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Cannabis lung cancer study. Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2005 6:24 pm
Smoking three to four joints a day might cause lung cancer? who would a thunk it.
Quite frankly get your hand out of my pocket Dr Dick, smoke has never and will never be good for your lungs, we don't need you sucking back the tax dollars to prove that.
Perhaps with that cash, we could identify the alleles in cannabis that give high amounts of THC, grow up some really potent cannabis and have users smoking 0.3-0.4g a day. This would provide the cash for a new study for you, you can try and find a statistical difference in lung cancer rates between someone that smokes 0.3g of cannabis a day and someone that smokes no cannabis.
Get fucking serious Dr Dick, smoking may be a problem, but the obvious answer is more refinement to reduce damage. Distilled alcohol has methanol in it that'll send you blind or kill you, do we put our underwear on our heads and run around screaming about the fucking apocalypse? no we just refine it until the amount of methanol is negligable.
yeap and so it goes....I think one could even find an argument to say refined petroluem is a drug...what about all the combustion products I have breath on the citee streets from auto emmissons, what about my lung cancer from all that shit....yes Dr I agree with you, it's just selective political bullshit and scaremongering...and ain't it a fact that we all die anyway? Just too scared to admit it, some fucker might just crash into u...and ya never touched a joint to protect your lungs. Died with perfect lungs and never did drugs
Go Harold Pinter! Nobel prize....peace bro....that is all good...he's the kinda of political person one should aspire to.....
Joined: Feb 23, 2003 Posts: 283 Location: Pt Chev, Auckland
Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2005 12:02 am
I wouldn't be so quick to accept that pot causes cancer, there really isn't any evidence for that. The crap that has been over the papers this week is just really bad journalism.
As far as I can make out, Gary Evans Wellington coroner asked the Wellington Medical Research Institute for some results from their two different "groundbreaking" studies - these studies are not finished yet, so the Wellington Medical Research Institute only supplied him with a literature review that mentioned all the previous studies that suggested lung problems for pot smokers. These studies have a range of opinions from mild bronchitis, no risk of death and less risk of cancer, all the way through to worse for you than tobacco. And of course one of these studies is the infamous 3 joints is worse than 20 cigarettes one.
http://www.norml.org.nz/article222.html
Now the thing about literature reviews done by research scientists is that they are done in order to justify spending money on further research, so they will be playing up the evidence rather than playing it down. Hence the reason why the mention of Maori high lung cancer rate, and the mention of the high Maori cannabis using rate - they were saying, pot could be the cause so we better study it.
So, then Evans made a big fuss in the papers, bandying about this paper by the Wellington Medical Research Institute as proof of pot causes lung cancer. Then lazy or deliberately misleading journalists write articles that are not entirely clear about what research is making the claims, and then in the next round of stories it has suddenly mutated into the Medical Research Institute have done this groundbreaking study and it shows that cannabis causes cancer.
Ah fuck it, I only just saw the article with Beasley in the oddity, goddamn cat-up-a-tree paper always has me running behind the times on the news.
I'm sticking with my assertion that cannabis causes cancer. Obviously cannabinoids don't cause cancer, but burning plant matter isn't good for anyone, and quite frankly it really isn't to hard to cause cancer.
I've seen the NORML lung damage thing before and I agree with most of what it has on it, although the statement "cannabis itself is non-toxic" always bugs the fuck out of me. Cannabis is toxic, everything including pure water and air
is toxic at some dosage level.
Joined: Feb 23, 2003 Posts: 283 Location: Pt Chev, Auckland
Posted: Sat Oct 15, 2005 3:36 pm
dr_depravo wrote:
I'm sticking with my assertion that cannabis causes cancer.
And I'm sticking with mine, that it doesn't - have you seen this research? Researcher Tashkin, a previously outspoken advocate of cannabis causes cancer, whose papers are often quoted by prohibitionists, has now changed his tune, now that he has actually studied real people (as opposed to petri dishes) and large sample numbers (as opposed to unrepresentative limited samples)...
Study shows risk of cancer lower for cannabis users than non users.
Even heavy long-term smoking of cannabis is not associated with cancer of the lung, upper airways, or esophagus, according to a case-control study by Dr Donald Tashkin that was presented to the annual conference of the International Cannabinoid Research Society.
Coming from Tashkin, this conclusion had extra significance. Over the years, Tashkin's lab at UCLA has produced evidence of the damage that marijuana smoke wreaks on bronchial tissue. It is Tashkin's research that is often cited when trying to link marijuana to lung cancer. Tashkin himself has long believed in a causal relationship.
"Our major hypothesis," he told the ICRS, "was that heavy, long term use of marijuana will increase the risk of lung and upper-airways cancers."
The study included 1209 residents of Los Angeles aged 18-59 with cancer (611 lung, 403 oral/pharyngeal, 90 laryngeal, and 108 esophageal), and 1040 cancer-free controls.
Exposure to cannabis was measured in joint years (1 joint year = 365 joints).
Compared with subjects who had used less than one joint year, the risk for lung cancer was 0.78 for 1-10 joint years, 0.74 for 10-30 joint years, 0.85 for 30-60 joint years, and 0.81 for more than 60 joint years.
