Kerry: Get an Herbal, not a Fetal Position.
By Ellen Komp, AlterNet.
http://www.alternet.org/drugreporter/19476/
If Kerry makes good on his promise to review research on medical
marijuana when he takes office, he'll be amazed at what has been learned
in the last several years.
John Kerry's acceptance speech for the Democratic presidential
nomination ended with a series of "what if's": "What if we find a
breakthrough to cure Parkinson's, diabetes, Alzheimer's and AIDS?" he
wondered aloud, to the cheers of the crowd.
Innovative treatments for these diseases, and many others, may be closer
than Kerry knows, and it won't take fetal tissue to find them. If Kerry
makes good on his promise to review research on medical marijuana when
he takes office, he'll be amazed at what has been learned in the last
several years.
After the voters of California and Arizona legalized medical marijuana
in 1996, then-drug "czar" Barry McCaffrey commissioned a $1 million
scientific review of existing studies on marijuana by the National
Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine. Since the 1999 IOM report
was published, hundreds of studies on cannabinoids, the active compounds
in marijuana, and their newly developed cognates, have uncovered
astonishing results.
"Every one of our body's organized systems makes and responds to
marijuana-like compounds: cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine,
excretory, immunological, nervous, reproductive and respiratory," says
Dr. Robert Melamede, head of the biology department at the University of
Colorado (Colorado Springs). Endogenous (natural in the body)
cannabinoids and their receptors are popping up everywhere, and showing
beneficial effects in animal and clinical (human) studies.
Beyond the traditional symptomatic relief for nausea in cancer and AIDS
patients, or pain and spasticity in Multiple Sclerosis sufferers,
cannabinoids may actually retard the progression of diseases like MS,
Alzheimer's, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). In addition,
compounds in marijuana are showing anti-tumor effects and protective
properties in the brain and heart tissue of stroke and heart attack
victims, and those exposed to nerve gas. "When they say marijuana
destroys your brain, they have it exactly wrong," says Melamede.
"Marijuana protects your brain, from the lack of oxygen and
neurotoxins." The U.S. army is investigating the matter, and one
research team in Spain is shrinking human brain tumors by injecting them
with cannabinoids.
Just a quick literature search on the list of diseases Kerry mentioned
brings up scores of studies. Take Parkinson's, a progressive
neurological disease impacting brain cells that normally produce
dopamine, a neurotransmitter that coordinates movement. The IOM report
stated, "Theoretically, cannabinoids could be useful for treating
Parkinson's disease patients because cannabinoids have been shown to be
closely associated with dopaminergic pathways in the body." The
following year, a Czech research team wrote, "It seems that cannabinoids
could delay or even stop progressive degeneration of brain dopaminergic
systems, a process for which there is presently no prevention."
As well as their neurological activities, cannabinoids have various
immunosuppressive effects, and studies on autoimmune diseases like
diabetes have been promising. In one animal study using an experimental
disease model, cannabinoids reduced the severity of diabetes symptoms
and extended the time before their onset. In addition, cannabinoids have
been shown to promote peripheral circulation, the lack of which can lead
to loss of limbs in diabetes patients. And THC receptors are replete in
the retina, where they may protect cells against the loss of sight,
another horrific outcome.
Scientists at the American Society of Consultant Pharmacists' 34th
annual meeting held in November 2003 in San Antonio, TX presented Phase
II studies showing that THC (tetrohydrocannabinol) reduces agitation in
patients with Alzheimer's disease. A side effect was reducing the stress
experienced by caregivers. Cannabinoids have also been shown to
ameliorate food refusal, a common problem in patients who suffer from
Alzheimer's-type dementia. As in AIDS wasting syndrome, marijuana's
appetite-enhancing properties can mean the difference between life and
death.
If elected, Kerry will take the helm of a federal government that denies
the medical value of marijuana, in defiance of DEA Administrative Law
Judge Francis Young's 1988 ruling that, "Marijuana ... is one of the
safest therapeutically active substances known. ... It would be
unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand
between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance." With the
new research, 34 states endorsing medical marijuana, and a federal bill
working its way up, the genie will be hard to put back into the bottle.
The Supreme Court has just agreed to hear a case challenging federal
authority over medical marijuana, and unless the Court wants to overrule
its own conservative majority's series of states' rights rulings, it
will have to acknowledge the federal government's limitations. "Direct
control of medical practice in the states is beyond the power of the
Federal Government," the Court ruled in 1925.
Both Kerry and John Edwards have admitted to smoking marijuana in the
past, but that is no indication of liberal action on this issue.
President Clinton waited until his last week in office to tell Rolling
Stone magazine he thought marijuana should be legalized. Al Gore
supported medical marijuana while running against fellow former pot
smoker Bill Bradley for the Democratic nomination in 1999; he recanted
when his opponent was Bush. Talk show host and former Naval intelligence
officer Montel Williams, who uses marijuana for MS, thinks George W.
Bush might be receptive to the message.
Pharmaceutical giant BAYER AG announced in May it will market a
cannabis-based multiple sclerosis and pain drug in the United Kingdom
and Canada, a plant extract sprayed under the tongue from British
company GW Pharmaceuticals. Bayer will pay $41 million in regulatory
fees in the deal and holds an option to market the drug, called Sativex,
to the EU. A 2002 survey of MS patients living in England found that 45
percent use cannabis. If the US doesn't act, we may get foreign-grown
marijuana (and industrial hemp) as yet another outsourced industry.
Melamede stresses that what cannabinoids seem to do is put the body into
balance, and though some may not benefit from additional doses, most of
us probably would. Cannabinoids seem to have anti-aging properties, in
part because they modulate free radical production, and since we're all
aging, we might be able to steal a little more youth from a plant rather
than an embryo.
"What if we have a president who believes in science?" Kerry asked. What if?
Ellen Komp manages the Web site www.veryimportantpotheads.com.
--
Jez
"The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious,
of being out of one's mind, is the condition of the normal man. Society
highly values its normal man.It educates children to lose themselves
and to become absurd,and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed
perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years."
R.D. Laing
.
|
