Posted on 04/22/2006 6:52:28 PM PDT by voletti
The fight to legalize the medical use of marijuana was dealt a blow Thursday when the Food and Drug Administration contradicted an earlier review by the respected Institute of Medicine and concluded that no sound scientific studies supported medical use of marijuana.
This finding, based on past studies by the FDA and other government health agencies, will further muddy the already confusing messages coming from scientists, doctors and legal agencies. Eleven states have legalized the use of marijuana if prescribed by a physician for medical conditions such as relieving nausea after chemotherapy, and AIDS-related wasting. But the Supreme Court last year decided that federal law enforcement officials can arrest anyone using the potentially addictive drug, even if its for medical reasons and in a state that has legalized this use.
WHAT IT MEANS: Critics of the FDA see this announcement as the latest in a string of decisions that they claim are more political than scientific in nature some see the influence of the Drug Enforcement Agency, whose director has opposed laws legalizing medical marijuana use, while scientists attempting to study the drug in controlled trials find themselves in a Catch-22. They claim that the government stymies their efforts to document the medical effects of marijuana by noting that there is little evidence to support its medical use, while the reason for the dearth of studies is that few agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, the largest source of research funding in the US, are willing to fund the work. Small studies funded by states or non-government interests have begun to show some potential benefits of smoking marijuana in alleviating pain, but it seems that documenting these effects in large, controlled trials may may just get more challenging.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.blogs.com ...
So they proved that every study cited by the Institute of Medicine was "unsound"? In a pig's eye ... this FDA pronouncement has as much to do with science as 'global warming' kookery.
The F.D.A. is a political agency that would come up with a study proving that apples cause cancer if that's what the government wanted.
Worth repeating. This is the same FDA which magically approved RU-486 under Clinton, has had egg on its face over Phen-Fen, COX-2 inhibitors...
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