10 | WEDNESDAY, JULY 31, 2019 THE NEW YORK TIMES INTERNATIONAL EDITION
CHIOS, GREECE Over my 54 years, I’ve
pinned my hopes on my parents, my
teachers, my romantic partners, God.
I’m pinning them now on a shrub.
It’s called mastic, it grows in particu-
lar abundance on the Greek island of
Chios and its resin — the goo exuded
when its bark is gashed — has been
reputed for millenniums to have pow-
erful curative properties.
Ancient Greeks chewed it for oral
hygiene. Some biblical scholars think
the phrase “balm of Gilead” refers to it.
It has been used in creams to reduce
inflammation and heal wounds, as a
powder to treat irritable bowels and
ulcers, as a smoke to manage asthma.
I’m now part of a clinical trial in the
United States to determine if a clear
liquid extracted from mastic resin can,
through regular injections, repair
ravaged nerves.
That would have profound implica-
tions for millions of Alzheimer’s pa-
tients, stroke survivors — and me. The
vision in my right eye was ruined by a
condition that devastated the optic
nerve behind it, and I’m at risk of the
same happening on the left side, in
which case I wouldn’t be able to see a
paragraph like this one.
Will a gnarly evergreen related to
the pistachio tree save me? That’s
unclear. But in the meantime, I thought
I should hop on a plane and meet my
medicine.
Chios has just 50,000 or so year-
round residents. It lies much closer to
Turkey than to the Greek mainland.
And there’s no separating its history
from that of mastic.
In the 1300s and 1400s, when Chios
was governed by the Republic of Gen-
oa, the punishment for stealing up to 10
pounds of mastic resin was the loss of
an ear; for more than 200 pounds, you
were hanged. The stone villages in the
southern part of the island, near the
mastic groves, were built in the man-
ner of fortresses — with high exterior
walls, only a few entrances and laby-
rinthine layouts — to foil any attempts
by invaders to steal the resin stored
there.
Today there’s fresh interest in mastic
— which is a tree or a shrub, depend-
ing on the individual plant’s size — as
pharmaceutical companies and supple-
ment manufacturers scour the natural
world for overlooked or underutilized
wonders: sprouting, blooming or ooz-
ing remedies developed in the largest
laboratory of all. Might something
more than superstition explain the
spell cast by mastic over time?
“This tree has been selected by
humans for 3,000 years,” Leandros
Skaltsounis, a professor of pharmacol-
ogy at the University of Athens, told
me when I visited Chios in early July.
“We’ve always known that mastic is
good for health. Now we’re learning
the reasons. It has huge potential.”
I ran into Skaltsounis beside the
dusty construction site for a new build-
ing to accommodate technicians and
equipment dedicated to studying (and,
ideally, validating) mastic’s various
applications. He had come to Chios for
the project’s official blessing, and stood
among more than a dozen business
executives and scientists who listened
as a bearded, black-robed Greek Ortho-
dox priest sang hymns and prayed that
the work done here would end suffer-
ing far and wide.It’s a lot to ask of a plant. But then
it’s hardly an unprecedented request.
Many indispensable medicines can be
traced back to the earth’s forests and
fields: another reason to protect and
nurture them a whole lot better than
we do. Although we now use a syn-
thetic version of aspirin, it was origi-
nally made from a compound foundin
the bark of the willow tree and its kin.
Hippocrates reputedly prescribed
chewing such bark or drinking tea
brewed with it for pain.
The cancer drug taxol, the malaria
drug artemisinin, the opiate morphine
and much more are the bequests of
bark, leaves, flowers, berries, herbs or
roots, some of which captured the
attention of modern scientists because
ancient folk healers venerated them.
There’s a formal name for the quest
to find more drugs like these — bio-
prospecting — and scientists involved
in it frequently pore through old tomes
for clues to where in nature they
should look. They know that we’ve
only scratched the surface of what’s
out there.
They know, too, that what we’ve
already discovered — mastic resin, for
example — may be able to do more
than we’ve asked of it. That’s why
scores of Americans with my vision
impairment, known as Naion, are
injecting a translucent amalgam of
selected compounds in the resin — or a
placebo of cottonseed oil — into our
thighs or bellies twice weekly for six
months. I have no idea which group I
fall into or whether my stint as a hu-
man pincushion is helping me. Three
months in, I haven’t experienced any
improvement.
