US: Report Supressed That Marijuana Components Can Inhibit Cancer Growth



Clinical research touted by the journal of the American Association for Cancer Research that shows marijuana's components can inhibit the growth of cancerous brain tumors is the latest in a long line of studies demonstrating the drug's potential as an anti-cancer agent.

Not familiar with it? You're not alone. Despite the value of these studies, both in terms of the treatment of life-threatening illnesses and as items of news - the latest being that performed by researchers at Madrid's Complutense University that found cannabis restricts the blood supply to glioblastoma multiforme tumors, an aggressive brain tumor that kills some 7,000 people in the United States per year - US media coverage of them has been almost non-existent. Why the blackout?

For starters, all of these medical cannabis studies were conducted overseas.

Secondly, not one of them has been acknowledged by the US government.

This wasn't always the case. 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 US 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, US 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 US 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.

However, in the eight years since the completion of the National Toxicology trial, the US 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, scientists overseas have generously picked up where US researchers so abruptly left off. In 1998, a research team at Complutense's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology discovered that THC can selectively induce program cell death in brain tumor cells without negatively impacting the surrounding healthy cells.

Then in 2000, they 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. Last year, researchers at the University of Milan in Naples, Italy, reported in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics that non-psychoactive compounds in marijuana inhibited the growth of glioma cells in a dose dependent manner, and selectively targeted and killed malignant cells through a process known as apoptosis.

And finally, this month, researchers reported that marijuana's constituents inhibited the spread of brain cancer in human tumor biopsies from patients who had failed standard cancer therapies.

2004 The Coastal Post
Contact: editor@coastalpost.com
Website: https://www.coastalpost.com/

[DrJay2001]

This is an old story that has made the rounds many times. Yet, it is true. I imagine if anyone else witheld a treatment for cancer that cost thousands of lives it would be considered reckless disregard, the legal defination of homicide. More thousands lost to the War on Drugs who didn't even know they were fighting it.

Yours,
Dr. Jay

[Joemutt1978]

I knew there was a reason I smoked pot.

[Chronis X]

Glad to read that info -

[flyingBIMBO]

I am a stage three kidney cancer patient with numerous other illnesses. I would have been dead long ago if not for Cannabis and it's wonderful anti-naseau, pain killing, and anti-depressant qualities.
I often cry when thinking of the cruelty of our current mj laws.
Having more than one terminal illness is stressful, but having to try to scrape up enough money to buy meds is even more depressing. I live on a disability pension which is next to nothing. It has been a constant stressor to have to try to continually find new sources of meds or donations of the same.
I struggle daily to obtain the medicine that makes my life bearable.
I am far too sick to worry about obtaining an exemption, having had no family doctor for quite awhile and now having to travel a long distance to see a GP.
This is hard enough without trying to run around in a large city (Toronto) that I don't know my way around in.
I was growing but I had a personal relationship fall apart and a falling out with the owner of the compassion club I belonged to, apparently I was 'set up' according to a person who knows what happened. Someone forwarded my personal correspondence and I think had altered it in some way as well.
This lead to a confrontation that was nasty and resulted in the owner cutting me off my meds. I destroyed my grow because of all of the problems surroundingthis and the knowledge that someone was trying to do me harm.
Unfortunately, I need marijuana to stay alive. My cancer remains in remission but now have fibrosis of my lungs, heart troubles (from a parkinson's med I was on), and a blood clot in my gut along with new pancreas problems.
I hope by joining all the Cannabis sites I can find, I will make new contacts and be in a position to resume my grow again.
I find depending upon charity very difficult as it puts me in a position of dependency.