to contain is a
molecule that is about 10,000 times as active as
glucose.
"It goes to the mid-brain and actually makes those
nerve cells fire as if you were full. But you have
not eaten. Nor do you want to."
Clinical trials:
Dixey organised the first animal trials for Hoodia.
Rats, a species that will eat literally anything,
stopped eating completely.
When the first human clinical trial was conducted,
a morbidly obese group of people were placed in a
"phase 1 unit", a place as close to prison as it
gets.
All the volunteers could do all day was read
papers, watch television, and eat.
Half were given Hoodia, half placebo. Fifteen days
later, the Hoodia group had reduced their calorie
intake by 1000 a day.
It was a stunning success!
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