A risk below 1.0 means that the risk for cannabis users was slightly lower than for non-users.
Similar results were obtained for the other cancer sites. There was no dose-response relationship of cancer risk, which means that there was no increased risk for more intensive users.
After presenting the study, Dr Tashkin said "I think that it would be difficult to extract from these data the conclusion that marijuana is protective against lung cancer. But that is not an unreasonable hypothesis."
The data on tobacco use, as expected, revealed a very potent effect and a clear dose-response relationship.
Morgenstern, H., Greenland, S., Zhang, Z-F., Cozen, W., Mack, T.M., and Tashkin, D.P.
Marijuana use and cancers of the lung and upper aerodigestive tract: results of a case-control study, presented ICRS conference (Florida) 24-27 June 2005
ICRS http://cannabinoidsociety.org/
IACM http://www.cannabis-med.org/
And I'm sticking with mine, that it doesn't - have you seen this research?
I am told from a reliable source that its possible that some of the Lung Cancer treatment providers are becoming aware of that New medical cannabis users seeking anti Chemo./radiolgy side effects are gaining more than just symptom relief.
I would be interested if anyone knows of any solid research , or any specialist who may be keeping records .
tony
Ok, I can find the press release of the Tashkin study, but I can't actually find a presented paper, I'm thinking it might be in the ICAM database part of their forum, but its down at the moment.
And so yeah, good point, don't jump from animal models to humans, but as much I'll admit you're right, no proven link, I'm still uneasy. 5 years is pretty poor for assessing mortality risk and the model for cancer suppression is rather unexplored.
If the competitive inhibition of CYP1A1 by delta-9-THC is actually the mechanism for prevention of carcinogenesis then to what extent is that inhibition affected by concentration? I can't find anything, but if others can?
Article-- Michael D. Roth, Jose A. Marques-Magallanes, Michael Yuan, Weimin Sun, Donald P. Tashkin, and Oliver Hankinson induction and regulation of the carcinogen mobilising enzyme CYP1A1 by marijuana smoke and delta-9-tetrahydrocannibinol. Am. J. Respir. Cell Mol. Biol., Volume 24, Number 3, March 2001 339-344
Tony - get started on these; Guzman M: Cannabinoids: Potential anticancer agents. Nat Rev Cancer 3:745-755, 2003
Massi P, Vaccani A, Ceruti S, et al: Antitumor effects of cannabidiol, a nonpsychoactive cannabinoid, on human glioma cell lines. J Pharmacol Exp Ther 308:838-845, 2004
This of course is the sort of press release our media never lets see the light of day , and i note Dunne has yet to quote.
tony
BMC Press release
18 October 2005
Cannabis smoke is less likely to cause cancer than tobacco smoke
Cannabis smoke is not as carcinogenic as tobacco smoke. In a review article published today in Harm Reduction Journal, Dr. Melamede from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, USA, writes that although cannabis smoke and tobacco smoke are chemically very similar, evidence suggests that their effects are very different and that cannabis smoke is less carcinogenic than tobacco smoke.
The pharmacological effects of tobacco and cannabis smoke differ in many ways, mainly because tobacco smoke contains nicotine while cannabis smoke contains tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The cancer-promoting effects of smoke are increased by nicotine, while they are reduced by THC.
Tobacco and cannabis smoke contain the same carcinogenic compounds - and depending on which part of the plant is smoked, cannabis smoke can contain more of them - but, whereas nicotine activates these carcinogenic compounds, THC has been shown to inhibit them in mice cells. THC is very likely to have protective effects against the carcinogens present in smoke in humans too, but cannabis smoke remains nonetheless carcinogenic.
While nicotine and THC can act on related cellular pathways, they bind to different receptors to activate these pathways. The cells of lungs and the respiratory passages are lined with nicotine receptors, but do not appear to carry THC receptors. This explains why cannabis smoking has not been associated with lung cancer, a main cause of death from cigarette smoking.
Cannabis has also been shown to kill cancer cells and to reduce tumour growth, in part by reducing the formation of blood vessels that feed tumours. But "the effects of cannabinoids are complex and sometimes contradicting," warns the author. In addition, as cannabis is frequently smoked with tobacco, the effects of the two drugs may interact in complex ways.
Cannabis is a class C drug in the UK and the USA. It has been linked to an increased risk of psychosis and schizophrenia, in a small group of vulnerable individuals. But there is increasing evidence that the drug has significant medicinal uses and can greatly improve the lives of patients suffering from a wide range of conditions, including multiple sclerosis, AIDS, Alzheimer's disease and insomnia. In spite of this, governments have been reluctant to legalize cannabis for medical use, on the grounds that the risks associated with the drug still outweigh its benefits.
# # #
This press release is based on the article:
Cannabis and Tobacco Smoke are not Equally Carcinogenic
Robert J Melamede
Harm Reduction Journal 2005, 2:21 (18 October 2005)
What I would like is the medical specialist who asked a patient ( having chemo and radiology )
quote
You have started to use cannabis have'nt you ,when this was confirmed , said .
I could tell , you seem to be managing so much better lately.
unquote
to tell others , we already know.
Has anyone come across a medical specialist who does not accept medipot works ??
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