Why do people like to skin the "giant panda" yew?

Recently, in Lingtou Natural Village, Xingu Village Committee, Da Qiao Town, Ruyuan Yao Autonomous County, Shaoguan, Guangdong Province, four national first-class protected plants, Taxus chinensis, were peeled by lawless elements and were on the verge of death.

So why do people like peeling yew? This should start with the medicinal value of yew.

197 1 year, two American chemists successfully isolated a substance from the trunk of Taxus chinensis, named it paclitaxel, and announced its chemical structure. From 65438 to 0982, paclitaxel was proved to have special effects on ovarian cancer, testicular embryonic cancer, breast cancer and other cancers in clinical experiments, and its side effects were far less than other anticancer substances found at that time. The research results caused a sensation after being published, and it was hailed as the most important discovery in this field for decades.

Taxol in nature mainly exists in the whole body of Taxus chinensis trees, and the content of bark is the highest, reaching about one in ten thousand. However, Taxus chinensis is a slow-growing tree species, which is very rare in the world and has long been listed as a protected tree species in the United States. In Asia, China, Myanmar, Indonesia and other countries have more wild yew.

1992, paclitaxel was officially certified by the US Food and Drug Administration and allowed to go on the market.

1992 in the summer, the first wave of yew bark war started in northwest Yunnan, and a large number of businessmen poured into the forest area to buy yew bark, which was unprecedented. A few months later, the acquisition suddenly stopped and the local forestry department recorded the wave of acquisition. According to insiders, after the news that the United States approved the listing of paclitaxel spread to China, some speculators thought it was profitable to buy it in northwest Yunnan where yew was concentrated. Because this kind of bark is not convenient to sell to the United States, this trend naturally stopped. However, for China, this is the beginning of paclitaxel fever.

In the United States, since 1992, paclitaxel has been regarded as one of the three first-choice anticancer drugs in clinical application, and its value has increased year by year. Patent-holding American manufacturers are pushing the price of paclitaxel higher and higher, reaching three or four million dollars per kilogram, while the supply does not exceed 100 kg. In this case, many American hospitals tend to buy paclitaxel abroad, and paclitaxel has become the drug with the most investment potential, thus setting off a paclitaxel investment fever all over the world.

So far, the United States is still the largest consumer of paclitaxel. Taxol produced in China is powder, almost all of which are exported to the United States. In particular, there are a large number of wild yew in the United States, but American laws allow the import of paclitaxel from abroad, but never allow the use of yew in China.

Since 1992, due to the backward understanding and legislation of the value of Taxus chinensis in developing countries, except for a few countries such as the United States and Canada, reports about the artificial destruction of wild Taxus chinensis have appeared on various environmental protection websites and media all over the world.

PACLI TAXEL is an extract of Taxus chinensis in China, which has a unique anticancer mechanism. Dr. Broder, director of the National Cancer Institute of the United States, said that paclitaxel is a new anticancer drug with good curative effect and little side effects on many cancers in the past 15 years after adriamycin and cisplatin. Since 1980s, the United States, Britain, Russia, South Korea and China have conducted in-depth research. The United States took the lead in applying the research results to medical clinic and achieved remarkable clinical results in the treatment of various cancers. Since then, mankind has made new breakthroughs in the field of anti-cancer. So far and for a long time to come, the most favorable weapon for human beings to fight cancer can only be paclitaxel.

Taxol is mainly extracted from the roots, skins, stems and leaves of Taxus chinensis. Because of the complex extraction process, it is difficult to remove chlorophyll from the stock solution, and because of the large equipment investment and lack of raw materials, the conventional extraction of paclitaxel developed late in China and just started in the 1990 s.

At present, about 6.3 million patients worldwide die of cancer every year. There are about 4 million people in the United States, Europe and Japan alone every year. Treating these patients consumes about 1500-2500 kg of paclitaxel every year. The world can only produce about 350-500 kilograms of paclitaxel every year. Among them, the United States can produce 25-50 kilograms, and China can only produce about 50 kilograms. Therefore, the market development and application potential of paclitaxel is huge. At the same time, the large-scale planting of Taxus raw material timber forest base also contains huge market opportunities. So the value of yew has doubled.

In foreign countries, the Canadian Botanical Medicine Company, the American Titan Chemical Company and the American Squibb (BNS) Company were the first companies to develop taxol by using yew, with the strongest technical strength and economic strength. Squibb has dominated the world paclitaxel market for 20 years. A considerable part of the raw materials used by the company to refine paclitaxel are imported from China or obtained through other channels, and then its product paclitaxel injection is sold in China for huge profits.

The content of paclitaxel produced in China is above 98%, and the export price is generally in 800 yuan/gram RMB. In foreign countries, each gram of paclitaxel is made into 33 grams of injection, each containing about 30 ml of paclitaxel, which is about 2500 yuan in China. In other words, each gram of imported paclitaxel used by cancer patients in China is equivalent to paying 80,000 yuan, which is more than 600 times the price of gold.

Because of this, the wild yew in China suffered unprecedented logging and destruction in just over ten years, and the wild stock decreased sharply. Some areas are even on the verge of extinction. Therefore, protecting the existing resources and artificially expanding the total amount of Taxus resources are placed in front of people of insight.