Marijuana Compound May Fight Lung Cancer
While smoking marijuana is never good for the lungs, the active ingredient in pot may help fight lung cancer, new research shows.
Harvard University researchers have found that, in both laboratory and mouse studies, delta-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) cuts tumor growth in half in common lung cancer while impeding the cancer’s ability to spread.
The compound “seems to have a suppressive effect on certain lines of cancer cells,” explained Dr. Len Horovitz, a pulmonary specialist at Lenox Hill Hospital in New York City.
According to the researchers, THC fights lung cancer by curbing epidermal growth factor (EGF), a molecule that promotes the growth and spread of particularly aggressive non-small cell lung cancers. “It seems to go to (EGF) receptor sites on cells and inhibit growth,” said Horovitz, who was not involved in the study.
The findings are preliminary, however, and other outside experts urged caution.
“It’s an interesting laboratory study (but) you have to have enough additional animal studies to make sure the effect is reproducible and to make sure that there are no overt toxic effects,” said Dr. Norman Edelman, chief medical officer of the American Lung Association. “It’s a little more than tantalizing because it’s a compound that we know has been in humans and has not caused major problems.”
The findings were to be presented this week at the annual meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) in Los Angeles.
Lung cancer is the number one cancer killer in the world. Lung tumors that over-produce the EGF receptor tend to be extra-aggressive and don’t respond well to chemotherapy.
THC is the main active ingredient of Cannabis sativa –marijuana. It has been shown to inhibit tumor growth in cancer, but specific information on its action against lung cancer has so far been limited.
In the new study, the researchers first showed that two different lung cancer lines, as well as samples from patient lung tumors, produced the cannabinoid receptors CB1 and CB2.
Endocannabinoids — cannabinoids produced naturally in the body — are thought to have an effect on pain, anxiety and inflammation when they bind to cannabinoid receptors.
Next, the researchers injected standard doses of THC into mice implanted with human lung cancer cells. After three weeks of treatment, tumors shrank by about 50 percent in animals treated with THC, compared to those in an untreated control group, the researchers reported.
The findings may shed light on a question that has been puzzling Horovitz: Why hasn’t there been a spike in lung cancer in the generation that smoked a lot of marijuana in the 1960s.
“I find it fascinating, wondering if the reasons we’re not seeing this spike is that THC inhibits lung cancer cells,” he said. “It would be very ironic, although you certainly wouldn’t tell somebody who smoked cigarettes to add marijuana.”
A second set of findings presented at AACR suggested that a viral-based gene therapy could target both primary and distant tumors, while ignoring healthy cells.
When injected into 15 mice with prostate cancer, this “smart bomb” therapy eliminated all signs of cancer — effectively curing the rodents. Researchers at Columbia University, in New York City, said the therapy also worked in animals with breast cancer and melanomas.
And in a third hopeful trial reported at the meeting, German researchers at University Children’s Hospital, in Ulm, said they’ve used measles viruses to treat brain tumors. In mouse experiments, the virus attached to the tumor from the inside out, the team said.
(HealthDay News)
Filed Under: Offbeat News
THC cures lung cancer?
THC is the active ingredient in marjhuana and hashish, if you didn’t know. This stuff apparently cuts tumor growth in half and also inhibits the tumor’s ability to grow. Which is why all those hippies never get lung cancer – a strange statistic that …
[...] That’s right ladies and gentalmen, toke away. [...]
This is nothing knew.
American scientists had that info in 1974 even though they continue to persuade people take their life threatening prescription drugs (of which some of my closest friends are addicted).
If the government wants to stop kids from taking drugs that “open their mind” and make them “drop out” than they should stop pushing drugs on them and the American people that in fact numb the mind and the senses.
Many children with ADHD are given large quantities of health threatening drugs that “get them to behave”.
It should be no supprize that many of these kids (after years of having their senses numbed out) decide to then take the “other drugs” that increase their mind and sense activation-and or stimulation.
Once America becomes a nation of non-smoking teetotalers than it will have the moral authority to declare a “war on drugs”, once it ceases promoting the philosophy of the “quik fix”.
Mabey the youth would then be unattracted to drugs that give them freedom from society.
Until then they can expect their children to eventually discover the drugs that “free their mind”; an act which is in fact essential when you have been dead on prescription drugs your whole life.
If the youth of India started taking LSD and smoking pot it would be quite a tradgety because Indian culture is so pure when it comes to REAL health.
But in America taking LSD and marijuana is essential to climbing out of the deep pit in which the drug companies, FDA, have left it’s citizens.
It is the way to gradually evolve out of the genetically damaging effects that American life will have on it’s future generations.
The perfect detox from American drugs (or individuals who a strongly dependent on sense numbing drugs) is to take LSD and marijuana for two or three years (LSD no more than 10 times a year of course)(marijuana no more than once a day) directly followed by a complete herbal detox regiment for five years, even still followed by a more or less vegetarian diet of organic fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains and multi-vitamins.
After 10 years of gradual mental, physical, and spiritual detoxification then, mabey, America will be able to defeat it’s drug and health problem permanently.
In life one must not go to extremes, and this is why I suggest first replacing the over the counter sense numbing drugs with natural and psychoactive-transcendental ones, because you should not go from being a comfortably numb drug addict to a drug free individual in the wink of an eye, this could have strange effects on the evolution of the genetic family.
As for hard illegal drug addiction one must look into the psychoactive plant known as “ibogain” it substantially lowers withdraw symptoms from previous dope fiends, coke monsters, and cracks heads in 3 days!
Of course this extreme treatment for such an extreme mental illness is totally illegal because it is not “manufactured” by the “drug companies”.
Doesn’t it just make you want to declare jihad against these devils?
I just finished reading a book by Kevin Trudeau entitled “Natural cures “they” don’t want you to know about”.
In it he describes how the FDA purposely looks to annihilate all natural opposition to the “profits” by conducting smear campaigns on all natural cures for various health problems.
Whether it is a cure for cancer, aids, or addiction it seems that those who run these companies are trying to make people sicker in the long run by giving them a drug that works like a charm in the short run (and they have the nerve to criticize the hippies!)
Rather than stimulating creativity and cures for the ills of society the drug lobbyists prefer to have the working Americans on Prozac as they sell them chemically dangerous food that makes them depressed, hungry, fat and in search of a momentary rush.
If people thought more reasonably instead of in terms of “the saved and the unsaved” mabey many of the social and cultural problems that are only fuel for the drug problem in America could be permanently won.
Living in truth is eventually the most rewarding, and since we will be dead when future generations inherit the earth it would only be wise to seek the solutions that will conquer fear, lies, and death for the the future instead of ALWAYS relying on the “quick fix” which is all marijuana and other psychoactive plants do for it’s users anyway(giving them a moment of heaven in a hellish world of lies and cyclical death).
Only then will America get over it’s drug problem.
Until then “inhale, smile, and precede to the next song” as Abbie Hoffman once said.
Marijuana is not a drug…drugs are man made…marijuana grows naturally all over the world…
It may just be the finest , and most misused plant in the world. all the plant can be used for extremely benificial uses , and that scares the powers that are in charge.