F.D.A. Dismisses Medical Benefit from Marijuana
The F.D.A has yet again favored the pharmaceutical cartel by declaring that Marijuana can not be used as a medicine, that there are no scientific studies that support its medical properties.
 | Marinol, a synthetic version of a marijuana component, is approved to treat anorexia associated with AIDS and the nausea and vomiting associated with cancer drug therapy. Well, that is all fine and good but let's look behind the sheep's clothing and see what is under there. The maker of Marinol is Unimed Pharmaceuticals, Inc. Which is directly connected to the Bush administration. |
| The real thing |
The patented, registered and approved synthetic drug is approved but the natural form of marijuana must be kept off the market as it has no scientifically proven benefit. That means that the The Food and Drug Administration statement directly contradicts a 1999 review by the Institute of Medicine, a part of the National Academy of Sciences, the nation's most prestigious scientific advisory agency.
Dr. John Benson, co-chair of the Institute of Medicine panel that examined the research into marijuana's effects, said that the FDA statement and the combined review by other agencies were wrong. The government "loves to ignore our report," said Benson. "They would rather it never happened."
A natural occurring substance can not be patented and therefore the pharmaceutical racket works to keep natural products off the market by criminalizing their use while their patented synthetic drug is approved though less effective than the natural substance and at a price that is even higher than if it were procured on the black market.
Comments
From GoozNews:
FDA Approves Pot! (the chemical version)
I let this pass last week, but I've been meaning to come back to it when I got a few spare moments (which inevitably come around 10:30 p.m. at night when I'm having a glass of red wine to help me get ready for Jon Stewart's Daily Show).
While a few of the newspaper accounts about the FDA statement on medical marijuana (in response to pressure from Capitol Hill) mentioned this fact, it bears repeating: the FDA has already approved the active ingredient in pot as a drug. Unimed's Marinol (dronabinol) is the chemical THC. It's been approved to combat AIDS wasting and as an anti-nausea agent for people on chemotherapy.
Hmmm. It gives you the munchies and settles your stomach. Sounds like pot to me.
A careful reading of the FDA-approved label (reprinted here), however, provides good reason for testing whether smoking dope may have advantages over using its chemical extract. The clinical trial proving it rebuilt appetites for people suffering from AIDS wasting showed that the effects of the pill version did not kick in until two weeks after the onset of therapy. In other words, there's a trade off. You get lung cancer-causing tars with the dope, but you get the munchies a lot quicker. That's a cost-benefit analysis suitable for FDA analysis.
If I were dying of AIDS or cancer, it would seem like a reasonable trade off to me. Indeed, I spent some time this year with a friend who smoked a lot of marijuana to reduce his need for heavy narcotics as he lay dying of pancreatic cancer. It gave his family many more positive moments together during his final months than would otherwise have been the case. I doubt that would have been the case had he been taking THC as an antiemetic.
Posted by: Sepp | May 3, 2006 12:36 PM
i would like to see where you got your information on the "cancer causing tars" in marijuana smoke
it has been clearly proven that marijuana is a benign substance and actually helps prevent cancer because thc kills older cancer-causing cells.
Posted by: Anonymous | March 9, 2007 06:05 PM