Essiac

Essiac is an herbal tea marketed as an alternative cancer treatment, promoted from around 1920 through the 1970s by Canadian nurse Rene Caisse, typically blending burdock root, turkey rhubarb root, sheep sorrel and slippery elm, though formulations vary. Caisse gave inconsistent and unsubstantiated accounts of the formula's origin, sometimes crediting an Ontario Ojibwa patient and sometimes an unnamed medicine man, though only slippery elm among its ingredients is native to North America. The American Cancer Society and National Cancer Institute have found no evidence it helps people with cancer live longer or has an anticancer effect, laboratory studies showed no effect or even increased cancer cell growth, and the FDA has listed it among fake cancer cures consumers should avoid; both the United States and Canada have refused to approve it as a medical treatment, so it is sold as a dietary supplement instead.