Paul Alan Cox learned of a potion that turned out to contain a potent anti-HIV drug (Image: David Agnello)
As an ethnobotanist working with the traditional healers of Samoa in the 1980s, Paul Alan Cox learned of a potion that he described in his field notebook as a treatment for “acute viral illness”. It turns out that the active ingredient, prostratin, is a potent anti-HIV drug, at least in the lab. Now nearing clinical trials, prostratin works unlike any other HIV drug, by coaxing hidden virus out of immune cells. This is no tale of bio-piracy, though. Quite the…
