Dr. Faten Abdel-Rahman Khorshid is responsible for one of the
Kingdom’s greatest national achievements in the field of science for her
work which began with the urine of camels and concluded in a potential
cure for cancer. After spending more than five years in lab research,
this Saudi scientist and faculty member from King Abdul Aziz University
(KAAU) and President of the Tissues Culture Unit at King Fahd Center for
Medical Research, has discovered that nano-particles in the urine of
camels can attack cancer cells with success. Her work began with
experiments involving camel urine, cancer cells found in patients’ lungs
and culminated in injecting mice with leukemic cancel cells and camel
urine to test the results.
Speaking to the Saudi
Gazette, Dr. Khorshid claimed that she was inspired by Prophet
Muhammad’s (pbuh) medical advice and that camel urine consists of
natural substances that work to eradicate malignant cells and maintain
the number of healthy cells in a cancer patient.
“This
treatment is not an invention, but rather, taken from our Prophet’s
legacy,” she remarked. A Hadith narrated by Al-Bukhari (2855) and Muslim
(1671) claims that some people came to Madina and fell ill with bloated
abdomens. The Prophet (pbuh) told them to combine the milk and urine of
a camel and drink that, after which they recovered. A swollen abdomen
may indicate edema, liver disease or cancer. Dr. Khorshid added that
she is not a medial doctor but a scientist and her job involves the
preparation and testing of a drug in the lab and supervising the
manufacture, testing and application of the drug.
“We
have researched and studied (camel urine) for seven years, during which
we have tested the effectiveness of camel urine in fighting cancer to
prerequisites set by the International Cancer Institute,” she explained.
According to her published study on the subject, the clinical trial
her team conducted on patients indicated that the medicine (capsules and
syrup) did not entail any harmful side effects.
In
the case of a volunteer patient with lung cancer, the medicine helped
in halving the size of the tumor after only one month. The patient, and
others like him, are still undergoing treatment. Heeding the advice
found in the Hadith, Dr. Khorshid is combining specific amounts of camel
milk and urine to develop her medicine and focuses on particular types
of cancer, including lung cancer, blood cancer, stomach cancer, colon
cancer, brain tumors and breast cancer.
She added
that she advises all of her volunteer patients to use fresh camel milk
and urine with the two components given individually for a period of
time and then combined together later. Other illnesses, including
vitiligo (depigmentation in certain areas of the skin), eczema and
psoriasis (an autoimmune disease which affects the skin and joints).
However, Dr. Khorshid adds that she will only dispense this medicine to
patients on a non-voluntary basis when pharmaceutical companies obtain a
license to do so. Currently, the medication is still undergoing tests.
“We will provide ointments, capsules, syrup,
shampoo, soap and gels to combat a number of the illnesses mentioned,
but only after they have been licensed by the Ministry of Health and
mass-manufactured by the pharmaceutical company,” she explained.
Her
study has obtained the formal approval of the Ethics Committee of
Scientific Research at KAAU. Meanwhile, her research has earned her team
the gold medal for innovation in the Kingdom in 2008, and the medicine
was also chosen as one of the six best innovations out of 600 entrants
at the International Innovation and Technology Exhibition (ITEX) 2009,
held in Malaysia in May. - SG
