Slashdot Mirror
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.
My mom had breast cancer several years ago. The treatments are just horrible, but I'm thankful she's still with us. It seems however that once a year we hear about some potential breakthrough or another. Well, with the truckloads of donations going to 'breast cancer research', I'm getting a little sick of hearing about 'potential' breakthroughs. I want something we can start using right now. It's hard to be patient when people you care about are sick or dying. I hope some of these possibilities pan out soon.
Basically everyone I've known who has died, has died of cancer. It drives me crazy that we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars to avenge the deaths of 3,000 people, while under four billion is spent on fighting cancer, which kills half a million people each year. It reminds me again how terrible people are at estimating risk.
References:
NCI budget
Cost of Iraq war
cancer deaths
I was waiting for someone to make a comment like that. How do they know that delivery by smoking doesn't include enough CBD when they haven't even finished trials using their own CBD-like (or CBD extracted, didn't read the article) chemical? It sounds pretty much the same as what GW Pharmaceuticals claims. You know, smoking isn't a good delivery method, but our product is. Even though it's a 100% pure plant extract. They have a point, but they put so much spin on it, trying to make it sound like it's not marijuana. It is.
I have no reason to believe that this is any different. Just a way for pharmaceutical companies to claim that it isn't marijuana (to the righteous right), while also managing to fuel the fight on drugs, which in this case is a direct (and much cheaper) alternative to their medication. The other reason I believe this is that there is already anectdotal evidence that smoking marijuana does have some kind of effect on cancer, and not just brain cancer.
Don't get me wrong, I do want to see new and better (and hopefully cheaper, but I doubt that will happen) treatments for breast cancer. My girlfriend has breast cancer, and just finished chemo. Considering how much hell it was for me, I can only imagine how hellish it was for my girlfriend, and that isn't even mentioning that they had to remove the entire breast because it was too big to be just partially removed. But it REALLY pisses me off when pharmaceutical companies pretend like they are 100% going out of their way to help the patients, when in reality they're working hard to keep a lid on marijuana which has some down right positive uses. (Actually, most of the uses, even recreational uses, are positive if you ask me. Only a small percentage of usage is actual abuse with adverse effects, and even that is not entirely to blame on weed alone.) When my girlfriend was going through chemo, I wanted her to use marijuana. The side effects of chemo she was experiencing were text book examples, many which could be eased or eliminated by smoking marijuana, even in doses that won't create a high. But alas, she thought it was too risky (we live in a country where you can get into a LOT of trouble for having weed) and I didn't feel comfortable in strongly suggesting it further if she wasn't comfortable. So there she went through 6 months of pure hell.
I hate the gov'ts of countries that seem to think they're doing someone a favor by criminalizing marijuana (and a long list of other things), but I even hate the pharmaceutical companies that put spin on their new weed-breed amazing drug that of course only they could make, using a patented process on a plant that is practically a common weed. Disgusting.
All that being said, eventually it will be legal, once people figure out that we have more important things to worry about. (Not holding my breath though..)
Never underestimate the power of stupid people in large groups.
look at taxol and the yew tree for breast cancer treatment
what the pharma companies do is substitute a methyl group for a hydrogen somewhere, or mix the chemical with some other chemical, patent that, and call it vastly superior, even if it isn't
just look at celebrex: it's just an NSAID. nothing that aspirin can't handle. but they modified the chemical slightly, patent that, the effects are slightly different, but the slight effects are relabelled massive and brilliant improvements in function, and you have a market
they do it with the opiates too: see oxycodone
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
we could spend that money on education too, or healthcare for the middle class
we don't. we think it's valuable to our security to get rid of saddam hussein and democratize iraq. is that right? is it wrong? certainly, it could be the stupidest thing the usa has ever done
but therefore, you need to defeat the money spent on that operation based on that rationale alone, within the confines of the merits or lack thereof of that operation by itself
but comparing the money spent on that to money to be spent on some other worthy concern is stupid. nobody thinks like that and gets anything done in this world
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I *heart* slashdot.
Problem is, almost no studies are done on this particular subject...good luck getting government funding to do so.
Common sense states that your average pot smoker smokes a lot less pot than your average cigarette smoker smokes cigarettes, so there's a starting point. Further, a LOT of chemicals are used in the manufacture of your typical cigarette.
There are a ton of starting points for reasonable research to be done, but alas, it won't be any time soon. Without doing research unfortunately, we simply can not know what affects the compounds in cannabis have on the human body.
