door Hesi Plantenvoeding

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

This report is not entirely new news. Some may recall a story from 2000 that suggested this possibility.  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.

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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

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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.

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