
Marijuana helped shrink one of the most aggressive brain cancers - runesoerensen
http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/18/how-pot-helped-shrink-one-of-the-most-aggressive-brain-cancers/
======
driverdan
I'm surprised Huffington Post isn't blocked from HN. It's nothing but blogspam
and cranks. How about we list the original content, either the study[1] or the
op-ed that most of the content was taken from[2].

1:
[http://mct.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2014/11/12/1535-71...](http://mct.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2014/11/12/1535-7163.MCT-14-0402.abstract)

2:
[http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/18/h...](http://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/18/how-
pot-helped-shrink-one-of-the-most-aggressive-brain-cancers/)

~~~
dang
> I'm surprised Huffington Post isn't blocked from HN.

It used to be, but somebody pleaded the case that they occasionally have solid
articles, so we moved it from banned outright to lightweight, which means the
articles get penalized by default but various conditions can override the
penalty. A lot of big media sites are in this category. It's not a perfect
solution, but it works better than the alternative.

In the case of specialized technical papers that aren't in the local sweet
spots such as computing, HN tends to prefer the best popular article on the
subject, with the paper linked to in comments. It's not a fixed rule but it
works well. For that reason, we wouldn't replace the Huffpo url with [1].
However, [2] is clearly a more original source, so we'll swap Huffpo out.
Thanks!

(Submitted url was [http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/18/marijuana-brain-
can...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/11/18/marijuana-brain-
cancer_n_6181060.html.))

~~~
driverdan
Thanks for the explanation. I've highly critical of HP but you're right,
occasionally they have original content that deserves a link.

------
unicornporn
OK. But it isn't marijuana "itself" that does this. It is one or more chemical
components that we can isolate, right? We've done so many times before and
created more potent medicines.

But just because these components are present in marijuana I can almost bet
that it will be reduced to an argument in the fight for legalization of
smoking weed.

I'm not saying it shouldn't be legalized (perhaps it should, perhaps it
shouldn't), but that it's an entirely different question.

~~~
jonnathanson
_" OK. But it isn't marijuana "itself" that does this. It is one or more
chemical components that we can isolate, right?"_

Correct. The study tested two cannabinoids isolated from marijuana, not whole-
bud marijuana.

 _" But just because these components are present in marijuana I can almost
bet that it will be reduced to an argument in the fight for legalization of
smoking weed."_

Well, yes, it's going to go there eventually. Pretty much all conversations
about the medical efficaciousness of marijuana (or marijuana-derived
compounds) bump up against the legalization topic. This is because conducting
research on a substance currently deemed illegal by the federal government is
very difficult. It's also because the government labels marijuana not just
illegal, but a drug "...with no currently accepted medical use and a high
potential for abuse." (This is the 'Schedule I' classification).

Marijuana's classification in Schedule I, a category for "the most dangerous
drugs of all the drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or
physical dependence," is ridiculous. For what it's worth, here are some drugs
legally considered _less_ dangerous, or psychologically and physically
dependence-forming than marijuana: cocaine, opium, methamphetamine, oxycodone,
morphine, codeine, fentanyl, Dexedrine, Adderall, Ritalin, Vicodin, Valium,
Ambien, ketamine, and anabolic steroids.

 _" I'm not saying it shouldn't be legalized (perhaps it should, perhaps it
shouldn't), but that it's an entirely different question."_

Absolutely. Marijuana's legalization as a consumer item has little to no
bearing on this finding, or vice versa. That said, its current medical status
is in debate, and whenever a potential medical usage comes up, that topic is
going to come up with it.

~~~
spiritplumber
Doesn't the whole "...with no currently accepted medical use" part
automatically obsoletes with research such as this?

Surely the DEA has a mailing address to which it's possible to send relevant
research papers?

