“We believe we’re sitting on a kind of motherlode of medical possibilities,”
says Dr. Robert M. Carlson, a professor of chemistry with the University
of Minnesota-Duluth and UMD’s Natural Resources Research Institute (NRRI).
The birch’s role as helpmate was established near the beginnings of time,
according to the Anishinabeg or Ojibway people, who call it wiigwaasag.
(See related story).
The more familiar name of birch grows from the ancient English words brice
or beorch, “to shine bright white.”
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“We believe we’re sitting on a kind of motherlode of medical possibilities,”
Dr. Robert M. Carlson (right) of the University of Minnesota-Duluth, says
of birch bark’s potential. The chemistry professor is credited with helping
to unlock potential uses for betulin and other products from the birch.
Inset:
Birch are prevalent around Lake Superior, even in the sands of the Grand
Sable Dunes in Michigan. BIRCH PHOTO BY TRAVIS MELIN; INSERT
PHOTO BY BRUCE MONTAGNE
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The very compound that makes the birch “shine bright white” has been tentatively
linked to treatment for such devastating human ailments as some melanomas
or cancer, several forms of herpes and even for AIDS.
The compound, betulin, is “about as water soluble as butter,” explains
Carlson. It’s probably what makes birch bark such a good preserver of foods
and such a great outer layer for canoes and shelters.
Dr. M. Reza-ul “Raj” Karim, long-time researcher on herpes viruses at the
University of Minnesota-Duluth, is testing betulin derivatives extracted
from birch bark. PHOTO BY LAKE SUPERIOR MAGAZINE
Betulin takes its name from the Latin, scientific name for the birch family,
Betula,
of which there are about 50 species in Europe, Asia and North America.
Betula
papyrifera, the paper or canoe birch, is the most common of that family
in the Lake Superior region.
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Found in abundance within birch bark, betulin can be adapted into the “betulinic
acid” that many medical researchers believe may cure or control certain
health problems. Betulin itself may also have medicinal properties.
Chemists identified betulin in bark some 200 years ago. Unfortunately,
they didn’t realize what they had. “They discovered it too soon,” Carlson
says. “They discovered it … and put it on the shelf.”
Carlson figuratively took betulin down from the shelf as he pursued a project
to find uses for bark left from industrial use of the birch. He then literally
took the compound down a few UMD halls to the laboratory of Dr. M. Reza-ul
“Raj” Karim in the biology department.
For 30 years, Karim has researched treatments for herpes viruses. Carlson
asked if betulin might be useful to his work.
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The serenity of birch heals the soul and now it may help heal the body.
PHOTO BY JAY STEINKE
After initial testing, Karim was amazed at the results. In fact, he called
over a graduate student just to make sure he was seeing what he thought
he was seeing.
“Do you think I’m seeing right?” Karim says he asked the student. She verified
his observations.
“Then I started testing this very seriously. Then we went for a patent.”
UMD currently holds patents related to the use of betulin from the birch’s
bark. The university through NRRI is trying to create partnerships with
national and international firms to determine the medical and industrial-use
potentials of this probably most recognized tree in the north woods.
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Along with Carlson and Karim, the NRRI’s Dr. Pavel Krasutsky has been instrumental
in initially linking birch to these possibilities. He is examining industrial
applications.
“This is the most pure compound that we isolated or extracted with the
help of the chemistry department,” says Karim, who also has worked with
some plants, used as medicine in Africa, to try to find herpes treatments.
Finding a compound in a natural plant with potential medicinal applications
is extremely rare. To find such a potential through the simple serendipity
of wanting to efficiently use up some leftover bark … well, that’s nearly
unnatural.
“Once in a lifetime, if you hit something like this …” says Karim, letting
his open sentence speak to the rarity. “It was out of the blue.”
Dr. Pavel Krasutsky at UMD searches for industrial uses of natural resources.
The former Ukrainian was recently honored with his
home country’s highest award. PHOTO BY JEFF FREY
Carlson, credited with getting the betulin ball rolling, smiles when he
relates the painstaking and time-consuming methods for finding medical
uses from natural plants.
This path is nothing like Hollywood’s “Medicine Man,” who lives for years
in a tropical rain forest testing plants and plumbing a native people’s
traditional lore and life to find one plant with the smallest of potential.
Carlson’s professional interest in birch - personally, the tree has always
attracted him, he explains - began only about three years ago. While working
with the Lake Superior Forum, the Citizen’s Advisory Group of the International
Joint Commission (IJC), Carlson became friends with managers of regional
paper industries, who were also members of the forum. These friendships
and common interest in sustainable development in the Lake Superior watershed
led to discussions about working together to produce more than paper from
a harvested tree.
