cannabisnews.com: Unlocking a Cure for Cancer – With Pot





Unlocking a Cure for Cancer – With Pot
Posted by CN Staff on August 16, 2004 at 22:33:25 PT
By Paul Armentano
Source: LewRockwell.com
Who could imagine that cannabis might one day offer hope as a cure for cancer? The United States government, that’s who.For the past 30 years, U.S. officials have willfully ignored clinical research indicating that marijuana can inhibit the growth of certain type of malignant tumors. However, the recent publication of a trio of clinical studies and a pair of scientific reviews have effectively blown the lid off "Cancergate," and revealed that pot’s medical value may be far greater than ever presumed.
 THE EMERGING EVIDENCE Last year, five scientific journals published prominent articles trumpeting cannabinoids (compounds in marijuana) as potential anti-cancer agents.These include:* Clinical trial data published in January 2003 issue of the Journal of the American Society of Clinical Investigation that found cannabinoids significantly inhibit skin tumor growth in mice. Investigators of the study concluded, "The present data indicate that local cannabinoids administration may constitute an alternative therapeutic approach for the treatment of non-melanoma skin cancer." * Clinical trial data published in the March 2003 issue of The FASEB Journal that found that the "local administration of a non-psychoactive cannabinoid inhibits angiogenesis (tissue growth) of malignant gliomas (brain tumors)." * A clinical review in the October 2003 issue of the prestigious journal Nature Reviews Cancer that concluded that cannabinoids’ "favorable drug safety profile" and proven ability to inhibit tumor growth make them desirable agents in the treatment of cancer. According to the review’s author, tumors inhibited by cannabinoids include: lung carcinoma, glioma, thyroid epithelioma, lymphoma/leukemia, skin carcinoma, uterus carcinoma, breast carcinoma, prostate carcinoma, and neuroblastoma (a malignant tumor originating in the autonomic nervous system or the adrenal medulla and occurring chiefly in infants and young children). * Clinical trial data published in the November 2003 issue of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics that found the administration of the cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) inhibits the growth of human glioma cells both in vitro (e.g., a petri dish) and in animals in a dose-dependent manner. Investigators concluded, "Non-psychoactive CBD produce[s] a significant antitumor activity both in vitro and in vivo, thus suggesting a possible application of CBD as an antineoplastic agent (something which prevents the growth of malignant cells.)" * And finally, a clinical review in the December 2003 issue of the journal Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets that summarized "the demonstrated antitumor actions of cannabinoids," and elaborated on "possible avenues for the future development of cannabinoids as antitumor agents." AND SUBSEQUENT MEDIA BLACKOUT Despite these stunning findings, media coverage of them in North America has been virtually non-existent. As noted by Richard Cowan, editor of the website MarijuanaNews.com, "The New York Times, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times all ignored this story, even though its newsworthiness is indisputable: a benign substance occurring in nature destroys deadly brain tumors." Why the media blackout? For starters, all of these studies were conducted overseas. And secondly, not one of them has been acknowledged by the U.S. government.U.S. KNEW IN ’74... AND AGAIN IN ’96! This wasn’t always the case. In fact, the first ever experiment documenting pot’s anti-tumor effects took place in 1974 at the Medical College of Virginia at the behest of the U.S. government. The results of that study, immortalized in an August 18, 1974 Washington Post newspaper feature, were 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."Despite these favorable preliminary findings, U.S. government officials banished the study, and refused to fund any follow up research until conducting a similar – though secret – study in the mid-1990s. That study, conducted by the U.S. National Toxicology Program to the tune of $2 million concluded that mice and rats administered high doses of THC over long periods had greater protection against malignant tumors than untreated controls. However, rather than publicize their findings, government researchers shelved the results – which only became public one year later after a draft copy of its findings were leaked in 1997 to the journal AIDS Treatment News, which in turn forwarded the story to the national media.Nevertheless, in the nearly eight years since the completion of the National Toxicology trial, the U.S. government has yet to fund a single additional study examining pot’s potential as an anti-cancer agent. SCIENCE IGNORED NO MORE Fortunately, researchers at Madrid, Spain’s Complutense University, School of Biology have generously picked up where U.S. researchers so abruptly left off. In 1998, the research team – led by investigator Manuel Guzman – discovered that THC can selectively induce program cell death in brain tumor cells without negatively impacting the surrounding healthy cells. Then in 2000, Guzman’s team reported in the journal Nature Medicine that injections of synthetic THC eradicated malignant gliomas (brain tumors) in one-third of treated rats, and prolonged life in another third by six weeks. A commentary to the study noted that the results were the first to convincingly demonstrate that cannabis-based treatments may successfully combat cancer.Today, Guzman believes that enough favorable clinical evidence exists supporting pot’s anti-cancer properties to warrant