Surely they read the literature?

~~~
MCRed
I honestly can't tell if you're being earnest or not. So, apologies if you're
being sarcastic.

The DEA, as a government agency, was created with the mission of eradicating
drugs. They aren't really in the business of doing scientific evaluation of
the drugs themselves, and I would be surprised if there are any scientists on
staff, and if there are, even more surprised if they have any pull.

At any rate, the DEA doesn't set drug policy, the federal government does.

The federal governments' track record when it comes to controlling substances
has not often been in line with scientific or social needs, as is evidenced by
the extreme cost of the current war on drugs and the consequent negative
effects on society. For example, cocaine is a refinement of cocoa which was
included in things like coca-cola as a mild stimulant. When it became
controlled, smuggling economics came to bear, and thus refining it into
cocaine allowed for more value-per-unit-shipment in smuggling. Being more
addictive, and thus worse for society, was a side effect of this. Worse, with
the war on cocaine that occurred an even further refinement was done for the
same economic reasons resulting in crack.

I posit that if the wellbeing of society were the primary importance for the
federal government there would be no drug war, and thus no drug related
violent crimes (or very few) and a lot less addiction.

~~~
spiritplumber
Thanks. It just seems to me "currently accepted medical use" is pretty
unambiguous, there is SOME, that is, other than none, currently accepted
medical use so their definition is wrong on its face. I'm surprised that
nobody told them "Look, you're using English wrong(ly)" as a way to challenge
the law.

English has a simple grammar to figure out, but things like this remind me why
it's a difficult language to truly grok.

(I am Italian. Our government does occasionally do things like this, but at
least they have to employ four paragraphs of byzantine quasi-latin, not get
away with five words of non-language).

I mean, if some words are in a law that causes public expense, arrests,
killings, etc. I would say it's pretty important that their meaning is set in
stone and universally understood! I suppose there are problems with the US
Constitution in that sense, but in this case the language used is current, not
300 years old.

~~~
jonnathanson
_" Thanks. It just seems to me "currently accepted medical use" is pretty
unambiguous, there is SOME, that is, other than none, currently accepted
medical use so their definition is wrong on its face. I'm surprised that
nobody told them "Look, you're using English wrong(ly)" as a way to challenge
the law."_

Their classification of marijuana as having "no accepted medical use" is silly
on its face, and I hope I adequately gave that impression in my comment. I'm
not agreeing with it. I'm just pointing it out.

Unfortunately, changing the DEA's opinion is harder than just sending them the
medical literature, and pointing out the contradictions in their position.
This is a problem that needs to be addressed through the legislative process.
(The DEA follows federal policy; it doesn't necessarily establish or alter
federal policy). Fortunately, change is happening at the state level. If we
reach the point where most states recognize medical uses for marijuana, then
eventually, the federal government will have to cave on its hard line. Or so
the thinking goes.

English is indeed a complex language, and it's also filled with the sorts of
loaded terms with which lawyers have a field day. For instance, consider the
word "accepted" in the phrase "accepted medical use." Accepted by _whom_? Who
decides whether to officially "accept" a medical use? Is it the DEA? Is it the
medical and scientific community? Is it the legislative branch of the federal
government? Is it the judicial branch? Is it someone else? If this issue were
ever to come to court, the DEA could argue that there is no "accepted"
consensus. It would be a weaselly argument, but English is a fantastic
language for weaselly, semantic arguments like that.

------
Beltiras
My mother died of an agressive blastoma multiforme last spring. I tried to get
her cannabis but she declined in spite of the evidence I presented (at the
time the principal papers were written in Spain). Marijuana use has been
greatly stigmatized in my country and that played a big role in her rejection.
I am both glad and angry at the same time.

~~~
wavefunction
Sorry to hear about your mother. I have talked my father into investigating
therapeutic use of cannabis for his Parkinson's. He indulged as a young man
but the war on drugs and raising a family put a kibosh on recreational use for
him years ago. The drug war propaganda has been so effective that he was
reluctant to try it despite recent legalization in our home state. In a very
unscientific experiment this summer, I watched his symptoms disappear after
imbibing a small amount. If only we can get the word out to more people.

~~~
narrowrail
My father is in the same situation, except MJ is not even available
medicinally. Could you tell me what form your father ingested? Was it high-CBD
edibles, or what?

------
tokenadult
Two parts of the Huffington post submission here clarify the issue:

"In a paper published Friday in the journal Molecular Cancer Therapies, a team
of researchers from St. George's University of London outlined the "dramatic
reductions" they observed in high-grade glioma masses, a deadly form of brain
cancer, when treated with a combination of radiation and two different
marijuana compounds, also known as cannabinoids. In many cases, those tumors
shrunk to as low as one-tenth the sizes of those in the control group."

So the tumors are being treated with radiation in the current study, as well
as with cannabinoids.

"Liu and his colleagues examined mice that had been infected with glioma and
subsequently treated with radiation alone or in combination with varying
levels of two cannabis compounds: THC, the psychoactive compound associated
with the "high" sensation, and CBD, which doesn't produce psychoactive side
effects."

So far this is a study in a mouse model organism, which may or may not
generalize to human patients. This is worth looking at further, but the trade-
offs of safety and effectiveness for drug treatments of all kinds can often
differ between human beings and mice.