“Economic sustainability was the issue. This value-added approach could
be one answer,” Carlson says.
Carlson began working with regional pulp producers to make their industrial
“waste streams” more profitable. Birch bark, tons of birch bark, gets discarded
or burned daily in most processes.
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Carlson and his university and industry colleagues set out to find a more
economically, socially and environmentally valuable use for bark.
UMD’s Natural Resources Research Institute, through which Carlson works,
often teams up with private or public enterprises to find economic opportunities
with environmentally sound practices, says NRRI Director Michael J. Lalich.
The institute, established in 1983, also performs government-funded research
to lay the groundwork for good regional decision-making.
Many NRRI researchers explore forest resources. NRRI helped to improve
a process that uses products from the tamarack tree to enhance printing
capabilities and for bio-medical uses relating to cell separation. The
LAREX Co. in Grand Rapids, Minnesota, now uses some of this research. NRRI
researchers also are helping to develop a fast-growing hybrid poplar that
can be sown on normally unused farmland, which could provide an ample tree
supply for industrial needs while reducing the need to harvest natural
forests. Using the whole tree efficiently is an NRRI aim.
“We believe there is tremendous potential for chemical derivatives of our
wood products,” Lalich says, such as pharmaceuticals, lubricants and adhesives.
Lalich and Carlson both emphasize “potential” when talking about the early
stages of testing medicinal compounds. Even after “potential” has been
identified, it takes time and money to determine what, if any, value exists.
“It typically takes $100 to $200 million to take a pharmaceutical to market,”
Lalich estimates. There are tests and more tests, and then federal review
to prove a product’s safety. If betulin does have medical uses, it could
be “somewhere close to the year 2010” before any products reach the shelves.
That’s why the University of Minnesota is negotiating potential partnerships
with large firms that can afford the necessary and costly next steps. Of
course, should the potential prove out, there’s a multi-million dollar
pharmaceutical carrot for an investor.
In the case of the birch’s betulin, there is cause for optimism. The medicinal
promise of betulinic acid is established. To a chemist, manipulation of
the naturally occurring betulin into betulinic acid doesn’t seem difficult.
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In Thunder Bay, Ontario, on the grounds of St. Joseph’s Heritage, lives
a birch whose existence is the source of annual celebration. The birthday
of Benny Birch is feted in early June each summer (11-13 this year). Benny,
a survivor of nearby construction nearly two decades ago and of disease
that has claimed many of his closest relatives more recently, was adopted
as St. Joseph’s Heritage’s mascot 17 years ago. His birthday has been noted
each year since.
In the generous spirit of birch, Benny’s Birthday Party is also an annual
fund-raising event for St. Joseph’s Foundation to defray costs of the St.
Joseph’s Care Group, which operates a number of health, nursing and other
care facilities.
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About 15 percent of birch bark is betulin. It can be felt as the almost
powdery residue one finds either on bark or just within its paper-thin
and thicker layers. That makes birch bark “a single pure source of a single
pure compound,” an incredible rarity, says Carlson.
Like other naturally occurring compounds, betulin may end up with none
or fewer of the detrimental side effects from synthetic compounds, according
to Carlson.
A researcher at the University of Illinois in Chicago about a year ago
labeled betulinic acid from betulin as a potential weapon against melanoma
tumors, which annually affect an estimated 34,100 Americans and cause 7,200
deaths. That researcher determined that 50 pounds of bark might produce
100 doses of betulinic acid.
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Inspiration to poets and a favorite of travelers in the north woods, the
family of Betula have long served the lakeshore’s human population.
PHOTO BY JAY STEINKE
Betulin research by Carlson and Raj Karim show potentials exist for battling
some forms of herpes. Herpes viruses, something of a bane to humans, cause
cold sores, genital infections, chickenpox, shingles, infectious mononucleosis
and have been linked to multiple sclerosis and to Karposi’s sarcoma, the
cancer that often delivers the fatal blow to AIDS sufferers. In UMD’s
research, betulin-based treatment was several times more effective than
the current most popular herpes treatment.
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Birch as a healing resource isn’t new. Along with the 5,300-year-old mummified
remains of a man in the Alps was found birch fungus, piptoporus betulinus,
the mildly toxic properties of which are speculated to have given this
ancient traveler temporary relief from intestinal parasites. Ancient woodlands
people molded wetted birch bark into a form-fitting cast on broken bones.
And birch sugar, taken as lozenges or gum, has reduced the occurrence of
ear infections in children in research at the University of Oulu in Finland.
Near Marquette, Michigan, Dr. Charles Van Riper swore an oath on a birch
while in his youth. He vowed that he would find a cure for the stuttering
problem that plagued him.
Each day, Van Riper has said, he visited that birch and revisited his oath.
