Jen’s Update Addendum: Marijuana Slows Tumor Growth

B’Man: I have an ongoing series of reports on my dear friend Jen relating to her glioma (brain tumor). I mentioned that it is similar to Teddy Kennedy’s tumor here. Since Jen has become sick, especially in the last 6 months (she has been diagnosed since 1999, which it is a miracle she is still alive this long… most prognosis only give a few years), I have been investigating and reading about therapies that can be used for her (the venom treatment was clinical and doesn’t appear to be working for her).

However, I read this article (which contains a video I will post below) which tells me something that I had suspected from a previous friend’s cancer and his insistence that marijuana was helping him. Of course, that is no clinical trial, but I have witnessed more than one person who swears they are helped by medical marijuana. As a matter of fact, I can attest to its pain functionality.

So, I sent Jen and her hubby an email with this post’s info. I am no prude, so those who use for fun… have right at it. Enjoy and watch out for Big Brother. However, for those who are frightened by it, the law and what may happen… fuck them. If I was dying and this could help, they can all just suck my ass.

The fact is that Big Prison keeps this medicine out of the hands of hurting people, but not only that, out of the hands of the researchers who could isolate the actions of the drug and use it to HELP PEOPLE.

Damn, I get pissed about this. It is a travesty.

I doubt that Jen has ever even seen marijuana and it is unlikely that she could beat the stigma associated. But, in my opinion, she should do anything and everything that will help alleviate her sufferring or, as miracles may happen, heal her. without the research into this wonder drug, we will never truly know.

I love you, Jen. Keep fighting, darlin’.

Can Pot Extend Ted Kennedy’s Life? Too Bad It’s Illegal

by Paul Armentano Posted on May 23, 2008

In the 14 years I’ve worked in marijuana law reform, few events have struck me as so needlessly tragic as the federal government’s consistent and deliberate stifling of medical cannabis research. Nowhere is the Fed’s refusal to allow this science more overt and inhumane than as it pertains to the investigation of cannabinoids as anti-cancer agents, particularly in the treatment of gliomas.

As noted in today’s wire stories regarding Sen. Edward Kennedy’s diagnosis, glioma is an aggressive form of cancer that affects an estimated 10,000 Americans annually. Standard treatments for the cancer include radiation and chemotherapy, though neither procedure has proven particularly effective — the disease kills approximately half its victims within one year and all within three years.

But what if there was an alternative treatment for gliomas that could selectively target the cancer while leaving healthy cells intact? And what if federal bureaucrats were aware of this treatment, but deliberately withheld this information from the public?

Sadly, the above questions are not hypothetical. As I originally wrote in a 2004 essay for Alternet.org, titled Pot Shows Promise as a Cancer Cure”:

In fact, the first 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, reported in an Aug. 18, 1974, Washington Post newspaper feature, were that marijuana’s psychoactive component, 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 — clinical trial 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 after a draft copy of its findings were leaked in 1997 to a medical journal which in turn forwarded the story to the national media.

In the years since the completion of the National Toxicology trial, the U.S. government has yet to fund a single additional study examining the drug’s potential anti-cancer properties. Is this a case of federal bureaucrats putting politics over the health and safety of patients? You be the judge.

Fortunately, in the past 10 years scientists overseas have generously picked up where U.S. researchers so abruptly left off, reporting that cannabinoids can halt the spread of numerous cancer cells — including prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, pancreatic cancer, and in one human clinical trial, brain cancer.

Writing earlier this year in the journal Expert Review of Neurotherapeutics, Italian researchers reiterated, “(C)annabinoids have displayed a great potency in reducing glioma tumor growth either in vitro or in animal experimental models. (They) appear to be selective antitumoral agents as they kill glioma cells without affecting the viability of nontransformed counterparts.” Not one mainstream media outlet reported their findings. Perhaps now they’ll pay better attention.

What possible advancements in the treatment of cancer may have been achieved over the past 34 years had U.S. government officials chosen to advance — rather than suppress — clinical research into the anti-cancer effects of cannabis? It’s a shame we have to speculate; it’s even more tragic that the families of Senator Kennedy and thousands of others must suffer while we do.

Watch a video of Paul Armentano explaining the relationship between cannabinoids and glioma.

Paul Armentano is the deputy director for the NORML Foundation in Washington, D.C.

© 2008 NORML All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/story/86256/