http://newscenter.lbl.gov/2004/11/05/samoas-gift-to-the-world/Mamala tree found on the Samoan island of Savaii...and others in the area as well.
Has anyone been there or is currently living there with some on their property possibly?
I would like one of these to use as a teaching tool on why plants and conservation of ecosystems and indigenous knowledge are important for (among MANY other things) for human health!! This case was particularly important due to a drug called Prostratin that is being looked into as a treatment for HIV thanks to Paul Alan Cox's research with the indigenous people.
http://news.stanford.edu/news/2008/may7/samoahiv-050708.html (
Excerpt from article below...good read!:)
"...Samoan healers, who willingly shared their knowledge with Paul Cox, an ethnobotanist who saw them prescribing a tea made from Mamala bark for patients with hepatitis-like symptoms. Cox, in turn, sent samples to the National Institutes of Health, in hopes that the bark might have antiviral properties useful in fighting some cancers. Researchers at NIH then analyzed the bark and isolated prostratin.
Prostratin belongs to a class of compounds called tiglianes, many of which promote tumor growth, so it had no initially perceived use in fighting cancer. But NIH researchers found that prostratin was not a tumor promoter and checked to see if perhaps it could help combat HIV, which is when its remarkable ability to flush out the dormant virus was discovered. Significantly, prostratin has also been found to block uptake of the purged virus, offering yet another potentially therapeutic benefit."
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25963564R,
Paraponera