Could Marijuana Extend Ted Kennedy's Life?

[DeSwiss]

Can Pot Extend Ted Kennedy's Life? Too Bad It's Illegal
Scientific studies indicate that marijuana can halt the spread of numerous cancer cells, including the type that Kennedy suffers from.

AlterNet | By Paul Armentano, NORML | Posted 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 http://americanmarijuana.org/Guzman-Cancer.pdf">cannabinoids as anti-cancer agents, particularly in the treatment of http://www.norml.org//index.cfm?Group_ID=7008">gliomas.

As noted in today's wire stories regarding Sen. Edward Kennedy's diagnosis, http://www.emedicine.com/med/topic2692.htm">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 http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/20008/">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 http://www.ukcia.org/research/AntineoplasticActivityOfCannabinoids/default.html">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 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science?_ob=ArticleURL&_udi=B6T36-3XFTGPR-X&_coverDate=09%2F24%2F1999&_alid=422767905&_rdoc=1&_fmt=&_orig=search&_qd=1&_cdi=4938&_sort=d&view=c&_acct=C000050221&_version=1&_urlVersion=0&_userid=10&md5=1c29920efb1acb800723560310e9004e">prostate cancer, http://mct.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/6/11/2921">breast cancer, http://www.nature.com/onc/journal/v27/n3/abs/1210641a.html">lung cancer, http://cancerres.aacrjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/66/13/6748">pancreatic cancer, and in one human clinical trial, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16804518">brain cancer.

http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/86256/">MORE

- If marijuana can help save Teddy, then you can look for George W. Dumbo to sign an Executive Order giving the death penalty for anyone caught with a joint....
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DeSwiss


http://atheisttoolbox.com/">The Atheist Toolbox

om edit: spelling

[cbc5g]

1. If I were him I'd be smoking an ounce a day n/t

[DeSwiss]

2. And....

...eating marijuana brownies and washing it all down with marijuana tea!

[RedCappedBandit]

3. How about those evil stem cells? nt

[DeSwiss]

5. You mean Snow Flake Babies???

Ummmm.... I predict a diaper change attitude adjustment around January 20, 2009.

[tridim]

4. I believe this madness is going to finally end next year.

Beginning with Barney Frank's efforts in Congress.

It's just cruel to keep Cannabis illegal if there is even the slightest chance that it can slow or prevent tumor growth. Grow the fuck up Feds, this isn't a joke.

[DeSwiss]

9. I certainly hope so...

....but I'm not going to hold my breath. Here's the text of the letter my DEMOCRATIC Congresscritter sent me when I asked him to support that legislation:

Thanks for getting in touch with me to share your views on the legalization of marijuana. I'm afraid that I can't agree with you that the legalization of marijuana is the best policy for our country. Although I can understand the arguments of those who favor legalization for specific purposes, such as for medical use, I'm troubled by the extent and consequences of drug abuse in our nation to support making marijuana legal. There's simply too much evidence on the dangers of marijuana, especially to young people.

I appreciate your taking the time to contact me. Although we don't agree on this issue, I hope that you will not hesitate to continue to share with me your views. I look forward to hearing from you again.

Sincerely,

Jim Cooper
Member of Congress

After I received this bit of tripe, I fired off another letter telling him that whenever I read the crap he sent me coming from a politician, then I have to remind myself that these are people who don't know what the hell they're talking about. He never responded to that letter.

But then, he's a Bluedog DLCer. Its the best we can do around these parts (TN).

- What an asshat....

[Ichingcarpenter]

6. Nominated .... it wouldn't hurt and definitely would help

A lot of research has been done with pot and tumors.

[DeSwiss]

10. And if everyone in Congress....

...was toking, it might keep us from getting into all these wars. Unlike alcohol, pot makes you want to munch, not fight.

[librechik]

7. No doubt! C'mon, DUers, let's get together and send Teddy some "flowers"

just kidding. I would leave that to friends and family.

Wouldn't it make a great test case, cannabis believers?

"Why Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer ten years ago, and all he did was smoke herb! Wait get him down off the uneven bars!"

[DeSwiss]

11. If he did start toking....

...and shrunk those tumors, unless he told everyone what he was doing, then it would no doubt be put down to divine intervention.

[librechik]

14. I know, the anti-pot forces are legion, powerful and amoral

they could care less if it helps folks. All they care about is protecting their corparte master's profits.

Teddy should do it anyway. What could it hurt?

[slackmaster]

8. I doubt it, but it could be helpful for him if he gets radiation and/or chemotherapy

It worked very well for my friend who had a malignant glioma in her mid-30s. Treatment was an ordeal, but she's been free of cancer for about seven years.

[DeSwiss]

12. I'm not so sure that you're right....

...based upon the few studies done so far. The whole point of the above article is to show how the feds have allowed politics to trump science, and in so doing have left wide open to question just how powerful an anti-cancer agent marijuana is.

An excerpt from one study:

Antitumour effects of cannabinoids
Inhibition of tumour-cell growth. The antiproliferative properties of cannabis compounds were first reported almost 30 years ago by Munson et al.29, who showed that THC inhibits lung-adenocarcinoma cell growth in vitro and after oral administration in mice. Although these observations were promising, further studies in this area were not carried out until the late 1990s.

http://americanmarijuana.org/Guzman-Cancer.pdf

There's only one way to find out. Do the research.

- In the meantime, if I were Teddy, I'd be rolling up one right now....

[Prophet 451]

13. Doubt it

As I understand the (admittedly, fairly scarce) evidence, Ted's cancer is too far gone for cannabis to have much effect on it. That said, it has made a superb painkiller since the dawn of time so I wouldn't be surprised if Ted is puffing away right now.

[MilesColtrane]

15. It didn't help Bob Marley beat melanoma.

But, then again he refused medical treatment as part of his religious beliefs.

Who knows? If he had gotten conventional treatment and continued to toke, he might be alive today.

[Wizard777]

17. Yeah, But Chemo has little or no effect on glioma.

I recently lost someone I love to that. In fact their Doctors stopped the chemo because it was ineffective. Treating with Marijuana wouldn't be nearly as profitable as chemo. But probably more effective. You can't forget about those Hospital administrators counting and pinching every last penny.

[MilesColtrane]

18. Sorry for your loss.

When my Dad was fighting against metastasized bladder cancer, I tried to talk him into smoking marijuana.

I said, "Dad, it might help, and you know, I AM a musician, I'm sure I could find a friend of a friend who would have some."

He looked at me and said, "No thanks, son." And then he paused for a second and said, "Friend of a friend....yeah right."

I miss him.

[Wizard777]

19. Thank you. I offered too. But they refused.

It may have bought a few weeks at best for him. Glioma is very agressive. One week he was fine like Kennedy is now. The next week he was dead. People with glimo usually die of other causes, like pneumonia, not the glioma it's self. The only way glioma can kill you is for it to consume the entire brain. But they die of something else long before that happens.

[nuxvomica]

16. I would suggest he sail out to int'l waters and do some

He's got a boat and no one could accuse him of breaking the law that way. That's how Buckley sampled it.