clinical trials in humans. "The scientific community has gained substantial knowledge of the palliative and anti-tumor actions of cannabinoids during the past few years," Guzman wrote in the October 2003 issue of Nature Reviews Cancer. "Anti-tumor compounds should selectively affect tumor cells [and] it seems that cannabinoids can do this, as they kill [malignant] tumor cells but do not affect their non-transformed counterparts and might even protect them from cell death. ... As cannabinoids are relatively safe compounds, it would be desirable that clinical trials using cannabinoids ... could accompany [ongoing] laboratory studies to allow us to use these compounds in the treatment of cancer." Guzman concludes the article by noting that the Spanish Ministry of Health recently approved a human clinical trial – the first ever – aimed at investigating the effects of intracranially administered THC on the life expectancy of volunteers suffering from malignant brain tumors."Cannabinoid research continues to show tremendous potential in the treatment of cancer," summarizes University of Southern California professor Mitch Earleywine, author of the book Understanding Marijuana: A New Look at the Scientific Evidence. However, he laments that the "vast majority of this work originates outside the United States, often in countries that lack our economic and scientific advantages. Let’s hope that our drug policy won’t stymie the battle against the second leading cause of death in America."Indeed. Let’s not add a potential treatment for cancer to the ever-growing list of victims of pot prohibition.Paul Armentano is the senior policy analyst for the NORML Foundation in Washington, DC. -- paul norml.orgSource: LewRockwell.comAuthor: Paul ArmentanoPublished: August 17, 2004Copyright: 2004 LewRockwell.comContact: lew lewrockwell.com Website: http://www.lewrockwell.com/DL: http://lewrockwell.com/orig5/armentano-p1.htmlRelated Articles & Web Site:NORMLhttp://www.norml.org/Marijuana May Stall Brain Tumor Growthhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19339.shtmlCannabis Hope for Brain Cancerhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread19338.shtmlPot Shrinks Tumors - Government Knew in '74http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread9211.shtml 
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Comment #12 posted by afterburner on August 19, 2004 at 08:21:59 PT
USA Losing Medicine Race to Europe
Both my father and grandfather died of cancer or related side effects. My grandfather's death led to my healthy obsession with health and healing. My father was young enough to have benefited from the suppressed 1974 cannabis anti-tumor studies, if the public and the medical community had been properly informed. My sympathies to anyone who has watched a loved one suffer this dread disease and its dread "treatment."Recently, the anniversary of the USSR's Sputnik recalled the beginning of the Space Race, which the USA was afraid of losing. Now, we are losing the Medicine Race to the more enlightened and traditional herbal research being done in Europe. We need a President who, like Kennedy, will set an ambitious national health goal, similar to JFK's pledge to put a man on the moon in that decade.Sputnik — Blow to America  
By Paul Dickson | Thursday, August 12, 2004 
http://www.theglobalist.com/DBWeb/StoryId.aspx?StoryId=2218State chair speaks about Democratic Party's future 
By: Charles M. Brown , Staff Writer 08/13/2004 
Dowdy asks Voters League for help with rebuilding the party http://www.zwire.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=12689245&BRD=1838&PAG=461&dept_id=104621&rfi=6' "The greatest thing I think Kennedy did was in 1961 when he stood before Congress and the American people, who were frightened because the Soviet Union had beat them to space with Sputnik, and said, 'As your president, I tell you that by the end of the decade, the American people will put a man on the moon,'" Dowdy said. Kennedy then committed the resources to accomplish the task. ' 
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Comment #11 posted by FoM on August 17, 2004 at 19:30:49 PT
breeze 
You brought up a very good point about the quality of life of someone who is terminal. Somehow our society doesn't want to think about how to make life more comfortable for a loved one who isn't going to make it. We run, we hide, we deny and wish the whole problem would just stop. Drugs that are given to someone that is terminal can make them mean and I'm not saying that unkindly but it happens. Cannabis would take the edge off and make the days that are left without as much stress. Anyone who has gone thru a long time illness with someone they love will understand what I'm saying.
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Comment #10 posted by FoM on August 17, 2004 at 17:57:21 PT
schmeff and breeze
I just want to say that I'm sure your Mothers would have been very proud of the both of you. Bless your hearts.
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Comment #9 posted by schmeff on August 17, 2004 at 17:49:57 PT
Breeze
You have my condolences on the death of your mother. I lost my mother to cancer in 2001 and the circumstances of her long lingering death are nearly identical to yours.I don't believe the massive and continual doses of morphine she received in her final months controlled her pain so much as made her so dazed and confused that she was unable to articulate her pain. This is good enough for those whose livlihood is involved in sending out the medical bills month after month.If cancer should be my fate, I will embrace it and hope for a speedy demise rather than submit to the prolongation of life (and income) represented by the parasitical modern medical paradigm.
