Jogro
Well-Known Member
Lots of people say this sort of thing, but its really an incomplete picture."Again, I don't want to be a wise-ass here, but if you really believe this to be true, please cite one."
Jogro, that's the problem with a schedule 1 drug.... you won't find many peer-reviewed, scientific studies of it. On top of that the pharmaceutical companies sure as hell won't fund any research in to it without the ability to monetarily capitalize on it.
The world is bigger than just the United States, and plenty of medical studies are conducted elsewhere. Medical use of cannabis is legal in Holland, Israel, and Canada, for example, and there is no fundamental reason why cannabis clinical trials couldn't be done in any of those three countries, as well as within several others where use of cannabis is either tolerated or private use is legal (eg Spain, see below).
As a matter of cost, in fact, there is a drug-company created standard cannabinoid product called "Sativex" and the manufacturer would stand to gain unbelievable sums of money if this product were proven to have legitimate anti-tumor effects. That's a pretty strong incentive for them to fund clinical trials, or at least subsidize them with inexpensive drug samples. There are also plenty of private foundations, organizations, and individuals who would be happy to fund legitimate cannabis/anti-cancer research. At least one of them has actually done so in Europe (again, see below).
The fact that cannabinoids aren't by themselves patentable doesn't mean that its impossible for drug companies to make money selling them in various standardized forms. As a counter-example, there are hundreds of studies looking at the effects of aspirin. Even though that particular drug isn't protected by patent, and only costs pennies per dose, drug companies still manage to make money selling the pills at a profit, and plenty of private foundation money and gov't funding is available for ongoing research.
You are right that there are virtually no clinical trials looking at effect of cannabinoids in humans with cancer. Again, I've done a pretty thorough literature search and there is only one I could find, here:
This group based in Spain took terminal patients with primary brain cancer and infused THC directly into their brain tumors. . The actual drug was provided by a private German donor. As expected, all of these patients died on average in 6 months, which is fairly typical for this disease and their stage. This study didn't actually prove any survival benefit from the cannabinoid infusion, though it was fairly limited in scope.http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16804518?dopt=Abstract
Br J Cancer. 2006 Jul 17;95(2):197-203. Epub 2006 Jun 27.
A pilot clinical study of Delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol in patients with recurrent glioblastoma multiforme.
Guzmán M, Duarte MJ, Blázquez C, Ravina J, Rosa MC, Galve-Roperh I, Sánchez C, Velasco G, González-Feria L.
Source
Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology I, School of Biology, Complutense University, Madrid 28040, Spain. [email protected]
The problem is that the plural of anecdote isn't "data".There are plenty of examples from individuals to cite. All you need to do is use google.
Without lots of specific medical documentation and appropriate controls individual case reports are effectively meaningless. EG, what would you say if I showed you 50 accounts on Google of Elvis sightings, or UFO abductions?
I've seen plenty of these "case reports" and most of them are so poorly documented and/or badly flawed, they wouldn't even meet entry criteria into any kind of real clinical study.
And don't get me wrong, I'd love it if cannabinoids were a viable treatment for cancer. . .I just have yet to see any credible evidence that this is true.
Its one thing to HOPE that cannabis cures cancer, and quite another thing to PROVE it. Wishful thinking doesn't shrink tumors.
Simple common sense indicates that cannabinoids have been in wide medical use all over the planet for 10,000 years, literally since the dawn of recorded human history, and they've been used to treat cancers as long as human beings have had cancers. If they could actually cure cancer, that would have been established decades, if not centuries ago, and it should be trivially easy to prove, right?