- Go get it!
(phone ringing)
Okay, you stay, ah! Stay.
Stay.
Hello?
Yeah.
Oh, John, good.
Well, I'm doing really well. I've had my second treatment.
I'm feeling great.
- [Narrator] The expression doing really well,
is more than just idle conversation
from Marcia Wiedemann of Poulsbo, Washington.
She suffers from ovarian cancer.
For two years now, she's battled a disease
that more often than not, takes no prisoners.
- [Marcia] I was just kind of figuring, well,
now how long is it going to take me to die?
That's where I was.
I mean, I had even told my employer
it's time for you to get me replaced
because I'm going downhill and I'm going, I'm,
and I was getting sick fast.
And so I had even told, I already told my employer,
it was time to replace me.
Well, once I don't have a job,
I might as well quit because that's my life.
- [Narrator] But this nurse didn't quit.
Instead, as she tells field producer, Jessica Martins,
something just short of a miracle happened.
- Two days after I told my boss that, two days after that,
we found out about this Taxol thing.
Well, I mean, then there's this little glimmer of hope.
And then when I got in the program, I mean,
it's a great, huge glimmer of hope.
For example, the tumor on this side was,
I think it was 19 by 23 centimeters
and now it's only like 15 by 13 or something like that.
So it shrunk probably two inches.
And then I had another small palpable tumor
up here on this right side.
That you can't even feel now, it's gone.
You can't feel it.
And a small one in my pelvis, that's shrunk significantly.
And that's all just in three weeks.
So now we're not looking for anybody to replace me again.
I'm doing my job.
It's wonderful.
- [Narrator] Marcia's glimmer of hope,
sprang from something that used to end up
in logging slash piles, the yew tree.
From this tree scientists have unlocked
the secret to the newest most important
cancer-fighting drug in 15 years.
That drug is Taxol.
Dr. Joanna Cain of the University of Washington
medical center explains that Taxol stops cancer cells
by inhibiting cell division,
very different method from past chemotherapy.
- [Dr. Cain] For us, the main positive is that
it causes responses in people
for whom we have nothing else.
The main longterm positive is that potentially
we won't have people who need chemotherapy
beyond the first round,
if we can cure them the first time through.
And we're very hesitant to talk about cure
in that sort of disease,
but it seems like this may be an opportunity.
- [Narrator] So it appears we've been provided
a weapon against one of the greatest scourges on Earth.
A tree once revered for making longbows and lutes,
now shows promise not only in the fight
against ovarian cancer,
but others like breast, colon, and lung.
But there's a catch.
It can take up to 10 of these trees to treat one patient.
And while that sounds like a small price to pay
for a human life, such a demand could wipe out
the very source of the drug.
If we cut down every yew treat today,
there wouldn't be enough Taxol to treat
even a fraction of the world's cancer patients tomorrow.
Taxol comes from the thin fragile bark of the Pacific yew.
A rather gangly shade-loving variety of yew.
It exists only in this region of the world.
Relatively few in numbers, this oldest of trees
still surviving in our ancient forest
grows at a very leisurely pace.
As slow as one inch, every 50 years.
Forrester, Nancy Lankford.
- Well, this tree is oh, about, 16 inches or so in diameter,
and in looking at the, the stand
and the overstory and at this tree,
it's probably, you know, 200, 250 years old or so.
- [Narrator] Everyone agrees that this species
is now of utmost importance.
The real controversy seems to center on just how well
the trees are being managed.
- This is a typical clearcut.
This happened this summer on the Umpqua National Forest.
And uh, I don't care what the forest service says.
They are wasting this resource.
They've left hundreds and hundreds of pounds
on this, on this sale alone.
I mean, there is enough yew bark here
to potentially save the lives of, of at least dozens of,
of cancer patients.
- We have found that sort of waste
virtually everywhere we have looked.
The Pacific yew may be the most valuable tree in the forest.
And yet the natural resources agencies,
the Bureau of Land Management and Forest Service are
managing this program from the seat of their pants.
- [Narrator] Charges of waste and mismanagement,
theft, and monopolization of the yew have come
from people like Congressman Ron Wyden and Wendell Wood
of the Oregon Natural Resources Council.
They feel the waste began
when the National Cancer Institute,
after years of experimentation,
that proved Taxol to be an extremely valuable drug,
took bids from pharmaceutical companies to manufacture it.
Bristol-Myers Squibb won out.
They now have first rights to all the Pacific yew bark
left in the world.
A move commissioner, Jerry Rust of Eugene
feels was a major mistake.
- [Jerry] This monopoly is holding down the development of
and production of Taxol in this country.
I'm convinced of that, absolutely.
- This is the first instance I know of
where one company is literally transferred control
over a species.
And I'm particularly concerned because
if you write an open-ended contract
between the federal government,
the natural resources agencies, and a major drug company,
and the federal government commits to specifics
such as the 750,000 pounds of bark a year.
And the drug company commits to virtually nothing
other than what it chooses in its own discretion to do.
It's an invitation to this kind of waste and mismanagement.
- Coordination.
- [Narrator] But John Lowe, Deputy Chief Forrester,
of region six, believes they've done everything they can
to take control of an unprecedented situation.
- Our highest commitment is to maintain
the viability of the yew species.