While during his lifetime Van Riper did not cure stuttering, the Birch
Tree Foundation, now headquartered in Philadelphia, sprouted from his inspiration.
The foundation works to fulfill his vow.
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These tidbits come from among the forest of news and journal articles gathered
by Carlson. Near his desk sits a somewhat dog-eared copy of “The Birch,”
an insightful and poetic tribute to the tree by Lake Superior area artist
and writer John Peyton. Carlson’s current passions are the birch and regional
sustainable development.
Medical healing is not the only benefit possible from materials in the
“waste stream” of industrial forest use. Krasutsky, who will head the NRRI’s
new chemical derivatives laboratory, has developed a turpentine product
from the sugars of the Scotch pine. He is working on uses of birch, too.
That means chemical derivatives from trees may boost the region’s economic
health. NRRI is working with regional companies to explore local development
of the “value-added” products from birch, pines, other tree species and
peat.
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Overall, Carlson predicts, this cooperative effort might “reduce waste
and at the same time add jobs and other value.”
The discoveries are far from over for the popular tree of poetry, often
immortalized in story and song. This giving tree seems destined to deliver
more gifts.
“Birch bark, which paper companies throw away, we can have lots of beneficial
use of it,” predicts Karim. “Some day, I’ll talk to you about what else
we have in mind. I can’t tell you the secrets!”
For Carlson, the chemist, a mystery yet remains. The mystery lies on the
forest floor, where he’s often seen the bark shell of a birch intact long
after its center rotted.
“We still haven’t totally solved,” he says, “the riddle of why it doesn’t
decompose.”
Protector, preserver, provider
It is said that those familiar black “scars” on the
bark of Birch come from the time when the tree protected Wenaboozhoo, sometimes
called Naniboujou, from the talons of enraged Thunder Beings.
The man-spirit protector of the Anishinabeg scaled a cliff to the Thunderbirds’
nest and killed their young, trying to protect the Anishinabe (sometimes
Anishinaabe)
people from the frightful storms that the Thunder Beings tossed down. He
also stole some of their powerful feathers.
Wenaboozhoo fled down the cliff when the adults returned, and he took refuge
inside a hollowed birch. It fell with its opening to the ground and Wenaboozhoo
protected within. The Thunder Beings couldn’t breach the bark despite their
terrible tearing. Eventually they left, and Wenaboozhoo emerged unharmed.
Wenaboozhoo declared Birch a friend to humans, a helpmate. And the man-manitou
gave a special gift to Birch. To this day, its bark endures even long after
the tree has fallen and its center decayed.
Because of this, a great respect must be given to Birch, explains David
Aubid, teacher of the Ojibway language at the University of Minnesota-Duluth.
Tobacco must be given to the tree before it’s cut down or its bark taken
for the many, many uses found by the Anishinabeg. David describes how his
mentor taught him to search for a birch, and then to reach high up and
carefully slice a right angle into the first layer of bark. When this was
pulled back, if the bark cracked, it could not be taken. But if the bark
were supple and bent without break, then the proper gifts and words could
be given and the bark removed from the tree. Skillfully done, the tree
will not die.
For the woodlands people, like those who lived around Lake Superior, Birch
held a pervasive importance similar to that of Buffalo for the people of
the Great Plains. It could become the durable skin of their houses or of
their canoes. It sometimes provided protective outer clothing. Birch bark
could be used to help winnow and later its preservative qualities protected
the harvest of manoomin, or wild rice, and of berries through the
winter. Some still know how to fold bark into a liquid-tight pot that can
withstand even boiling water for cooking.
Ever ready to help, Birch’s quick ability to ignite was crucial when a
fire meant life or death. To those who knew Birch well, medicine could
be made from its parts. Once, it is said, sugar flowed freely from Birch
and Maple. Now that gift comes only with much work.
Wonderfully artistic baskets made by the Anishinabeg from birch bark could
preserve everything from the umbilical cord of an infant to crucial foodstuffs
for long winters. Sometimes a layer of the bark became paper for the Anishinabeg
and then the birch preserved something as important as food - knowledge.
When he hears about the possibilities for Birch being studied by chemists
and others, that doesn't surprise David Aubid. The Anishinabeg are long
familiar with this helpmate. “There’s a whole science to using birch bark,”
David says, not referring at all to university science.
Birch was among the three trees claimed in perpetuity by the Anishinabeg
people from Lake Superior when they signed treaties ceding certain lands
to the government of the United States. Harvesting rights throughout those
ceded territories were retained for Birch, Cedar and Maple - all considered
crucial for the people’s survival.
This is just some of the story of Wiiwaasag, of Birch. There are
many stories that can be told only when the days are shorter and the waters
frozen.
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