CNN: Dr. Sanja Gupta: Cannabis versus Cancer (Disinfo Alert)

Dr Gupta, cherry-picking the science is not a good way to restore lost credibility.

Note: overall, the news that Sanjay Gupta has come out in favor of cannabis is a giant leap forward for all of us. While I am celebrating this breakthrough, I feel compelled to note certain things along the way. THC’s ability to heal a deadly disease is nothing to whitewash or ignore, so please excuse me if I sound rude, but I won’t be silent about this.

Why Gupta is now spreading more misinformation, in this case by what is not said, is unknown, but one could assume that the eventual goal of demonizing/minimizing the beneficial effects of THC, whilst hailing the “non-psychoactive” CBD, is to sell you pills, rather than allow you to think you can grow your own cancer cure. (If he didn’t apologize for misleading us, and appear to now be on the side of science, he could no longer be used to spread disinformation.)

I cannot believe that Sanjay, after an entire year of research, could have missed stuff like this:

Cristina Sanchez, a young biologist at Complutense University in Madrid, was studying cell metabolism when she noticed something peculiar. She had been screening brain cancer cells because they grow faster than normal cell lines and thus are useful for research purposes. But the cancer cells died each time they were exposed to tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the principal psychoactive ingredient of marijuana.

Instead of gaining insight into how cells function, Sanchez had stumbled upon the anti-cancer properties of THC. In 1998, she reported in a European biochemistry journal that THC “induces apoptosis [cell death] in C6 glioma cells,” an aggressive form of brain cancer.

Subsequent peer-reviewed studies in several countries would show that THC and other marijuana-derived compounds, known as “cannabinoids,” are effective not only for cancer-symptom management (nausea, pain, loss of appetite, fatigue), they also confer a direct antitumoral effect.

A team of Spanish scientists led by Manuel Guzman conducted the first clinical trial assessing the antitumoral action of THC on human beings. Guzman administered pure THC via a catheter into the tumors of nine hospitalized patients with glioblastoma, who had failed to respond to standard brain-cancer therapies. The results were published in 2006 in the British Journal of Pharmacology: THC treatment was associated with significantly reduced tumor cell proliferation in every test subject.

Around the same time, Harvard University scientists reported that THC slows tumor growth in common lung cancer and “significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread.” What’s more, like a heat-seeking missile, THC selectively targets and destroys tumor cells while leaving healthy cells unscathed. Conventional chemotherapy drugs, by contrast, are highly toxic; they indiscriminately damage the brain and body. SOURCE

Further, there is a subtle demonizing of the euphoric effects of THC, headed by Dr Sanjay Gupta. This is unfounded and more reefer madness. Per Harvard’s Dr Lester Grinspoon:

As for getting high, I am not convinced that the therapeutic benefits of cannabis can always be separated from its psychoactive effects. For example, many patients with multiple sclerosis who use marijuana speak of “feeling better” as well as of the relief from muscle spasms and other symptoms. If cannabis contributes to this mood elevation, should patients be deprived of it?

As Ryan Grimm states, “…this is politics….[Gupta] admits that this is not the result of new science having been created. It’s the result of him, he says, looking at some of the science that had been done.”

Related articles

• CNN’s Gupta: I was wrong about marijuana (sacbee.com)
• Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s pot confessional gets global headlines (cnn.com)