Andrews states his information is derived from an earlier work, Les Femmes, les eunuques, et les guerriers du Soudan, published by a French explorer, Count Raoul du Bisson, in 1868, though this detail does not appear in Du Bissons book.Remondinos claims were repeated in similar form by Henry G. Spooner in 1919, in the American Journal of Urology and Sexology. Spooner, an associate of William J. Robinson, referred to the monastery as "Abou Gerbe in Upper Egypt".According to Remondino, Spooner, and several later sources, the Coptic priests sliced the penis and testicles off Nubian or Abyssinian slave boys around the age of eight. The boys were captured from Abyssinia and other areas in Sudan like Darfur and Kordofan, then brought into Sudan and Egypt. During the operation, the Coptic clergyman chained the boys to tables, then, after slicing off their sexual organs, stuck a piece of bamboo into the urethra and submerged them in neck-high sand under the sun. The survival rate was ten percent. Slave traders made especially large profits off eunuchs from this region.However, neither "Abou Gerbe", as an actual monastery, nor "Mount Ghebel Eter", as an actual location, are known. Additionally, the cited references from Andrews, Remondino and Spooner appear circular, originating in tales told by a single French explorer. The later cited sources simply copy the earlier ones. Further, the 90% mortality rate seems economically improbable, given that it would require that markets paid at least 15 times the value of an uncastrated slave boy for a eunuch slave boy.
This is a controversial point, some assign COX 1 as the major prostacyclin producing cyclooxygenase in the endothelial cells of the blood vessels.The series-3 prostaglandin PGH3 also follows the prostacyclin synthase pathway, yielding another prostacyclin, PGI3. The unqualified term prostacyclin usually refers to PGI2. PGI2 is derived from the ω-6 arachidonic acid. PGI3 is derived from the ω-3 EPA. Artificial synthesis
Prostacyclin can be synthesized from the methyl ester of prostaglandin F2α. After its synthesis, the drug is reconstituted in saline and glycerin.Because prostacyclin is so chemically labile, quantitation of their inactive metabolites, rather than the active compounds, is used to assess their rate of synthesis. History
During the 1960s, a UK research team, headed by Professor John Vane, began to explore the role of prostaglandins in anaphylaxis and respiratory diseases. Working with a team from the Royal College of Surgeons, Vane discovered that aspirin and other oral anti-inflammatory drugs work by inhibiting the synthesis of prostaglandins. This critical finding opened the door to a broader understanding of the role of prostaglandins in the body. A team at The Wellcome Foundation led by Salvador Moncada had identified a lipid mediator they called "PG-X," which inhibits platelet aggregation. PG-X, later known as prostacyclin, is 30 times more potent than any other then-known anti-aggregatory agent. They did this while searching for an enzyme that generates a fellow unstable prostanoid, Thromboxane A2In 1976, Vane and fellow researchers Salvador Moncada, Ryszard Gryglewski, and Stuart Bunting published the first paper on prostacyclin in  Nature.