Does Cannabis Oil Really Cure Cancer?

By James Donahue

The cannabis plant has been shown in studies by research teams in various parts of the world to be an amazing treatment if not a cure for everything from joint pain to glaucoma, but now there is a lot of Internet chatter, including a few research papers, linking cannabis oil as a potential treatment for certain types of cancer.

While it is well known that the cannabinoids found in the plant have been successfully used for pain and for the reduction of nausea from chemotherapy, researchers have been reluctant to recommend the use of cannabis for treatment of a variety of other human disorders, mostly because cannabis remains listed as an illegal substance by the U. S. government.

The American Glaucoma Society admits that cannabis lowers intraocular pressure of the eyes, but still recommends against its use by glaucoma patients because of what it calls "a lack of evidence" that it cures the disease.

Researchers also admit that cannabis works as an appetite stimulant and has an analgesic effect, eases muscle spasms, anxiety and may even ease symptoms of AIDS patients.

Use of the plant also appears to ease symptoms of multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, Huntington’s disease and Parkinson’s disease. It also lessens the effects of Alzheimer’s disease, slows cell damage in some types of diabetes, and shows value as a treatment for Tourette syndrome.

This has all been proven in research studies, mostly done by scientists working with cannabis in countries where the plant is not found to be illegal to grow and use. But United States medical people are still refusing to recognize this amazing plant as a miracle cure-all for so much human discomfort and suffering.

Why is this? We believe it is because doing so would be very costly to the pharmaceutical industry which furnishes costly drugs to treat all of the above. It also would be costly for the medical insurance industry which covers the accepted medical treatments for these conditions.

Allowing patients to freely grow marijuana plants in their back yard and then smoke the leaves, consume the oil from the seeds and cure themselves would be devastating to the entire medical industry in the United States. Doctors who have spent fortunes getting degrees and licenses to specialize in the treatment of these diseases would suddenly find themselves out of business.

Among the most important parts of the medical/industrial complex has been the field of Oncology – or the treatment of cancer. And a search of the Internet will produce volumes of personal accounts by former cancer patients who medicated themselves back to health by consuming cannabis oils.

Does it work, or is it all a hoax? How can we know truth from fiction here? People just diagnosed with cancer are faced with hard choices here . . . do they dare put their faith in a treatment that their doctor says is a hoax, or do they subject themselves to months of pain and suffering in the nearest Oncology treatment facility?

A recent article by Robert Cushing that appeared in Alternet claimed that a research team at the Medical College of Virginia conducted a study of the effects of cannabis on cancer in rats in 1974 that proved the oil, when consumed in concentrated forms, actually shrank cancer cells. The experiment found that the treatment cured all forms of cancer, in all stages, without causing any side effects. The cannabis worked fast, and it also strengthened and rejuvenated healthy cells. It was found to be the perfect cure for cancer.

Because of the political and financial implications, Cushing wrote that the Drug Enforcement Administration closed down the study and destroyed the report so the American people never knew about it.

But in 2000 another research team in Madrid, Spain, conducted the same study and reached the same results. The Madrid study, led by Dr. Manuel Guzman at Complutense University, was published that year in Nature Medicine magazine. The results were ignored by the American media.

It is said that with President Nixon saw the results of the Virginia study, he threw the report in the trash the declared the study classified. In 1976, President Gerald Ford stopped all public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to major pharmaceutical companies, where the information disappeared.

In 1983, the Reagan/Bush Administration attempted to persuade American universities and researchers to destroy all 196676 cannabis research work. Consequently, most of the literature about that monumental study has disappeared.

We all know that synthetic forms of THC, developed by the pharmaceutical companies, have proved ineffective.

Thanks to the Internet, however, the word is being spread around the world. More and more people are trying, perhaps out of desperation, to self-medicate themselves with cannabis oils rather than face the torture of surgery and months of chemotherapy that is their only alternative.