Cannabis Compound Said To "Halt Cancer"

h.ross.perot informs us of research out of the California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute suggesting that a compound found in cannabis may stop breast cancer from metastasizing. Cannabidiol, or CBD, could develop into a non-toxic alternative to chemotherapy some years down the road, if animal and human trials bear out its effectiveness. The article notes that smoking cannabis will not deliver significant quantities of CBD.

Comments

So smoking doesn't cut it eh?

[mrjb]

Maybe this will do the trick then.

CBD

[spazmolytic666]

The article notes that smoking cannabis will not deliver significant quantities of CBD.

Actually, you can get CBD from smoking cannabis, but most cannabis is optimized for the best high (most abount of THC).

CBD is one of the two lesser psychoactive chemicals (CBN is the other) that THC breaks down to in the late life cycle of the cannabis plant. Most growers harvest when the plant is "ripe", when it has the most THC. If you wait a week or two after the peek harvest time, the THC will break down and have a higher percentage of CBD and CBN and a lesser percentage of THC.

Re:I volunteer

[morgan_greywolf]

NOTE: Link is NSFW! (shows nude breasts)

Brain tumors, too

[Scrameustache]

http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=6947

THC selectively decreases the proliferation of malignant cells and induces cell death in human GBM cell lines. Healthy cells in the study were unaffected by THC administration.

Separate preclinical studies indicate that cannabinoids and endocannabinoids can stave off tumor progression and trigger cell death in other cancer cell lines, including breast carcinoma, prostate carcinoma, colectoral carcinoma, skin carcinoma, and pancreatic adenocarcinoma.

Re:Chemotherapy

[Lloyd_Bryant]

Um, using a cannabis-derived compound isn't an alternative to chemotherapy, it is chemotherapy, which literally means "treatment with chemicals." Just because a bunch of people have screwed up the meaning of the word like they did with 'hacker' vs. 'cracker', that doesn't make it right. Um, perhaps you should actually read the Wiki article, specifically the part about modern day usage meaning treatments using cytotoxic substances.

By your definition, ANY drug-based treatment is "chemotherapy", while the general usage (including usage by the medical profession) refers to this specific class of drug treatments.

The hacker/cracker screwup was a result of outsiders misinterpreting geek jargon. The meaning change of chemotherapy originated from the professionals *within* the medical field. Two entirely different issues.

Re:This comes up every few years

[Scrameustache]

That weed is a magic cure for "X". A while back they where offering it for glaucoma then M.S. and now cancer. In the end it's still used mostly for getting high.
I don't care what you do, but until there is a viable way to get all the positive herbal healing from it, don't sound the "smoke weed to cure [blah]" horns. It was listed by Hypocrates as a cure-all.
It was prescribed by Queen Victoria's doctor.

It was then made illegal under false pretenses, kept illegal "pending review", and kept illegal under new false pretenses once the scientific review proved it shouldn't be illegal. No honest, free-thinking, educated person wants this to be illegal.

Re:Bad article summary!

[Anonymous Coward]

here is some new data on cannabis related emphysema:

The tests were unable to show which substances had caused the lung damage, but cannabis fibres were found in the tissue samples and can constitute the starting point for inflammation.(...) There were also no cases of emphysema in the control group, even though it included 74 regular smokers.

Re:I volunteer

[sm62704]

Google has failed me this morning. I remember reading in New Scientist (whose anti-drug propaganda I ranted about a couple of years ago) that they did a study of baby boomers; the generation that started smoking ganja in their youth and are now geezers. They were trying to prove, as all these government studies from all the world's governments do, that pot is bad for you. The object of the study was to look at cancer rates in potheads vs non-potheads. They were certain that reefer causes cancer because there are carcinogens in it.

What they found instead was that (IIRC) potsmokers who did not smoke tobacco had a 10% lower incidence of all cancers than nonsmokers. More striking, however, was the difference between cigarette smokers who also smoked hemp and buttheads who only smoked butts. The cancer incidence of those who smoked both marijuana and tobacco was half the number of those who only smoked cigarettes.

So your study is done, the results are that cannibis prevents cancer.

As I said, a google search for "marijuana boomer study" yielded only one hit (he he he said), to a site I'd never heard of. So I searched New Scientist and found some other interesting tidbits:
Cannabis compound reduces skin allergies in mice
Cannabis compound slows lung cancer in mice
Cannabis extract shrinks brain tumours
Cannabis can help MS sufferers
Cannabis can protect the brain from damage from stroke

So we have a substance that is non-addictive (habit forming but not addictive), non-lethal, fights cancer, helps MS sufferers, is the best anti-nausea agent known, stimulates appetite, yet it is illegal. So why is it illegal?