It was an attempt to take a very limited supply
of raw material and make sure it got
in the right places to get at the answers that
that everyone is trying to reach right now.
- [Nancy] The area we're in right here is next to
a timber sale unit, where they harvested the timber
for other species.
And in the summer we've allowed yew bark peelers
to come in and to peel the bark.
And what the peelers do is they score the ...
The bark right at the stump and they leave a stump
that's ... with the bark and tack
that's large enough to resprout.
- [Narrator] While no one wants to deny
a patient's life saving medicine.
Some feel the current method of getting Taxol
is a shortsighted quick fix.
- [Jerry] Let's put it this way.
These are 200, 300 year old trees.
We do not know how many of them there are.
We do know they're quite rare.
They have yet to replant one single tree in our forest.
So we're cutting 200 and 300 year old trees down.
It can't be sustainable.
- Some of the older trees that were taken out, it,
it will take a while before they get back to that size
and age. But I think,
I think the accusation that there's mismanagement
in terms of ...
mining out the species or whatever, is,
is really not accurate.
- [Nancy] This uh Pacific yew was cut two years ago,
possibly three years ago. And as you can see,
it really is a pro, prolific sprouter.
Some of these sprouts are several feet high
and they're quite abundant.
So it's just a dramatic example of what the tree can do.
When the bark is left on the stump.
- But look at this stump,
you've got little trees, here's your next growth.
But when they burn this, it's going to be wiped out.
- [John] We know that in some cases we've broadcast,
burned around stumps and they, they have sprouted back.
We know in some cases we've broadcast around stumps
and they didn't sprout back.
- [Narrator] Bristol-Myers Squibb contracted
with Hauser Chemical Research Incorporated
and its subsidiary Hauser Northwest incorporated
to take the bark.
Mike Trumbull, as manager of Hauser Northwest,
handles the harvest.
- We took the bark off of the limbs
out to a one inch diameter,
and took the bark off the tops
and then left the, the,
the log and the rest of the tree
for the forest service to market,
to specialty product people.
- This was just cut just this last year.
This is perfectly good bark.
It's Pacific yew right here, all this.
I've just pull off here, right now,
there's about two pounds of bark right there.
- [Narrator] But Hauser says they never had anything
to do with this stand.
They claim its yew was taken
by another party in the summer of 1990,
before the harvesting was as regulated.
They assume they will come back to stands like these
as harvesting season and collect anything
that was left behind.
The Forest Service says they will hold off broadcast burning
until that's accomplished.
But there may be another reason bark
has been found in slash piles.
- After a certain period of time, mold and some other
growths that it may have will ...
It does get in a condition where it's not usable.
A lot of the units that we've had in logging.
I think where people are accusing that we're leaving bark in
the units has been cut several years ago.
- [Narrator] While Bristol-Myers Squibb pays
for inventory and research on the yew,
but not for the bark itself.
There is speculation that others, perhaps overseas,
are paying heavily for the Northwest's new cash crop.
The monopoly has born a black market
and poaching is now a problem.
- [Nancy] There's obvious waste here.
There are trees that were just stripped
as high as a person could reach.
- [Narrator] In the fall of '91
in a federal sting operation.
One of Hauser's own agents was arrested
for buying stolen yew.
Hauser could not comment on that case at this time.
Next year, the National Cancer Institute
wants even more bark for experimentation.
- Now, I don't think we should just go strip
the world bare of yew trees,
but we can grow yew trees again.
You know, and when people die,
they don't grow again.
- [Narrator] Companies like Weyerhaeuser are trying
to grow yews the nurseries,
but it looks like trees aren't the longterm answer.
- We really need completely synthetic forms
to make a difference.
- [Narrator] The NCI hopes to be free
of its dependence on wild yews by 1998.
And in fact, one researcher has already produced
a semi-synthetic version of Taxol,
but while synthetics may be the future,
there's another alternative that many feel
would have a more immediate positive impact
on the situation.
- [Jerry] You have the potential for getting
about as much Taxol out of a tree.
If you utilize the needles as you do,
if you just get the bark.
And the good thing about needles is it's renewable.
You can crop it again and again, like an apple tree.
You wouldn't cut an apple tree down to get your apples.
- [Producer] Are you harvesting needles?
- We have not harvested needles.
We've looked into the needle process
along with a lot of others.
It has approximately 10% Taxol compared to the bark.
So it would be 10 times as costly to manufacture.
- [Narrator] Still, The Seattle Times reported
that a company called NaPro has plans to pursue this method
and become Bristol-Myers Squibb's first competition.
But this form of Taxol is more complicated to extract
and could be years away from FDA approval.
- While people are dying off,
the bureaucracy is just ... dawdling.
And that's how, that's how the bureaucracy works.
But I mean, that's ...
I think it's inexcusable.
- But until new sources of Taxol are available,
will the yew survive its call to duty?
- [Dr. Cain] I understand the environmentalist side
and I understand the timber side and ...
I'm a native of the state,
but that's not the same world as living and dying.
- [Narrator] T.S. Eliot wrote,
'Redeem the time. Redeem the dream.'
'Til the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew.
The wind has shaken, and the yew
has whispered hope and mercy,
and the dream of health has been redeemed.
- [Marcia] Absolutely.
That something out of a bark
can give you a shot to live like this. That's great.
- What do you want to do in for? There's nobody in there!
(laughs)