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Posted November
5, 2003
Analysis by Richard Cowan
In
layman’s terms, medicinal substances and treatments generally fall into three
categories, palliative, therapeutic and curative.
Palliatives
relieve the symptoms of the disease, reducing the suffering of the patients.
Perhaps the best-known medical use of cannabis is for the relief of the nausea
and anorexia associated with cancer and AIDS treatments and the diseases
themselves. In such cases, palliation can be lifesaving by making it possible to
continue with the treatments and for the patients to eat and thus maintain their
health.
Palliation
can be highly subjective, but often it can also be easily measured, as when a
patient stops vomiting. The broad public support for medical cannabis is based
on the commonsense idea that if something makes sick people feel better, they
are the best judges of their own comfort.
A therapeutic substance may prevent the disease from doing further damage to the
body. The first legally recognized use of medical cannabis in the US was that of
the late Robert Randall, who found that cannabis kept him from going blind from
glaucoma. He successfully forced the federal government to provide him with free
cannabis. Some of the seven surviving members of that program also have
glaucoma.
See
Eye Specialist On Board of Florida Prohibitionist Propaganda Organization
Opposes Medical Marijuana for Glaucoma. But Inspires No Faith In His Profession.
Finally,
a curative treatment or substance eliminates the disease itself. Antibiotics
that kill pathogens, and chemotherapy, radiation and surgery for cancer are the
most obvious example of curatives.
Most
people do not think of cannabis as a curative, but it seems that may be about to
change.
The
Strange Case Of Steve Kubby.
See
Placer
County: Still Crazy After All These Years. Kubby Hearings Offer New Evidence
California Law Enforcement Still Fighting Medical Cannabis Law. Special Report
to MarijuanaNews.com
and links
Steve
Kubby has an extremely rare form of adrenal cancer, pheochromocytoma, that kills almost
all of its victims within a few years by causing the blood pressure to soar,
thereby causing strokes, heart attacks, kidney failure, etc.
Steve has survived for over 25 years, using only cannabis.
His
use of cannabis began as palliation. Before he discovered that cannabis could
help him, Steve suffered from blinding headaches. His old college roommate came
to visit him and offered him a joint, saying, “If you are going to die, you
might as well die happy.” It not only made Steve “happy”, it made his
headache go away for a bit.
That
sort of serendipity is how many people learn about the medical use of cannabis,
but in Steve’s case, the story had the added fillip that his old friend was
Cheech Marin, whose partner, Tommy Chong, is now in the federal pen for the
heinous crime of selling a glass pipe.
So,
when General Barry McCaffrey, Clinton’s Drug Czar, called medical cannabis
“Cheech and Chong Medicine” he was closer to the truth than he realized. Had
he but known, I am sure he would have chosen a different way to lie. He seldom
got that close to the truth.
See
The
Boston Phoenix Comments On The Drug Czar’s Position On IOM Report — Top Notch
Eventually, Steve would discover that cannabis was somehow controlling his blood
pressure, so his use was therapeutic, not just palliative, and it was keeping
him alive. In one sense, cannabis worked almost too well for Steve. He
looks perfectly healthy and lived a very active lifestyle. People, especially
the narks, simply did not believe him. He has an extremely rare form of cancer
and needs cannabis to live? Yeah, sure… Whatever.
(For a preview of a book that I have written about the Kubbys, see Reefer Refugees.)
Now,
however, there is a new twist to the story.
An
article in a special issue of Nature Medicine magazine by Dr. Manuel Guzman
of the Complutense
University in Spain describes
how cannabinoids might even be able to cure cancer, including pheochromocytoma.
“Inhibition of growth-factor-receptor signalling following
cannabinoid-receptor activation has also been observed in PHEOCHROMOCYTOMA,
skin carcinoma
and prostate carcinoma cells, and could therefore constitute a general mechanism
of cannabinoid antiproliferative action.”
(emphasis added)
This report is
not entirely new news. Some may recall a story from 2000 that suggested this
possibility.
See
What
If Marijuana Could Cure Cancer? One More Reason Marijuana Prohibition Is Murder.
The
new references to pheochromocytoma
obviously caught Steve’s attention, and now the
mechanism is explained, which should be of major interest to everyone.
In 2000, Dr. Lester
Grinspoon reacted very cautiously, saying, “If there is truly some promise
to it, that would really be quite phenomenal. However, we have to be very
cautious before we jump to any conclusions on how it effects humans.”
