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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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US: Is the US Playing Politics with Pot Research?
Paul Armentano Betterhumans.com
Wednesday 06 Oct 2004 For three decades, politicians and bureaucrats have ignored research on marijuana's role in cancer prevention Clinical research published recently in the journals Cancer Research and BMC Medicine touting the ability of cannabis to stave the spread of certain cancers is the latest in a three-decade long line of studies demonstrating pot's potential as an anticancer agent. Not familiar with this research? You're not alone. For more than 30 years, US politicians and bureaucrats have turned a blind eye to any and all science indicating that marijuana may play a role in cancer prevention, a finding that was first documented as early as 1974. That year, a research team at the Medical College of Virginia (acting at the behest of the federal government, which must preapprove all US research on marijuana) discovered that cannabis inhibited malignant tumor cell growth in culture and in mice. According to the study's results, reported nationally in an August 18, 1974, Washington Post newspaper feature, 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 dismissed the study (which was eventually published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in 1975), and refused to fund any follow-up research until conducting a similarthough secretclinical trial in the mid-1990s. That study, conducted by the US National Toxicology Program to the tune of two million dollars, concluded that mice and rats administered high doses of THC over long periods had greater protection against malignant tumors than untreated controls. Rather than publicize their findings, government researchers once again shelved the results, which only came to light after a draft copy of the findings were leaked in 1997 to a medical journal which in turn forwarded the story to the national media. Nevertheless, in the eight years since the completion of the National Toxicology trial, the US government has yet to encourage or fund additional, follow-up studies examining the drug's potential to protect against the spread of cancerous tumors. Foreign findings Fortunately, scientists overseas have generously picked up where US researchers so abruptly left off. In 1998, a research team at Madrid's Complutense University discovered that THC can selectively induce programmed cell death in brain tumor cells without negatively impacting 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. More recently, researchers reported in the August 15, 2004 issue of Cancer Research, the journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, that marijuana's constituents inhibited the spread of brain cancer in human tumor biopsies. In a related development, a research team from the University of South Florida further noted that THC can also selectively inhibit the activation and replication of gamma herpes viruses. The viruses, which can lie dormant for years within white blood cells before becoming active and spreading to other cells, are thought to increase one's chances of developing cancers such as Kaposi's Sarcoma, Burkitt's lymphoma and Hodgkin's disease. Regrettably, US politicians have been little swayed by these results, and remain steadfastly opposed to the notion of sponsoring - or even acknowledging - this growing body of clinical research. Their stubborn refusal to do so is a disservice not only to the scientific process, but also to the health and well being of America's citizenry. Nonetheless, it appears that their silence will be unable to put this genie back in the bottle, as overseas research continues to move forward at a staggering pace. Writing this month in the journal of the American Society of Hematology, researchers at Saint Bartholomew's Hospital in London reported that THC induces cell death (apoptosis) in three leukemic cell lines. Authors further noted that the cannabinoid appears to function in manner different than standard chemotherapeutic agents such as cisplatin, and begins taking effect within mere hours after administration. Swiss researchers are also weighing in on the use of cannabinoids' anticancer properties, reporting in a recent study published in the Journal of Neuropathology and Experimental Neurology that endogenous cannabinoids (naturally occurring compounds in the body that bind to the same receptors as the cannabinoids in marijuana) induced apoptosis in long-term and recently established glioma cell lines. Even more notably, a review article published last month in the journal Neuropharmacology concluded that cannabinoids' ability to selectively target and kill malignant cells set the basis for their potential use in the management of various types of cancers. Unfortunately, as long as US politicians continue putting pot politics before patients' lives, it appears that any potential breakthroughs regarding the potentially curative powers of cannabis will only emerge in a land far from America's shores and beyond the reach of close-minded Washington bureaucrats. Paul Armentano is the senior policy analyst for the NORML Foundation in Washington, DC. He may be contacted via email at paul@norml.org.
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