BANGKOK: The National Cancer Institute’s dismissal of the claim that drinking the juice of papaya leaves could cure cancer may be premature, Deputy Prime Minister Somsak Thepsutin (pic) said on Friday (Dec 29).
Somsak said he would task the Public Health Ministry with undertaking further study and research on the capability of papaya leaves to fight cancer.
He added that the Thai ministry may coordinate with a Japanese institute that had been researching this topic and had already filed a patent to use the leaves as medicine.
Earlier this week, Somsak went on a TV show to present a report of cancer patients who were reportedly cured after drinking papaya leaves boiled in water.
In the show, Somsak said that that the data had been collected from a group of patients who had been diagnosed with cancer, but the treatment result varied from person to person.
Somsak’s presentation was met with scepticism and questions were raised about the credibility of the results, including a response from the Digital Economy and Society Ministry’s anti-fake news centre, which said that the report could be fake news.
The centre cited data from the National Cancer Institute that the study on the efficacy of papaya leaves had been done only in labs and never on patients. The institute denied the claims that consuming the juice of papaya leaves could cure cancer in humans due to lack of supporting data.
“Arguing about this topic would not be beneficial to the public and society. What we need is further study and research to secure a conclusive result,” Somsak said on Friday.
He added that he had presented the report to “spread the knowledge”, and had never claimed that papaya leaves would replace traditional methods of treating cancer.
“I want to offer an option to those who have not been successful with other kinds of treatment. A medical test has confirmed that one of the patients in the report, whose cancer had reached the fourth stage, could resume normal daily life after drinking the juice of papaya leaves,” he said.
“What I said is not a lie, as some patients who drank the juice were really cured of cancer,” he maintained. - The Nation/ANN
