GOOD MEDICINE

Vainly trying to dig to the bottom of my inbox today and there's some articles I want to post for you before they get lost in the endless stream of information. To begin with, there's this excellent analysis by Richard Cowan, If Cannabis Could Cure Cancer, They Would Tell Us, Right?

Cowan adroitly illustrates with a case study of Steve Kubby - who suffers from an extremely rare form of adrenal cancer, pheochromocytoma, that kills almost all of its victims within a few years - the answer to that question is no and the reason is simply because that information is a threat to cannabis prohibition.

The article tackles a complex subject and connects the dots for the layman between the research and the politics that suppress its results.

In layman’s terms, medicinal substances and treatments generally fall into three categories, palliative, therapeutic and curative. Palliatives relieve the symptoms of the disease, reducing the suffering of the patients.

...A therapeutic substance may prevent the disease from doing further damage to the body.

...Finally, a curative treatment or substance eliminates the disease itself. Antibiotics that kill pathogens, and chemotherapy, radiation and surgery for cancer are the most obvious example of curatives.

Most people do not think of cannabis as a curative, but it seems that may be about to change.

The piece is richly linked to supporting documents including this article in a special issue of Nature Magazine by Dr. Manuel Guzman of the Complutense University in Spain describes how cannabinoids might even be able to cure cancer, including pheochromocytoma.

Cowan also notes that Steve Kubby has survived for over 25 years, using only cannabis. This is just another illustration of the cruel disregard with which the prohibitionists hold the American public. They would rather advance their own punative agendas than admit they are wrong about cannabis and allow patients humane relief.

---

IT HURTS DOC

I have one good thing to say about that bloated windbag Limbaugh, his fall from grace certainly has brought the issue of pain management to the forefront. Many experts feel the under-treatment of chronic pain is the primary health issue in America. So I imagine, do the patients suffering from inadequate pain relief.

Frank Owen published an insightful piece in the Village Voice last week, on The DEA's War on Pain Doctors.

This article offers an inside look at the medical community's response to having been made victims to this unholy War On Some Drugs and Users.

"The war on drugs has turned into a war on doctors and pain patients," says Dr. Ronald Myers, president of the American Pain Institute and a Baptist minister who operates a string of clinics for poor people in the Mississippi Delta. "Such is the climate of fear across the medical community that for every doctor who has his license yanked by the DEA, there are a hundred doctors scared to prescribe proper pain medication for fear of going to prison. The DEA is creating a situation where legitimate pain patients now have to go to the streets to get their medication. It's a health care catastrophe in the making."

The DEA created climate of fear within the ranks of medical providers comprises the quality of your health care in the US for purely political reasons.

...medical schools advise students not to choose pain management as a career because the field is too fraught with potential legal dangers.

...some doctors believe that the DEA, having conspicuously failed to stem the tide of illegal drug use in this country, is coming after physicians to ratchet up the agency's prosecution count.

"They're unable to take down the real drug lords, so they're coming after doctors using the same tactics," one pain physician tells the Voice. For an agency keen to justify its massive budget, doctors provide an easy target.

Living with pain is not the worst of the ramifications of this DEA meddling.

"Opioids when taken under clinical supervision are not that dangerous," says the American Pain Institute's Myers. "The data tells us that only 3 percent of people who take opioids become addicts. The latest research conclusively shows that the best medicines for the treatment of chronic pain are narcotics. They have less side effects and more benefits than any other type of drug."

More dangerous, contends Myers, are the everyday drugs that pain sufferers turn to when they can't get narcotics. He talks about something called "suicide by Tylenol": "When chronic pain patients can't get opioids, they go out and use tremendous amounts of drugs like Tylenol and Motrin, which can cause serious liver and kidney damage. Pain patients are dying from kidney and liver disease because of this."

Many pain patients are also dying by their own hand, according to the Pain Relief Network's Reynolds. "All over America, pain patients are committing suicide because of the DEA's campaign," she claims.

The article also notes this year alone, two federal reviews lambasted the DEA for its poor performance in fighting illegal drug use, one report giving the agency a zero on a scale of one to 100. So why is a agency that has so bungled its campaign against illegal drugs allowed to meddle in the precribing of legal ones?

The Association of American Physicians and Surgeons recently released a statement in reponse to current DEA prosecutions saying that doctors who treat pain patients are heroes, not felons.

And in the current issue of the AMA newsletter, the organization has taken this position:

Preventing drug abuse is remains an important societal goal—it should not hinder patient’s ability to receive the care they need and deserve or discourage physicians from prescribing pain medications when medically appropriate.

DEA agents are not doctors and have no objective means to determine if a physcian is practicing responsibly. It seems to me the medical community has its own highly effective peer review system for that.

---

POWELL'S CHEMICAL REACTION

You know, it's the hypocrisy inside the beltway that really pisses me off. All these rabid prohibitionists wanting to impose their morality on my personal choices, very few of them are exactly living exemplary lifestyles.

Last word today comes courtesy of Jules Siegel's eagle eye who spotted this quote from our Secretary of State, Colin Powell in a recent issue of the Washington Post.

Powell described his killer schedule in an interview Thursday with Abdul Rahman Al-Rashed, a reporter for a London-based Saudi newspaper.

"So do you use sleeping tablets to organize yourself?" Al-Rashed asked.

"Yes. Well, I wouldn't call them that," Powell said. "They're a wonderful medication -- not medication. How would you call it? They're called Ambien, which is very good. You don't use Ambien? Everybody here uses Ambien."

So let me get this straight. I smoke an unprocessed plant and they call it a drug, they take chemicals with soothing names and those are not a drug?

You can bet they take a whole lot more than just Ambien inside the vaulted walls and I'd bet the farm no one is losing sleep on that side of the river wondering if their doctor will be busted for prescribing their medications - oops, not medications to them.

---