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Comment #8 posted by mayan on August 17, 2004 at 16:47:37 PT
They've Always Known...
The government has always known what this plant could do. That is why they banned it.The medicinal and industrial uses of cannabis would empower the people instead of the government/corporations. They never wanted us to know the truth. Greed sucks.
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Comment #7 posted by breeze on August 17, 2004 at 14:54:48 PT
Both post 's #'s 4&5
The fact in your comments resounds with such an everbearing truth that the very bells in hell should be breaking apart.Having witnessed a family member(My Mother) die of cancer, and the pain she endured while the treatment was futile mirrors the desires of doctors to make money. Most people who do not know what cancer patients must endure to undergo when using chemotherapy have NO IDEA what a patient must do to retain their strength to just sit up straight in bed.While the medications prolong the life of the patient, it does NOTHING to improve the QUALITY of their life. My Mother had to drink this thick pasty stuff out of a can that she said tastes just like aluminum in order to not lose weight too drastically. She had to choke this stuff back as she drank three cans or more a day. She weighed only 110 at the beggining of treatment, reduced to 95 pounds at death. She could only take a few bites of food, before resisting the remainder on her plate. It eventually got to the point where she had no appetite at all, and she would cringe at the idea of drinking the liquid nutrition.IN the final hours, she was in such pain, they had induced her into a state of morphine coma. She spent the last few months of her life in pain, house bound, and miserable- when cannabis could have aided her through use of a vaporizer (she never, ever used alcohol nor did she ever smoke)she could have had an appetite, and it would have definitely have improved her mood/mentality.The number one issue that people in this nation do not confront when dealing with treatments of disease, is pain mangagement. The fear that people who do not have illness would use medication for recreational use is the most likely reason that pain medication is not researched as much as it should be. After my second surgery, I was restricted to a bed for a month- the first week I was administered morphine intraveinously(sp), which only partially decreased the pain- I asked for more constantly, because I was in PAIN not because I was addicted. I said to my nurses that the morphine wasn't working, that it was only putting me to sleep,and questioned if there was something else that they could administer. I knew then and there that pain medication is indeed lacking among the vast number of chemicals used to treat various situations a patient undergoes while suffering.I know a lot about medication because of my cancer, my parents cancers, and I also worked for a major pharmaceutical distributor. The company I worked for distributed pharmaceuticals to hospitals, stores, and pharmacies. The building that held these medications was monolithic. 
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Comment #6 posted by The GCW on August 17, 2004 at 14:54:12 PT
Many old proverbs.
The assertion: "...pot’s medical value may be far greater than ever presumed..." doesn't take the Biblical implications into account.The Bible has been telling Us all along that cannabis may do more that the ordinary plant.And here are some words to support its use.Proverbs 3:3, “Do not let kindness and truth leave you;…”
     Proverbs 3:27, “Do not withhold good from those to whom it is due,
     When it is in your power to do it.”Proverbs 3:29, “Do not devise harm against your neighbor,
     While he lives securely beside you.”Proverbs 3:31, “Do not envy a man of violence
     And do not choose any of his ways.”
Proverbs 11:18, “The wicked earns deceptive wages,
     But he who sows righteousness gets a true reward.”Proverbs 11:24, “…there is one who withholds what is justly due, and yet it results only in want.”Proverbs 11:26, “He who withholds grain, the people will curse him,
     But blessing will be on the head of him who sells it.Proverbs 11:28, “He who trusts in his riches will fall,
     But the righteous will flourish like the green leaf.”Proverbs 11:30, “The fruit of the righteous is a tree of life,…”Proverbs 12:18, “;… But the tongue of the wise brings healing.”Proverbs 13:23, “Abundant food is in the fallow ground of the poor, But it is swept away by injustice.”Proverbs 14:25, “A truthful witness saves livs,”Proverbs 15:17, “Better is a dish of vegetables where love is Than a fattened ox served with hatred.”Proverbs 21:20, “There is precious treasure and oil in the swelling of the wise.”EVERTHING WRITTEN IN THE BIBLE IS POTENTIALLY WRITTEN WITH TRIPLE MEANINGS!
 
3 is green and green is 3.The Green Collar Worker
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Comment #5 posted by schmeff on August 17, 2004 at 12:33:45 PT
Follow the Money
I am afraid the dark reality is that there is more money to be made in treating cancer than in curing cancer.
