Marijuana
Daily Observer
An article in the
New York Times reported that patients on cancer chemotherapy are better able to
withstand the nausea-inducing effects of chemotherapy when they take marijuana
in conjunction with the chemicals
Getting on the bandwagon the Food and Drug Administration
(FDA) will encourage pharmaceutical companies to apply for permission to
manufacture to manufacture Delta Nine
Well apparently it does, and this knowledge came off the
street not from the august research laboratories performing government
sponsored cancer programs.
It is indisputable that the government, the FDA, and the
Boards of Medical Examiners have intimidated doctors and pharmaceutical
companies alike to the point that the sensible application of known chemicals
such as heroin, cocaine and marijuana is discouraged, and as a result people
suffer needlessly.
There is for all of us a time to live and a time to die, and
the right at certain stages of life, to live without pain or anxiety. There
comes a time when death is more precious than life, and the transition must be
monitored by loved ones, with the assistance of the caring doctors and nurses.
Governing death by committee is a sacrilege. Patients receiving chemotherapy
for cancer have turned to the street for surcease from their suffering and the
time will come when the street people will be called to help the custodial
numbing of mind and body that some of the aged suffer in nursing homes.
There is a place for drugs but we have permitted them to
exist in schools instead of hospitals. Finally then it is the street children
who have taught the chemotherapists how best to supplement their medications.
There are perhaps four or five classes of chemotherapeutic
drugs designed to kill cancer cells and the mixtures and dose schedules are
passed down to doctors who practice this dismal specialty. The guidelines are
strict, and protocols of treatment in many large institutions are of research
quality, the results being fed back to computers to be measured against other
protocols. It is sort of stupid work because when a cure for cancer is
discovered it will not require statistical corroboration.
I am not saying that doctors should not keep records, but am
saying that the cancer chemotherapeutic agents should not be limited to cancer
specialists. One reason is that they have been programmed to restrict their
imaginations with respect to treatment regimens. In cancer therapy today there
is little freedom of the intellectual marketplace. Lessons learned from one set
of conditions have profitably applied to another.
The great advances in medicine have not always originated in
research laboratories. They often were outgrowths of botany usages, passed from
generation to generation by trial and tradition. Medical research, defined,
refined and institutionalized these observations, and thus we learned about
their mechanism of action. But the original observation that set the course
often sprouted from the grass roots (and routes).
Now the purpose of this is not to put research down. There
is original thought provoking departures from the norm creating new pathways;
but there is also humdrum research in which statistical methodology is used to
prove or disprove a point in dispute. This is helpful but does not provide the
substance of progress, and should not be confused with original science. I am
not intrigued by proofs that one treatment schedule when compared to increases
longevity by as much as fourteen months. That is prolongation not progress. But
I am intrigued when my learned colleagues get and willingly accept help from
the street.
Let us accept knowledge from any and every source. When
things come to a dead end, not only must we go back to the drawing board, but
perhaps back to the graffiti as well.