Certainly, caution is still appropriate, in that trials on humans are not yet
under way, but animal testing clearly demonstrates that cannabinoids can kill
tumors, while not harming normal cells.
As
the article explains it, “Cannabinoids inhibit tumour growth in laboratory
animals. They do so by modulating key cell-signalling pathways, thereby inducing
direct growth arrest and death of tumour cells, as well as by inhibiting tumour
angiogenesis and metastasis….
To grow beyond minimal size, tumours must generate a new vascular supply (angiogenesis)
for purposes of cell nutrition, gas exchange and waste disposal — therefore,
blocking the angiogenic process constitutes one of the most promising antitumour
approaches now available, and the underlying mechanisms of cannabinoid action
remain obscure.”
In
other words, this article explains several ways in which cannabinoids might be
used to fight cancer, and, as the article says, “Cannabinoids are usually
well tolerated, and do not produce the generalized
toxic effects of conventional chemotherapies.”
This does not mean that someone with cancer can
get well just by smoking large quantities of cannabis, but it seems possible
that these actions by cannabinoids might explain why cannabis smokers do not
seem to get lung cancer.
What is very clear is that there needs to be an
accelerated program of research on the use of cannibinoids in the treatment of
cancer, but it seems unlikely that there will be much funding available for it
in DEAland. Nor will there be much public demand for such research, because the public is
not being told about the study.
Usually, any story that even suggests the
possibility of a new treatment for cancer is greeted with headlines about a
“cancer cure” – however remote in the future and improbable in fact it
might be. Not this one, and it is not the first time.
On
March 29, 2001, the San Antonio Current carried
the following story by Raymond Cushing:
POT SHRINKS TUMORS; GOVERNMENT KNEW IN ‘74
( Wednesday, March 28, The United States Supreme Court rules on whether
marijuana use for medicinal purposes can be a valid defense on charges of
marijuana possession. The following article was listed as one of the top
25 censored stories of the year 2000. We reprint it here and pose the
question, why would the government want to keep us from knowing this? )
The term medical marijuana took on dramatic new meaning in February 2000, when
researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in
rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.
The Madrid study marks only the second time that THC has been administered to
tumor-bearing animals. In 1974, researchers at the Medical College of
Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institutes of Health to find
evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed
the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice — lung and breast cancer, and a
virus-induced leukemia.
The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor
research, according to Jack Herer, who reports on the events in his book, The
Emperor Wears No Clothes. In 1976, President Gerald Ford put an end to all
public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to major
pharmaceutical companies, who set out — unsuccessfully — to develop synthetic
forms of THC that would deliver all the medical benefits without the
“high.”
The Madrid researchers reported in the March issue of Nature Medicine that they
injected the brains of 45 rats with cancer cells, producing tumors whose
presence they confirmed through magnetic resonance imaging ( MRI ). On the
12th day they injected 15 of the rats with THC and 15 with Win-55,212-2, a
synthetic compound similar to THC. “All the rats left untreated
uniformly died 12-18 days after glioma ( brain cancer ) cell inoculation …
Cannabinoid ( THC )-treated rats survived significantly longer than control
rats. THC administration was ineffective in three rats, which died by days
16-18. Nine of the THC-treated rats surpassed the time of death of
untreated rats, and survived up to 19-35 days. Moreover, the tumor was
completely eradicated in three of the treated rats.” The rats treated with
Win-55,212-2 showed similar results.
The Spanish researchers, led by Dr. Manuel Guzman of Complutense
University, also irrigated healthy rats’ brains with large doses of THC for
seven days, to test for harmful biochemical or neurological effects. They
found none.
“Careful MRI analysis of all those tumor-free rats showed no sign of damage
related to necrosis, edema, infection or trauma … We also examined other
potential side effects of cannabinoid administration. In both tumor-free
and tumor-bearing rats, cannabinoid administration induced no substantial change
in behavioral parameters such as motor coordination or physical activity.
Food and water intake, as well as body weight gain, were unaffected during and
after cannabinoid delivery. Likewise, the general hematological profiles
of cannabinoid-treated rats were normal. Thus, neither biochemical
parameters nor markers of tissue damage changed substantially during the
seven-day delivery period or for at least two months after cannabinoid treatment
ended.”
Guzman’s investigation is the only time since the 1974
Virginia study that THC has been administered to live, tumor-bearing animals.