The drug is the raison d’être of an
Israeli biotech start-up, Regenera
Pharma, built on an Iraqi émigré’s
research. In animal tests and two
small-scale human studies, Regenera
established that it was safe and
showed enough promise in restoring
neural function that
the Food and Drug
Administration
blessed the larger
trial that I’m in,
which will involve
nearly 250 people
with Naion at a
dozen sites in the
United States.
We’re perfect test subjects, because
we have just one, discrete neural func-
tion to monitor — vision. Either we
correctly read more letters on an eye
chart or we don’t. But Naion is rare,
affecting only about one in 10,
Americans, so we’re only a small frac-
tion of the market that Regenera is
after. If the drug, RPh201, works, it or
its derivatives could be useful for an
array of neurological or neurodegener-
ative disorders. But that’s a big if.
Though mastic grows throughout the
Mediterranean, Jordan Rubinson, the
chief executive of Regenera, told me
that the company gets all its resin from
Chios. Only here has it been cultivated
with such an eye toward consistency
for so long. Only here do mastic trees
and shrubs produce so much resin, the
result of many centuries of horticultur-
al eugenics. Only here is a visitor
constantly encountering, in everything
from coffee to soap, the subtle, eva-
nescent taste or perfume of the resin,
which is like a suggestion of pine, a
hint of vanilla and a rumor of seawater
but a confirmation of none of the
above.
And only here is mastic not just a
facet of the flora but an indispensable
engine of the economy and, really, a
pillar of identity. Chios is mastic, and
islanders are embracing that with a
whole new exuberance and marketing
savvy. Near the crest of a mountain in
the south, a stunning structure of glass
and stone houses the Chios MasticMuseum, which opened three years
ago. Local tour organizers have chris-
tened the medieval stone settlements
that I mentioned earlier “mastic vil-
lages,” a few of which, like Mesta and
Olympi, are surprisingly well pre-
served. Guides take visitors through
those mazes and then beyond them, to
touch the fabled trees.
Fabled but frumpy, if I’m honest.
Although they cover much of the
southern slopes, they’re overshadowed
by the silver-leaved olive trees that
rise taller and more flamboyant around
them, and I would have looked right
past them but for their dandruff. That’s
how I came to think of the odd layer of
white powder — calcium carbonate —
on the soil around their forked trunks.
The mastic farmers spread the pow-
der there in early July, a few weeks
before they begin the process of cut-
ting diagonal grooves in the mastic’s
bark. The resin then rises to fill these
wounds — it’s how some plants protect
themselves from insects and patho-
gens, a sort of botanical self-care —
and forms what look like giant
teardrops. As they harden, they tumble
to the calcium-carbonate landing pads,
which keep them from sticking to the
ground. They’re collected in Septem-
ber and October.
Some 4,500 people on Chios are
involved in the mastic industry, which
doubled its production over the last 15
years, according to Ilias Smyrnioudis,
the head of research and development
for the island’s mastic growers associa-
tion. He gave me a tour of the hangar-
like building where an array of food
products with mastic resin are
produced. The resin has long been a
culinary darling in Greece, especially
as a chewing gum, a liqueur or a fla-
voring in sweets. Lately the enterpris-
ing islanders have assigned it a much
broader gastronomic portfolio.
“Cereal, pasta, tomato sauce, egg-
plant sauce, olive oil, salt, jams,” Mairi
Giannakaki, a senior official with a
Chios food company, ticked off as we
slalomed around conveyor belts bear-
ing the various items. “We put mastic
in everything .”
But the more important production
plant, a few miles away, is the one
where the resin bound for therapeutic
use is cleaned meticulously by dozens
of women in sterile garb who buff and
sort small, ivory-colored pebbles of it
as delicately as if they were cutting
diamonds. Some pebbles are shipped
that way, to be processed further by
the companies receiving them. Some
are pulverized first.