~~~
dekhn
Nearly all cancer studies use combination treatments. Among other reasons, the
cancer cells will adapt to single treatments rapidly (for example, the
treatment will kill all but a small population, which is immune to the
treatment, and that population will expand).

------
deskamess
Will there be a time when a majority look at how we have stigmatized and
prevented marijuana use so vocally and with such dire criminal consequences
when it could have been used to help in the proper channels?

I strongly believe a lot of science is not done on marijuana because of the
vocal critics or the fear of vocal critics. Just in the US, certain people can
be pretty vindictive when it comes to their causes.

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
>I strongly believe a lot of science is not done on marijuana because of the
vocal critics or the fear of vocal critics.

That appears to be changing for the better. The most important thing is to
somehow make sure that non-physicians and non-scientists such as the DEA are
removed from the decision making process (of what gets studied, and of drug
scheduling).

>Just in the US, certain people can be pretty vindictive when it comes to
their causes.

I hope that it isn't vindictiveness. I've always assumed that it is either an
inability to sympathize, or an indifference to other peoples' suffering; also,
ignorance.

------
omilu
Terence McKenna smoked marijuana for 35 years heavily. He died of brain
cancer.

 _McKenna was diagnosed with glioblastoma multiforme, a highly aggressive form
of brain cancer. For the next several months he underwent various treatments,
including experimental gamma knife radiation treatment. According to Wired
magazine, McKenna was worried that his tumor was caused by his 35 years of
smoking cannabis, although his doctors assured him there was no causal
relation._ -Wikipedia

~~~
josefresco
Smoke anything for 35 years and you're running the risk of serious health
complications. Smoking cannabis for medical reasons is nonsensical.

~~~
codyb
That's probably not true. If you don't have the time, expertise, or space to
legitimately cook something in it with whichever components of marijuana are
utilized in the cessation of nausea or pain, and you can't afford/don't have
the time to go get/are not near a place where they sell a vaporizer then
smoking is your best option. And recent research has suggested a litany of
positive effects for those suffering from a variety of ailments.

In this case, smoking would be quite sensical not only because it will make
you feel better. Stress is a known killer, symptoms such as nausea (and it's
side effect known as 'not being able to eat') or pain increase stress. Ergo,
it can be quite easily seen that there are many instances where a person would
be quite sensical in choosing to smoke marijuana instead of continuing to
suffer, negative side effects of smoking marijuana included.

This of course does not go into the debate of marijuana versus addictive
opiates or more "traditional" forms of medication which opens up an additional
set of conversation topics, many of which conclude that marijuana is more than
likely to be preferred over traditional forms of Western medication.

~~~
josefresco
Obviously if given no other choice, smoking cannabis might be a viable option.
It's important to keep this discussion in the context of the parent comment,
which was pointing our (rather anecdotally) that some guy who smoked cannabis
for 35 years died of cancer (implying that the assertion made in the parent
article was incorrect or flawed).

------
cbd1984
Now maybe we can extract the active ingredients and make a better, more
effective therapy with fewer side effects, instead of making people damage
their lungs smoking a weed to get this into them, or making them eat fatty
foods and damaging the rest of their bodies.

------
driverdan
Anyone have a source that explains the mechanism of action behind cannabinoids
disrupting cancers?

------
eip
Works really well on skin cancer too.

Vaporize then condense the resins. Apply resin to skin cancer spots sparingly.

~~~
Raphmedia
Wouldn't it work better with oil and also be easier?

~~~
eip
I don't know. Try it. I just posted what I know from personal experience. The
resin definitely works.

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQwwGPiyW9M](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fQwwGPiyW9M)