( The Spanish researchers cite a 1998 study in which cannabinoids inhibited
breast cancer cell proliferation, but that was a “petri dish”
experiment that didn’t involve live subjects. )
In an e-mail interview for this story, the Madrid researcher said he had heard
of the Virginia study, but had never been able to locate literature on it.
Hence, the Nature Medicine article characterizes the new study as the first on
tumor-laden animals and doesn’t cite the 1974 Virginia investigation.
“I am aware of the existence of that research. In fact I have
attempted many times to obtain the journal article on the original investigation
by these people, but it has proven impossible,” Guzman said.
In 1983, the Reagan/Bush Administration tried to persuade American universities
and researchers to destroy all 1966-76 cannabis research work, including
compendiums in libraries, reports Jack Herer, who states, “We know that
large amounts of information have since disappeared.”
Guzman provided the title of the work — “Antineoplastic
activity of cannabinoids,” an article in a 1975 Journal of the National
Cancer Institute — and this writer obtained a copy at the University of
California medical school library in Davis and faxed it to Madrid.
The summary of the Virginia study begins, “Lewis
lung adenocarcinoma growth was retarded by the oral administration of
tetrahydrocannabinol ( THC ) and cannabinol ( CBN )” — two types of
cannabinoids, a family of active components in marijuana. “Mice
treated for 20 consecutive days with THC and CBN had reduced primary tumor
size.”
The 1975 journal article doesn’t mention breast cancer tumors, which are
featured in the only newspaper story ever to appear about the 1974 study — in
the “Local” section of The Washington Post on Aug. 18, 1974.
Under the headline, “Cancer Curb Is Studied,” it read in part:
“The active chemical agent in marijuana curbs the growth of three kinds of
cancer in mice and may also suppress the immunity reaction that causes rejection
of organ transplants, a Medical College of Virginia team has discovered.”
The researchers “found that THC slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast
cancers, and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their
lives by as much as 36 percent.”
Guzman, writing from Madrid, was eloquent in his response after this writer
faxed him the clipping from The Washington Post of a quarter century ago.
In translation, he wrote:
“It is extremely interesting to me, the hope that the project seemed to
awaken at that moment, and the sad evolution of events during the years
following the discovery, until now we once again draw back the veil, over the
anti-tumoral power of THC, 25 years later. Unfortunately, the world bumps
along between such moments of hope and long periods of intellectual
castration.”
News coverage of the Madrid discovery has been virtually
nonexistent in this country. The news broke quietly on Feb.
29, 2000 with a story that ran once on the UPI wire about the Nature Medicine
article. This writer stumbled on it through a link that appeared briefly
on the Drudge Report Web page. The New York Times, The Washington Post,
and Los Angeles Times all ignored the story, even though its newsworthiness is
indisputable: a benign substance occurring in nature destroys deadly brain
tumors.
Copyright:
2001 San Antonio Current
Why
would governments in the developed world suppress a cancer cure? Very simply, it
would undermine cannabis prohibition.
As
Steve Kubby commented on the new article, extraordinary claims demand
extraordinary proofs, but here we have proof of two enormously important points.
The
first is medical. Cannabis offers a way to cure many forms of cancer.
The
second is political. This information has been
suppressed for almost thirty years, and it seems likely that it will continue to
be suppressed because it is a threat to cannabis prohibition.
If
this article and its predecessors from 2000 and 1974 were the only evidence of
the suppression of medical cannabis, then one might perhaps be able to
rationalize it in some herniated way. However, there really is massive proof
that the suppression of medical cannabis represents the greatest failure of the
institutions of a free society, medicine, journalism, science, and our
fundamental values.
The
stakes now are even higher than ever. We are not just risking decades of delay
in finding a cure for cancer and effective treatments for many other diseases.
We
are risking our freedom, and our very souls.
See
World
AIDS Day: More Proof That the Suppression Of Medical Cannabis – Indeed
Cannabis Prohibition Itself – Is Mass Murder. Analysis by Richard Cowan
and
and
and
and
and
No,
Cannabis Will Not Be “The 21st Century Aspirin” – Because It Doesn’t
Kill Anyone! People Suffer And Die, While “Scientists” Try To
Pharmaceuticalize The Aspirin Of the 21st Century B.C.
and
The
Ultimate Betrayal: Depriving Our Troops of Medical Cannabis. But It Is Okay to
Give Combat Pilots Speed. US Army Tests Proved Cannabis Works Four Years Ago!
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