February 15, 2007

• Drugs

  Miracle Drug & Cancer Cure

     “The New Scientist is reporting that researchers working at the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada have discovered that an existing drug called dichloroacetate (DCA) is effective in killing cancer cells, while leaving the host’s healthy cells unharmed.

      DCA has already been used for years to treat metabolic disorders, and is known to be fairly safe. Why is the mainstream news media failing to report on this potential breakthrough?

     The University of Alberta and the Alberta Cancer Board have set up a site with more info, where you can also donate to support future clinical trials.

   

   

  Pot, Cures Lung Cancer!!!

  
  Friday, May 26, 2006 (SF Chronicle)
  Researchers surprised to find no link between marijuana, lung
  cancer/Study’s findings apply even to heavy pot smokers
  Marc Kaufman, Washington Post
  
  
     The largest study of its kind has unexpectedly concluded that
  smoking marijuana, even regularly and heavily, does not lead to lung cancer.
     The new findings “were against our expectations,” said Dr. Donald
  Tashkin, a UCLA pulmonologist who has studied marijuana for 30 years.
     “We hypothesized that there would be a positive association between
  marijuana use and lung cancer and that the association would be more
  positive with heavier use,” he said. “What we found instead was no
  association at all, and even a suggestion of some protective effect.”
     Federal health and drug enforcement officials have widely used
  Tashkin’s previous work on marijuana to make the case that the drug is dangerous.
  Tashkin said that while he still believes marijuana is potentially
  harmful, its cancer-causing effects appear to be of less concern than
  previously thought.
     Earlier work established that marijuana does contain cancer-causing
  chemicals as potentially harmful as those in tobacco, he said. However,
  marijuana also contains the chemical THC, which he said may kill aging
  cells and keep them from becoming cancerous.
     Tashkin’s study, funded by the National Institutes of Health’s
  National Institute on Drug Abuse, involved 1,200 people in Los Angeles who had
  lung, neck or head cancer and an additional 1,040 people without cancer
  matched by age, sex and neighborhood.
     They were all asked about their lifetime use of marijuana, tobacco
  and alcohol. The heaviest marijuana smokers had lit up more than 22,000
  times,
  while moderately heavy usage was defined as smoking 11,000 to 22,000
  marijuana cigarettes. Tashkin found that even the very heavy marijuana
  smokers showed no increased incidence of the three cancers studied.
     “This is the largest case-control study ever done, and everyone had
  to fill out a very extensive questionnaire about marijuana use,” he said.
  “Bias can creep into any research, but we controlled for as many
  confounding factors as we could, and so I believe these results have
  real meaning.”
     Tashkin’s group at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA had
  hypothesized that marijuana would raise the risk of cancer on the basis
  of earlier small human studies, lab studies of animals and the fact that
  marijuana users inhale more deeply and generally hold smoke in their
  lungs
  longer than tobacco smokers — exposing them to the dangerous chemicals
  for a longer time. In addition, Tashkin said, previous studies found
  that marijuana tar has 50 percent higher concentrations of chemicals linked
  to cancer than tobacco cigarette tar.
     While no association between marijuana smoking and cancer was found,
  the study findings, presented to the American Thoracic Society
  International Conference this week, did find a 20-fold increase in lung cancer among
  people who smoked two or more packs of cigarettes a day.
     The study was limited to people younger than 60 because those older
  than that were generally not exposed to marijuana use in their youth, when
  itis most frequently tried.
  ———————————————————————-
  The original article can be found on SFGate.com here:
  http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2006/05/26/MNGAKJ2S481.DTL
  ———————————————————————
  
  

  • 6:46 pm
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