Maybe tobacco isn’t all that evil after all …

… since there seems to be a therapeutic use in treating certain types of cancer. I’m all for tobacco use in moderation, particularly in the form of long-cut filler cigar or high end pipe tobacco. I’ve even blogged on the joys of pipe smoking here, here, here and here.

From KurzweilAI.net:

Tobacco ‘could help treat cancer’

BBC News, July 21, 2008Stanford University researchers are using tobacco plants to grow key components of a cancer vaccine, turning the plants into factories for an antibody chemical specific to the cancerous cells that cause follicular B-cell lymphoma, a type of non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma. Once a patient’s cancer cells are isolated in the laboratory, the gene responsible for producing the antibody is extracted and added to a tobacco virus. When the virus infects the tobacco, the gene is added to the plants’ cells, which start producing large quantities of the antibody. These antibodies are put back into a patient to “prime” the body’s immune system to attack any cell carrying them.   Read Original Article>>