Smyrnioudis took me to a room
where sealed white and blue boxes —
the colors of the Greek flag — were
stacked high and far. “This one is going
to Libya,” he said, inspecting the labelon one box before moving on to an-
other. “This one says Japan. It’s pow-
der, maybe for toothpaste.” He told me
that the resin is exported to more than
45 countries.
“Its gastrointestinal, antioxidant,
anti-inflammatory, anti-diabetic, anti-
microbial and anticancer activity, as
well as its beneficial effects in oral
hygiene and in skin care, are firmly
documented,” reads a glossy booklet
by Smyrnioudis, who has a doctorate
in virus epidemiology and molecular
biology. “Firmly” is in the eye of the
beholder: While the booklet cites
scores of papers and studies, they’re
not from particularly prominent medi-
cal journals, and in America at least,
the resin isn’t the F.D.A.-approvedtreatment of choice for the ailments it
purportedly relieves.
There are clinical trials in Greece to
evaluate the resin’s effectiveness in
treating inflammatory bowel disease
and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease.
Smyrnioudis said that he has seen
evidence that it can reduce blood pres-
sure; Skaltsounis, the pharmacology
professor, spoke of its potential in
lowering cholesterol.
To hear them tell it, there’s virtually
nothing mastic can’t do.
In the Chios beach town of Komi, I
met Irene Argyraki and her dog, Bella,
a stray who came her way several
years ago after being hit by a car. Fur
and skin had been shorn from one of
Bella’s legs, and a veterinarian told
Argyraki that Bella “would always be
limping, with a very obvious scar.”
Bella was neither limping nor scarred
when I saw her, a fate that Argyraki
credited to daily applications of an
ointment with mastic-resin powder
that she instructed a local pharmacist
to make.
In the central square of the medieval
village of Mesta, just a few long strides
past the Mastic Memories memorabilia
shop, I had coffee with Roula Boura.
She and her husband run a group that
promotes island tourism, and she, too,
is a mastic evangelist.
“When I was pregnant,” she told me,
“I needed to digest my food better, so I
drank water with mastic powder in it.”
Problem solved. “But still I couldn’t
sleep,” she added. “I had a very big
belly. I was carrying twins.”
I told her that I was injecting mastic
for my bum eye, and she lit up, be-
cause she said she knew of something
else excellent for vision problems:
organic olive oil with fennel. I should
start consuming it regularly.
Maybe hyperbole, along with mastic,
thrives in this sunny climate. Some
islanders have claimed that Christo-
pher Columbus was born here, an-
gering Italians no end. Some speak of
Chios as the birthplace of Homer,
although many scholars believe that
Homer wasn’t even a single person but
a troupe of poets.
And some questions aren’t easily
answered, even after millenniums of
asking. I couldn’t be sure — as I
walked among the mastic and then
headed home to pump yet more of it
inside me — whether this was a story
of human ingenuity or human gullibil-
ity, of shrewd enterprise or blunt op-
portunism. Regardless, it’s a story of
hope, which comes from many sources,
some of them gnarly and evergreen.Can this ancient Greek medicine cure humanity?
The blessing of the construction site for a mastic research center in Chios.There’s fresh
interest in a
fabled shrub
on the
Aegean island
of Chios.Frank Bruni
To collect the mastic resin, farmers spread calcium carbonate around the trunks of trees.PHOTOGRAPHS BY MARIA MAVROPOULOU FOR THE NEW YORK TIMESDrops of mastic resin.opinion
The Trump administration, which often talks about the
importance of reducing regulation, has found at least
one place where it would like to add red tape. The
Agriculture Department wants to make it more diffi-
cult for poor children to get enough food.
The department is proposing to end programs in 40
states and the District of Columbia that make it easier
for low-income families to sign up for food stamps. The
stated rationale is that some people who are getting
help do not need it. But the evidence suggests that
problem is quite small, while the proposed solution is
likely to keep millions of Americans who do need help
from getting it.
The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
helped 33.5 million people in the average month over
the last year — mostly families with children, older
Americans and people with disabilities — to buy a
limited range of groceries from a list of supervised
retailers. In place of the original coupons, beneficiaries
now get an average of $127 loaded on a special debit
card.
