Posted on 02/16/2007 3:23:59 PM PST by cryptical
The cannabis plant has been used as a medicine for thousands of years. In the United States, doctors could prescribe marijuana cigarettes to patients for a variety of conditions until the 1940s, when it was banned. Marijuana's status as an illegal drug has removed it from the official medical arsenal, but its therapeutic power is still attracting attention, especially its pain-killing properties.
About 30 percent of HIV patients develop painful nerves during the course of their illness, and this neuropathy is extremely difficult to treat with standard pain medications. Dr. Donald Abrams, of the University of California at San Francisco, studied the use of marijuana for relief of their discomfort. "We've known for along time that cannabinoids, the active ingredients in marijuana, can be involved in modulation of pain and the response to pain," he explains, adding that the body has its own cannabinoid system. "We make natural substances called endo-cannabinoids and it's felt that one of the main roles of these endo-cannabinoids is in our processing of painful stimuli." Abrams studied 50 patients who had suffered nerve pain for an average of 7 years. He gave half actual marijuana cigarettes to smoke three times a day, the other half smoked placebo cigarettes. He found the patients smoking the marijuana had significantly greater pain relief, and it was almost immediate. "After smoking the first cigarette on the first day," he recalls, "we asked patients what had happened to their pain. Those smoking the actual marijuana cigarette, their pain reduced 75 percent; where those smoking the placebo, their pain reduced less than 20 percent." These results were consistent throughout the study.
Abrams says there is a pill on the market containing the most active ingredient of marijuana, called tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. But he says smoking the actual plant works better than taking the pill, because THC is only one of the components present in the plant. "The plant has over 400 chemical compounds, many of which also have medicinal value. Many of those compounds in the plant also offer a balance to the side effects of the THC alone. So when you take a pill that's just THC, some people have more adverse effects than actually smoking THC as part of marijuana."
The research appears in the February 13th issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
2. No, he was very clear on this - he was warned not to write a recommendation for marijuana for any of his patients.
Your story is mutating.
What's his name?
>>The HIV prevalent lifestyles offload lots of costs onto more responsible citizens (read taxpayers). If we could opt out of paying for their lifestyle I would have no problem with them smiling and rump riding into oblivion.<<
A friend of mine, whose only "mistake" was to be a hemophiliac, died of AIDS. LOTS of people who have died of AIDS or been infected with HIV have lifestyles not significantly different from yours or mine.
Only about 2% of people who have died from AIDS was from tainted blood supplies or from accidental exposure in emergency medical related incidents.
Depending on your "lifestyle" (i.e.; intravenous drugs, promiscuous partners and sex perversions, etc.), most normal healthy people do not get AIDS - - it is primarily spread by a behavioral pathology.
Marijuana also contributes to immune deficiency...
I call bullshiite. Citation please? You wouldn't want anyone to think you pulled this out yer @ss?
37 posted on 02/16/2007 5:03:22 PM PST by youngjim
To: youngjim; Sir Francis Dashwood
Sir Francis Dashwood: Marijuana also contributes to immune deficiency...
youngjim: I call bullshiite. Citation please?
"British Medical Association, Therapeutic Uses of Cannabis. 1997. P.48...."cannabinoids have been shown to have immuno suppressive effect ..... potentially damaging in individuals whose immune system is already compromised by HIV or chemotherapy."
"Cabral GA et al. Adv Exp Med Bio 288: 93-105, 1991. (THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, causes immunosuppression.)"
"Cusher et al. Cellular Immunology Vol 154:99-108, 1994. (Low levels of THC inhibited tumor necrosis factor thereby weakening the killing activity of lymphocytes against tumor cells. Marijuana's implication in a number of chronic diseases reflects its harmful impact on the immune system.)"
"Djeu et al. Drugs of Abuse Immunity and Immunodeficiency, 1991. (THC is able to interfere with the function of white blood cells taken from humans. Both neutrophils, which fight bacterial infection, and mononuclear cells of the immune system, which fight viruses, were suppressed by various concentrations of THC.)"
48 posted on 02/16/2007 6:00:55 PM PST by robertpaulsen
The use of marijuana in AIDS treatment would have an adverse affect on an autoimmune deficiency syndrome...
"There's a sucker born every minute." (P.T. Barnum)
The trial was conducted over a two-year period during which 50 volunteers each spent a week at a secured laboratory at San Francisco General. After a two-day orientation period, during which they stopped smoking marijuana they may have been using, they were given one cigarette three times a day. Half of the volunteers received marijuana containing about 3.5 percent of THC, the active ingredient of the drug; the other half received the placebo.
There are a few things that stand out.
1. They made no effort to weed out (pun intended) people who may be addicted to marijuana.
2. The participants were HIV patients in San Francisco. The odds that they whole heartedly believe in the legalization of marijuana in the first place makes them at the best biased patients and at the worst liars.
3. People who smoke pot on a regular basis know pretty quickly whether they're smoking bogus weed or not. The fact that they're not getting buzzed may very well influence their response to the questions asked about the "bottom of their foot pain" that must be so horrendous that they have to smoke pot to get rid of it.
Sorry, but this study proves only that pro-drug legalization leftists are very good at setting up bogus "studies" and generating good press for their cause.
Given past experiences with drugs and those who offer them, we've decided that the FDA is a good clearing agency. They're not perfect, but they're better than nothing.