No Comment.
frankly, it's an embarassment that the usa doesn't have this. all arguments against universal healthcare are not just morally bankrupt, they are logically bankrupt. if you accept the notion that everyone in a rich country should have good healthcare, socialized medicine falls logically into place
even from just a callow economic point of view, in terms of the cost of preventive care (what you get with socialized medicine) versus the costs of emergency care, it is cheaper
what is the system we have now? a more inefficient and wasteful bureacratic way to get a less quality system
or we can just let middle class people go bankrupt when they get cancer, and leave tons uninsured
it's such bullshit, the state of healthcare in the usa
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I used to think that it would be legal by the time I was thirty.
I high school (circa 1977), at least 70% of the kids smoked regularly or occasionally.
25% didn't care if anyone smoked it and only 5% were against it. (These numbers are all personal observation so take with a grain of salt.) The point is -- I was a geek, I occasionally did imbibe, I didn't care if anyone else smoked all day long.
Fast forward a couple decades. Those same pot-heads are now republicans and swear that they never, ever smoked pot. In fact they believe it is immoral to do so. And anyone who does should be thrown in jail. Amazing how raising kids changes your perspective.
I believe that alcohol is far worse than pot to your body and to society as a whole. BTW, I quit smoking pot years ago, but that doesn't mean you should.
- I live the greatest adventure anyone could possibly desire. - Tosk the Hunted
Could you be so kind to cite your sources? "They" doesn't sound very convincing. You suggest Cannabis has a permanent effect on cognitive skills. If true, that would be *major* news.
with all the waste a government system obviously means, it is still far better than an equally wasteful system, that only cares about profit, that doesn't insure everyone
i am not stumping for universal healthcare as some sort of nirvana, i am saying it is the less worse of two evils
all of the negatives you can throw at me about universl ahealthcare, i agree with you 100%
and it's still better than what we have now
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power." -- Mussolini
It's good to see so many people have done research to make sure that pot smokers can get high safely. Now if only we had time for those poor sods with *real* diseases...
You are using English. Please learn the difference between loose and lose; they're, there, and their; your and you're.
Making pot use a felony offense drives alot of people in many ways. If you want more time spent on "real" diseases, get the gov't to lay off pot. Otherwise, STFU and GBTW.
Blar.
People will quote the special interests against it, but there's a bigger reason that dominates them all, and makes racism and the chemical company lobby fade into the background. That reason is: attitude about government.
Americans still overwhelmingly think the purpose of government is to implement whatever good ideas come up, and solve our problems. That's why this particular article is political: people are talking about the presence of useful compounds inside the plant. People talk about how harmful it is, how harmful it isn't, etc, as though the utility of the plant, or its side-effects, actually matter.
As long as you engage in discussion of the merits (or lack of merits) of the plant, in the context of whether or not it should be illegal, you lose. There will always be arguments against anything, whether its heroin or hydrogen hydroxide, that the material is harmful to the user. There's nothing on this earth that is provably safe.
The debate should always be about who owns people, not the decisions that the owner makes. Is it the government's decision on what people should ingest, or the people's decision? People, stop citing the plant's advantages, and start talking about the real political issues. Don't ask "why is this illegal?" Ask, "How is does local gardening fall under the intent of the 'interstate commerce' clause?" Ask, "Why do voters in Texas have a say in Vermont citizens' health?"
"Believe me!" -- Donald Trump
In science, if something *plausible* COULD be wrong with a study, it deserves to be analyzed before the study is assumed to be rigorous. This also applies to studies on the other side, i.e. the ones which claim marijuana cures death and stops global warming. In your analogy, you can't possibly give me any plausible evidence that my parents killed JFK. I pointed out a rather common methodological flaw (check the literature) with using self-reporting in smoked marijuana studies.
Would you say there's an honest culture of information about cannabis in the United States? I wouldn't. I don't know if you're being sarcastic or not, but I'd be all for a campaign to educate people on the safe use of marijuana. In the Netherlands, most coffee shops stock a vaporizer and a lot of Dutch people I've talked to would prefer to use a vaporizer. Ultimately, people will probably still smoke cannabis because of the social bonding aspect, but they should be educated about the alternatives. After that, it's a choice you make for yourself.
In case you were NOT being sarcastic, here are some websites that advocate safe marijuana use:
safer choice, regulate, marijuana uses (not really an organization, but an emeritus harvard professor who's studying the positive uses of marijuana)
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Have you read that study? They took 17 people with collapsed lungs or emphysema, all of whom smoked on average six joints a day over a period of more than eight years and also consumed cigarettes on a daily basis for nearly 12 years. They then said that tests were unable to show which substances had caused the lung damage.