Dhaniram Baruah, the cardiac surgeon who landed in jail for transplanting a pig's heart into a human in 1997, now says he has extracted wonder organic compounds from edible medicinal plants that can cure a heart patient without surgery.

Believed to be a pioneer in xeno-transplantation or animal-to-human transplants, Baruah, who shuttles between Britain and Assam, claims he has treated and cured 302 patients suffering from coronary blockages by administering the compounds that he calls 'Baruah Alfa DH' and 'Barua Beta DH'.
 
"Most deaths attributed to coronary artery blockages actually occur because of high level of accumulation of intra-cellular calcium," Baruah told IANS in an interview here prior to his departure for London.

"No hospital is equipped to estimate the level of intra-cellular calcium but the compounds I have developed bring down intra-cellular calcium drastically."

Though Baruah first discovered the compounds in 2002, he said he now had corroborative evidence of their efficacy after having treated many people,
including some noted journalists in Assam.

Baruah hit the headlines in January 1997 when he transplanted the heart, lungs and kidneys of a pig in 32-year old Purno Saikia. Saikia, who was suffering from end-stage organ failure, survived for a week after the transplant. After his death, Baruah was put in prison for 40 days.

Before this daring experiment, Baruah served as a cardiac surgeon in top hospitals of Britain and Sweden and carried out over 5,000 bypass surgeries.

"Cardiac surgeons are not doing any justice to patients by performing coronary artery bypass surgery as it is at best a palliative, not a cure. The level of blockage recurrence is very high in patients," he said.

"So I concentrated on developing viable organic compounds from edible medicinal plants in my region. The capsules and injectibles are developed from edible plants by expensive methods of extraction, separation, isolation and then purification and identification.

"In our painstaking procedure we get 0.1 mg compound out of 50 kg of leaves," he said.

Baruah claimed he had also cured people of hypertension and diabetes mellitus.

"A beta blocker has to be taken everyday for hypertension which actually congests the lungs and leads to breathlessness. Our compounds treat hypertension effectively and in case of diabetes, they can reactivate beta cells and allow them to secrete insulin," Baruah said.
 
He said he was inspired by the almost complete lack of heart disease and coronary blockages among the Lalung, Mikir and Kachari tribes living around his research facility at Sonapur near Assam's capital Guwahati.

"When I installed my research facilities at Sonapur, I failed to get a local suffering heart disease. I tracked down the plants they were eating, either as vegetables or as medicines, and from these plants, I isolated the compounds to produce this wonder drug," says Baruah.

Baruah's Sonapur facility was established in 1996 over 1,000 acres. The facility has a huge animal laboratory with over 300 large animals that are used for experiments.

"Now I have motivated local tribals to plant more of these medicinal plants," said Baruah. "They have planted nearly 3,000 acres with these plants."

One of these is a fast growing creeper, the other a slow growing tree. But Baruah did not want to disclose the specifics of the plants lest his claimed discovery was taken away from him.

Baruah said he was not seeking to patent his discovery. "If I register my patent, I have to disclose all scientific information to the authorities. And it will all be immediately leaked out," he said.

"I don't need recognition so long as people come and get cured," said Baruah.