Medicine: The Great Papaya Fracas

Does the fruit extract really help back pain ?

The papaya is a wondrous fruit—abundant, tasty and nutritious. A papaya extract is the active ingredient in supermarket meat tenderizers, and the papaya has long been used by traditional healers to treat illnesses ranging from hepatitis to gonorrhea. Now an extract from the fruit has become the center of a growing medical controversy. Despite doubts expressed by many U.S. experts, hundreds of U.S. citizens are traveling to Canada to be treated with a papaya enzyme for what is commonly called a slipped disc.

The Canadian...

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