Because it makes you lazy and forgetful, and what's worse for our corporate overlords, makes you think. You can forget about any substance that makes you think ever being legalized; thinking is the VERY last thing your government (wherever you may live) wants you to to do.

Yes, I'm a geezer. No, I wasn't in the study. Yes, I've smoked dope.

-mcgrew

Re:I volunteer

[EastCoastSurfer]

The history channel has has on a good show about drugs. Their reason, while similar to the one from wikipedia, had to do with anti-mexicanism at the time. The mexicans were here working in the US (much like now) and smoking lots of pot. Well they blamed any bad mexican behavior on the pot and then eventually outlawed it. BTW, if you ever see the history of drugs on the history channel it's a great show. IIRC, cocaine was originally outlawed because of "crazed blacks" and your description.

Re:Bad article summary!

[caffeinemessiah]

No worries, you will still get emphysema which is almost as unpleasant and tourchers you for longer. By the way, this explains why Cannabis has a ratio of emphysema to lung cancer that is quite different from cigarettes which is something that has been suspected for a while (hard to get good data because people generally smoke both).

This is righteous bullshit. Allow me to elaborate:

• Cannabis studies have a history of being stooped in politics, alternating between pro and con. If you're talking about the ratio of emphysema to lung cancer, I'd be interested in how the population was sampled. Was it a random sampling of cannabis users? Was it people who showed up in a clinic with emphysema, and were then entered into the study? Consider the next point.
• Suppose there are two equal-sized populations of cigarette smokers and cannabis smokers. Each population has exactly the same emphysema/lung cancer ratio. We'll assume that cannabis smokers don't smoke cigarettes for now, although if they did it would only make the study more dubious. If everyone reported accurately if there were a cannabis smoker or just cigarette smoker, we'd find approximately equal ratios. On the other hand, if some healthy cannabis smokers, out of fear of law enforcement or privacy reasons, reported themselves as cigarette smokers, the emphysema/lung cancer ratio in the sampled cannabis 'group' would appear to be much higher. I'd also doubt non-cannabis smokers reporting themselves as cannabis smokers.
• The final point. You don't actually need to smoke cannabis, thereby removing all risk of emphysema and associated respiratory disorders. THC is fat-soluble, and so can be cooked or baked into anything that requires the use of fat or oil. Popular recipes include pasta and confectioneries, and I'm pretty sure none of those give you cancer. If you do choose to smoke cannabis, a vaporizer is often advocated in the Netherlands. I don't know what the health risks are, but they certainly seem to have a lot lower concentration of particulate matter (hence the name).

I do advocate...

[cromar]

I do advocate smoking ganja.

BTW, THC is much more soluble in fat than in EtOH. This Erowid article has good information on chemically extracting THC. I don't advocate that unless you know what the fuck you are doing. You know, something more than HS chemistry. Acetone is poisonous.

Anyway, I really do advocate that you (yes, you) smoke the sensimillia till yu eyes turn red certain. A fi bun mi sensi!

Re:Bad article summary!

[MythoBeast]

For a drug to treat cancer it must be at toxic to at least cancer cells. And if a drug is used to treat cancer it is by definition chemotherapy.

Not true. It doesn't have to be toxic, it just has to prevent the cancer from spreading for long enough for other treatments to do the killing.

THC, for instance, has been demonstrated to prevent cancer cells from creating new blood vessels to feed themselves. Metastasizing isn't even growth, it's migration, where a cancer colony sends out cells to other parts of the body.

So Vote for Ron Paul

[CranberryKing]

I hate to promote drugs as a selling point, but as a legitimate position.. Vote for Republican RON PAUL in the US 2008 Presidential election. He is really a libertarian and has been advocating legalizing drugs for years.

In summary:

If you want to SMOKE DOPE [or think adults should be able to decide for themselves, NOT government],

vote for RON PAUL!

Re:I volunteer

[zmooc]

Official reasons that sound like crap usually are crap. And crap is generally used to hide economic motives. I, for one, think it's really coincidental that marijuana was prohibited in the entire US in exactly the same year that the decorticator for hemp was invented - a device that sped up the processing of hemp a tenfold, thereby making it far superior to cotton for textile and far superior to woodpulp for paper.

http://www.jackherer.com/popmech.html