The program is enormously successful in mitigating
poverty. Most beneficiaries live in households with
incomes up to 130 percent of the federal poverty line —
$32,640 a year in 2019 for a family of two adults and
two children. But in 1996, as part of a broad overhaul
of federal aid for lower-income families, Congress let
states expand eligibility even as it curtailed benefits.
States can offer food stamps to households with in-
comes up to 200 percent of the poverty line, or around
$50,200 a year for a family with two children. States
also can waive a requirement that beneficiaries must
have no more than $2,250 in assets.
Critics have long argued that the expansion was
overly generous; the Trump administration is propos-
ing to substantially restore the old rules. Officials at
the Agriculture Department have highlighted the ex-
ample of Rob Undersander, a 66-year-old Minnesota
resident who qualified to receive food stamps even
though he had more than a million dollars in assets
because Minnesota, like most states, has chosen to
waive the asset cap.
Mr. Undersander applied for food stamps in 2016, in
the manner of a man who robs a bank to demonstrate
the need for more security. He collected more than
$6,000 in benefits he did not need, donating the money
to charity while seeking to publicize his story.
“There may be other millionaires” on food stamps,
an administration official told reporters.
But the proposed changes are not tailored to keep
millionaires from getting food stamps. They would
keep millions of low-income families from getting food
stamps.
The Trump administration estimates that 4.9 per-
cent of beneficiaries live in households with incomes
above 130 percent of the poverty line. But all recipi-
ents, including those households, still must demon-
strate that their disposable incomes, after deductions
for housing, child care, and other basic expenses, fall
below the poverty line. That’s hardly an open-door
policy — which is why relatively few households qual-
ify. And those with higher incomes get smaller
monthly payments. The program is meant to cover the
gap between income and need.
The administration estimates another 4.1 percent of
beneficiaries live in households with more than $2,
in eligible assets. The standard excludes some kinds of
savings, like equity in a home or money in a retire-
ment plan. But it is still draconian. A worker in a min-
imum-wage job who managed to save three months of
salary for a rainy day would lose his or her eligibility
for food stamps as a consequence. The threshold was
set at $2,000 in the mid-1980s, but only indexed to
inflation in 2008. As a result, it has become much more
restrictive than the original intent.
In all, the administration says the government can
save about $2 billion a year by denying benefits to 3.
million people who would not meet the old standards.
By the same logic, the government could save $
billion a year by suspending the entire program. But
those savings will not come from denying food stamps
to millionaires. The vast majority of the government’s
money is given to Americans who are hungry, so they
may eat.
The proposal once again highlights the gap between
Mr. Trump’s rhetorical promises to help lower-income
American families, and the reality of his policies,
which have systematically made life more difficult for
those very families.
Congress should move to codify the current food
stamp rules, which have been embraced by red and
blue states alike, to protect millions of Americans from
this act of theatrical cruelty.The Trump
administration
has decided to
make a show
of fiscal
discipline by
withholding
food from
hungry
children.THE FARCE OF CUTTING FOOD STAMPS
A.G. SULZBERGER, PublisherDEAN BAQUET, Executive Editor
JOSEPH KAHN, Managing Editor
SUZANNE DALEY, Associate EditorJAMES BENNET, Editorial Page Editor
JAMES DAO, Deputy Editorial Page Editor
KATHLEEN KINGSBURY, Deputy Editorial Page EditorMARK THOMPSON, Chief Executive Officer
STEPHEN DUNBAR-JOHNSON, President, International
JEAN-CHRISTOPHE DEMARTA, Senior V.P., Global Advertising
CHARLOTTE GORDON, V.P., International Consumer Marketing
HELEN KONSTANTOPOULOS, V.P., International Circulation
HELENA PHUA, Executive V.P., Asia-Pacific
SUZANNE YVERNÈS, International Chief Financial OfficerPrinted in Athens, Denpasar, Beirut, Biratnagar, Doha, Dubai, Frankfurt, Gallargues, Helsinki, Hong Kong, Islamabad, Istanbul, Jakarta, Karachi, Kathmandu, Kuala Lumpur, Lahore, London, Luqa, Madrid, Manila, Milan, Nagoya, Nepalgunj, New York, Osaka, Paris, Rome, Seoul, Singapore, Sydney, Taipei, Tel Aviv, Tokyo,Yangon.
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