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Comment #4 posted by drfistusa on August 17, 2004 at 11:28:28 PT
cannabis is potentially free ! thats the problem!
fortunes are being made with all these cancer drugs and the drugs you take to get over the effects of the chemo. This is about money at the top. Stem cell research is similar problem, we can use our own stem cells ,again free! God doesn't like free, "according to W"
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Comment #3 posted by Max Flowers on August 17, 2004 at 10:50:52 PT
Let's see them ignore this one
This information basically needs to be shoved into the faces of the antis and rubbed in. Their continued self-imposed ignorance of cutting-edge medical developments---their stubborn denial of the facts---is costing people their lives.Think how far ahead in medical science we could be if none of this idiotic stonewalling had taken place and American researchers had been allowed to follow all leads and paths of investigation all along, without any stigma slowing them down.Now it's European research that is blowing by us as our scientists stand around, hands tied by institutionalized bureaucratic superstition and fear. 
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Comment #2 posted by ubas on August 17, 2004 at 08:56:25 PT
Better Humans
"As far back as 1974, a US government funded study at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond found evidence that ingredients in marijuana slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice, but the study was subsequently shut down and its findings little reported."Marijuana Compound Chokes Brain Tumors More evidence found for cannabinoids' cancer-fighting abilities 
By Gabe Romain 
Betterhumans Staff 
8/16/2004 4:42 PMMarijuana's main active ingredients, cannabinoids, appear to restrict blood supply to brain tumors, a finding that supports their use to fight brain cancer and could lead to new cannabinoid-based cancer treatments.Principal investigator Manuel Guzmán and colleagues at Complutense University in Madrid, Spain have found that cannabinoids significantly lower vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF) activity in mice and in tumors from two people with late-stage glioblastoma multiforme—the most common type of brain tumor.VEGF is known to facilitate cancer growth by stimulating blood vessel formation, and some studies suggest that it also directly promotes tumor cell proliferation."Blockade of the VEGF pathway constitutes one of the most promising antitumoral approaches currently available," says Guzmán. Rediscovered treatmentGlioblastoma multiforme is a highly aggressive form of a type of brain tumor called a glioma. The disease strikes more than 7,000 Americans each year, generally resulting in death within one to two years following diagnosis. Standard treatment for glioblastoma multiforme is surgery and then radiotherapy alone or in combination with chemotherapy. Unfortunately, such treatment often yields unfavorable results.Previously, researchers at Complutense found that cannabinoids eradicated tumors in some rat models of glioblastoma multiforme and lengthened the lives of others. This wasn't the first time that marijuana had been found to fight cancer, however. As far back as 1974, a US government funded study at the Medical College of Virginia in Richmond found evidence that ingredients in marijuana slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice, but the study was subsequently shut down and its findings little reported.Cannabinoids appear to work by inhibiting angiogenesis—a process involving the formation of new blood vessels from pre-existing ones. Angiogenesis is a normal process in growth and development, but also supplies tumors with the vital nutrients they need to grow. Although prior experiments with cannabinoids yielded promising results for treating tumors, researchers knew little about the specific mechanisms by which cannabinoids inhibited blood vessel growth. In addition, the researchers didn't know whether the cannabinoids would do the same for human tumors. Stemming the flowTo address these issues, Guzmán and colleagues induced gliomas in mice, and then injected them with cannabinoids. Using DNA microarray analysis—a technique to swiftly screen for the activity of many genes at once—the researchers found that cannabinoids lowered the expression of certain genes involved in the VEGF pathway.They also discovered that cannabinoids seemed to work by increasing the activity of ceramide, a type of fat produced in the body that can cause some types of cells to die. By stimulating ceramide activity, cannabinoids inhibited cells needed for VEGF production. Conversely, inhibiting ceramide activity decreased the ability of cannabinoids to alter VEGF production.To study the ability of cannabinoids to inhibit the growth of blood vessels in human tumors, Guzmán and colleagues obtained tumor samples from two people with glioblastomas who had failed to benefit from standard therapy.After cannabinoid injections, the researchers found that VEGF levels in the tumors decreased, just as they did in experiments on mice, suggesting a potential strategy to treat intractable brain tumors. "It is essential to develop new therapeutic strategies for the management of glioblastoma multiforme," say the researchers, "which will most likely require a combination of therapies to obtain significant clinical results." The research is reported in the journal Cancer Research.Home | News | Features | Resources | Topics | Site Map | Search
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Comment #1 posted by dongenero on August 17, 2004 at 08:21:40 PT
health news in the U.S.?
It is interesting that in the European news this Spanish study is getting coverage. There were also similar articles covering latest studies in the U.K.
When searching health news through my Yahoo page which links me to Reuters, AP, Healthday, ACS News today,AFP and CP there is no medical cannabis news. Lots of stuff about cancer and latest cancer drug work but nothing about the cannabis studies. It certainly seems as though it would be a study of great interest to many.
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