If indeed God created created marijuana for medicinal purposes, it will be verified by that agency. HE can take it up with them. I see no reason whatsoever to make an exception for marijuana.
Perhaps that occurred prior to October, 2003. If not, it's bull$hit from the agents. Here's an article on it. The Supreme Court declined to review a unanimous Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding the rights of physicians to discuss the medicinal use of marijuana with their patients.
"It was my impression no one knows if it's a good treatment for neuropathic pain because the studies haven't been done in MS."
Studies have not been done that show marijuana is effective at treating MS, that's true. But studies have been done that show it's not effective.
The Institute of Medicine published a report in 1999 that summarized the marijuana research. In it it concluded:
"In general, the abundant anecdotal reports are not well supported by the clinical data summarized in Table 4.1. The regular use of smoked marijuana, however, would be contraindicated in a chronic condition like MS."
"The National MS Society is funding a well-controlled study on the effectiveness of different forms of marijuana to treat spasticity in MS"
And here you told me the government wasn't allowing studies. You kidder you.
I think this is great. Based on research like this, GW pharmaceuticals developed “Sativex® Oromucosal Spray” which received an Approval with Conditions from Health Canada in April 2005 for use as an adjunctive treatment for the symptomatic relief of neuropathic pain in Multiple Sclerosis (MS). Each spray of Sativex® delivers a fixed dose of 2.7mg THC and 2.5mg CBD.
I support this product and others like it. This is medicine.
"It may cure nothing, but it relieves symptoms."
If it cured something, anything, I could understand the urgency. It doesn't. As to relieving symptoms, well, the jury is still out on that one. The patient may say it relieves symptoms, sure. So? Case in point:
A survey of California doctors found that 99% of their medical-marijuana-seeking patients were already smoking marijuana prior to their first visit. Doctors weren't evaluating the patients and then recommending marijuana -- they were simply validating it.
It a scam, retMD. Recreational marijuana legalization advocates have all but admitted it.
Post #11 LOLOLOL
Well, that's the number I found. Do you want to argue that it should be 16,000? 10,000?
Where's this going?
What's next from you? Judicial activism is OK as long as they rule in your favor? States can flaunt federal law if it's an issue with which you agree?
Welcome to your world, the rule of man not the rule of law.
No more of this "home grown" or "street" marijuana for you, right? Certainly there should be restrictions ... at least until the product is legalized. You do support that?
If we're going back to first principles, the DEA and all its antecedents back to the Bureau of Narcotics should never have been allowed to exist.
Even if they had been allowed to exist, the racist little demagogue, Anslinger, should have been run out of town on a rail and the craven congresscritters of 1937 should have listened to the AMA then when they were told they were power-mad, whoremongering idiots.
That every congress since has been too chicken**** to fix their screw up is precisely the situation that the very good tool of the ballot proposition was meant to correct.
**While I've never experienced the pain described in this article, my experience with pot and other types of pain leads me to believe this story is BS.**
My reaction to pot that I smoked in high school was the same as yours, but I have a good friend who is disabled and in a lot of pain who swears by it.
I think people just react differently to it.
Because smoking a homegrown and handmade impure non-filtered plant product down to the last nanometer, drawing it deep into the lungs and holding it, is not a healthy delivery system for a medicine? Inhaling 600 chemicals to get the possible benefit of one or two makes sense to you? What's the negative effect of those 598 chemicals? You don't know, nor do you care. Some of us do.
"What is wrong with studying the positive effects of something used in it's natural state?"
Using this logic, if there's a medical benefit offered by a chemical found in gasoline, you'd favor a patient drinking gasoline. Hey, sorry. That's where your logic takes me.
Using MY logic, we'd isolate the chemical, study it, do trials, write a peer reviewed report, publish side effects, drug interactions, set dosages and frequency, get FDA approval, and have the medicine prescribed by a doctor through a licensed pharmacy.
But hey. That's me.
"However, I'm Just sayin those negatives should be weighed on the scale of decision making."
They have been. Smoked marijuana is not medicine. No major medical organization supports smoked marijuana.
Why are you so against isolating these cannabinoids and making them available as safe medicine? Well, I think we know why. Getting you to admit it is a whole 'nuther matter.
Oh, why are we only offering "medical marijuana" to those over 21? Why can't a 7-year-old benefit from it? Is there any other medicine out of the tens of thousands out there that are restricted to those over 21?
Geez. You're not so compassionate after all. You'd let little kids suffer. You .... monster, you.
I really don't care what he did and said back in 1937. You might as well try to start an argument about how slavery was wrong. Neither are relevant to today's laws.
Congress passed the Controlled Substances Act in 1970 which made marijuana illegal. The Act said nothing about Anslinger, white women or Negro jazz musicians. Give it a rest already.
Well, that's the number I found. Do you want to argue that it should be 16,000? 10,000?
I'm pointing out that the studies mostly involve substance abuse problems, not the potential use of the drug in disease states.
Kind of like pointing to studies on opioid addiction and saying "see? It's been studied and isn't helpful!" Which doesn't negate the benefits of morphine, vicodin, duragesic patches, or MS contin for the right patients. Are those misused? Absolutely! Do they have legitimate medical use? Unquestionably.
Assuming that any of that unverifiable story is true, he is an ignorant or dishonest quack. California law provides for recommendations, not prescriptions.
And when confronted with the Act's actual findings, they fall mute.
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