A Cactus Blossoms on the Web
For: Ask the Experts,
August 2002
Long before the age of the Internet dawned, H.G. Wells, author of War of the Worlds, recognized the world's need for a "permanent world encyclopedia" to handle the information glut of that day. He thought that this information "might have the form of a network," via microfilm and film projectors. This farsighted idea is quoted in a recent article in the American Journal of Health Promotion, which then goes on to evaluate the quality of one entry in our burgeoning "world encyclopedia"—information about the herbal remedy called Opuntia, or prickly pear cactus.
You may never have heard of it, but this cactus is a most valuable plant. It has beautiful flowers and a delicious fruit. Grown around the world, it has many uses, including the making of dyes and as cattle feed. It can be planted as a hedge; it grows to tree-size. Its fibers can be dried and woven into baskets. Luther Burbank studied it extensively a century ago. It has been used medicinally for centuries for everything from treating diabetes to killing mosquitoes. (Burbank found that the sap of the cactus was a very effective killer of mosquito larvae when spread on the water they lived in.) Now, thanks largely to the Internet, extracts of Opuntia are being sold to treat or cure nearly everything.
Though by no means the most popular herbal remedy, Opuntia has at least 184 websites, most from the U.S., but from 10 other countries as well. The researchers looked at these sites and identified nearly 100 claims—everything from treating diabetes and killing the AIDS virus, to cleansing the bladder, acting as a laxative, and lowering blood pressure. Two-thirds of the claims had never been addressed in scientific literature: they are based on hearsay or tradition. For the remaining one-third of the claims, the studies cited were of questionable value—either of poor design, or lab studies. The claim about the AIDS virus, for instance, was based on just one experiment in a test tube. Of course, many substances kill viruses in a test tube; viruses inside human cells are harder to kill.
Freedom of speech is a wonderful thing, and so is the prickly pear cactus. So, for that matter, is the Internet, which may be no worse, as a source of health information, than the average newsstand. Still, it's a pity that our "new permanent world encyclopedia," imagined so long ago by Wells, is such a thicket of mis-information and hard sell. Unfounded claims raise false hopes. If you surf the Web, stay skeptical.
UC Berkeley Wellness Letter, February 2001
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