I've never been one to shy away from controversy. A useful attribute to possess in a country like South Africa. Before I continue I would just like to stipulate that this article is in no way intended to endorse or encourage the use of cannabis to treat conditions for which it has not been prescribed by a medical practitioner. This article is purely for educational purposes.
I’ve been doing a serious amount of background reading in this area after hearing countless claims being made to suggest that cannabis being able to cure cancer may not be far from the truth.
Here is some of the most convincing evidence I have come across on my travels:
“In 1974, University of Virginia researchers discovered something very unlikely. Cannabis, banned in the United States in 1937, and further demonized by the Nixon administration in 1968, had an unexpected property: it inhibited the growth of lung cancer cells.”[1]
“A 2003 study by Manuel Guzmán of Madrid, Spain found that cannabinoids, the active components of cannabis, inhibit tumor growth in laboratory animals. They do so by modulating key cell-signalling pathways, thereby inducing direct growth arrest and death of tumor cells, as well as by inhibiting the growth of blood vessels that supply the tumor. Cancer occurs because cells become immortalized; they fail to heed normal signals to turn off growth. A normal function of remodelling in the body requires that cells die on cue. This is called apoptosis, or programmed cell death. That process fails to work in tumors. THC promotes its reappearance so that gliomas, leukemias, melanomas and other cell types will in fact heed the signals, stop dividing, and die."[2]
I’ve been doing a serious amount of background reading in this area after hearing countless claims being made to suggest that cannabis being able to cure cancer may not be far from the truth.
Here is some of the most convincing evidence I have come across on my travels:
“In 1974, University of Virginia researchers discovered something very unlikely. Cannabis, banned in the United States in 1937, and further demonized by the Nixon administration in 1968, had an unexpected property: it inhibited the growth of lung cancer cells.”[1]
“A 2003 study by Manuel Guzmán of Madrid, Spain found that cannabinoids, the active components of cannabis, inhibit tumor growth in laboratory animals. They do so by modulating key cell-signalling pathways, thereby inducing direct growth arrest and death of tumor cells, as well as by inhibiting the growth of blood vessels that supply the tumor. Cancer occurs because cells become immortalized; they fail to heed normal signals to turn off growth. A normal function of remodelling in the body requires that cells die on cue. This is called apoptosis, or programmed cell death. That process fails to work in tumors. THC promotes its reappearance so that gliomas, leukemias, melanomas and other cell types will in fact heed the signals, stop dividing, and die."[2]
The story that first brought this topic to my attention was about a man called Rick Simpson who supposedly healed his skin cancer using a concentrated form of cannabis known as ‘hemp oil’ in the United States and who showcased this experience and subsequent successful treatments of others in a documentary called ‘Run from the Cure’ (it should be easy to find on Google if anyone wants to watch it).[3] Also have a look at Phoenix Tears to find out more about hemp oil.[6]
A few years later I heard about a 22 month old boy from Missoula, Montana in the United States called Cash Hyde. His father, Mike Hyde, administered concentrated THC (Tetrahydrocannabinol, one of the most active ingredients in the cannabis plant) to his son when he felt he’d exhausted all other options including an exhaustive cocktail of conventional drugs, highly invasive brain surgery and numerous chemotherapy sessions. The doctors all gave Cash a very grim prognosis, saying that he only had “a 30 percent chance of surviving five years, and, at best, radiation could stop the tumor from spreading”. Their treatments however were slowly but surely making him weaker. In Mike’s words “I've had law enforcement threatening to kick my door down, but I would have done anything to keep Cashy alive."[4][5] How could one blame him for doing what any loving parent would do to save their child from an untimely and possibly preventable death?
If this plant has even half of the medicinal benefits, which it is claimed to have, surely it deserves to be officially recognised and made available to the people of South Africa as soon as adequate research permits? Israel and Spain are the two countries currently investing heavily in research related to cannabis’s anti-cancer effects. South Africa has long been known as a world leader in medicine so why are our people not entitled and indeed encouraged to do the same?
Is it just government policy that hinders the truth from hitting the mainstream or is it something more sinister? How about the worst kind of corporate greed? The type that actively lobbies for the denial of a safer, more effective alternative purely because it’s widespread availability could jeopardise their profits. I believe that the pharmaceutical industry has a lot to answer for in this regard. They are quite blatantly profit driven, not compassion driven and I don’t believe this to be acceptable. What kind of a sick world (excuse the pun) do we live in where companies, which claim to be helping the feeble and infirm, are actually profiteering from their misery? The fundamental problem with western medicine is that the rule more often than not seems to be treating the symptoms and not the cause. This ensures that patients will require a constant supply of expensive medications for longer periods of time. If only an apple a day really did keep the doctor away! You couldn’t make this stuff up.
Is it just government policy that hinders the truth from hitting the mainstream or is it something more sinister? How about the worst kind of corporate greed? The type that actively lobbies for the denial of a safer, more effective alternative purely because it’s widespread availability could jeopardise their profits. I believe that the pharmaceutical industry has a lot to answer for in this regard. They are quite blatantly profit driven, not compassion driven and I don’t believe this to be acceptable. What kind of a sick world (excuse the pun) do we live in where companies, which claim to be helping the feeble and infirm, are actually profiteering from their misery? The fundamental problem with western medicine is that the rule more often than not seems to be treating the symptoms and not the cause. This ensures that patients will require a constant supply of expensive medications for longer periods of time. If only an apple a day really did keep the doctor away! You couldn’t make this stuff up.
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