Pplaying it safe, Dr. Clark then cautioned the public not to take selenium supplements. And imagine what these results might have been if the people in question had also taken good, organic vitamin E, vitamin C, glutathione, etc. Unmentioned in all this excitement was where these ideas originally came from. The value of selenium as an anti-cancer agent was unknown or derided when it was proposed by Emmanuel Revici, M.D., the New York alternative doctor, decades ago. Too bad the A.M.A. doesn't give out Belatedly Recognized Genius awards.
Red grape skins, it turns out, contain a substance called resveratrol.
These stages are initiation of DNA damage, transformation of the cell into cancer, and growth and spread of the tumor. Although resveratrol was first isolated from a Peruvian legume called Cassia quinquangulata, it was later found in grapes, particularly red grapes, as well as in peanuts, mulberries and other plants. Again, this makes us think of another approach long derided by the quackbusters. You can sometimes find her slim volume on a dusty shelf in the health food store. Brandt was herself drawing on an old European tradition which held that grapes had almost magical health-restoring properties when eaten in abundance.