Robert Melamede, Professor of Biology at UC Colorado Springs, on the medical value of cannabis

Robert Melamede, Ph.D. in Molecular Biology & Biochemistry, is a biology professor at University of Colorado, Colorado Springs (and former chairman of the dept.) This link isn't available via youtube so I am posting it here in GD in order to demonstrate, yet again, the medical value of cannabis.

Here is a 40 minute video of a presentation Melamede gave relating the way in which endocannbinoids regulate various bodily functions, and how exocannbinoids are supplements when people fight disease. At minute 37, Melamede shows the photographic evidence from Guzman's research in Spain (which has been mentioned here many times before) into glioma and how cannabis shrinks brain cancer cells and how, incredibly, some of the mice actually survived. Because cannabis also has neuroprotective qualities, the nerve cells surrounding the cancer cells are not harmed. Because of this evidence, Melamede states that cannabis kills cancer cells.

This research was done on mice but research on humans is already in progress in Spain.

http://www.archive.org/details/HolisticBiochemistryOfCannabinoids-Robert Melamede

Melamede has come to a point in his research and life at which he has developed an over-arching view of cannabis in relation to human bodily functions and now views them as an "essential nutrient." I cannot go that far - but I don't have his background, either. Melamede notes that cannabinoids are part of that balance in other ways - excessive endocannbinoids naturally produced by females may contribute to infertility because the endocannabinoids are turned down during ovulation to facilitate implantation on the uterine wall. Melamede states his career has been about applying the work of Ilya Prigogine to the discipline of biology. Malemede talks about balance as the organizing system in our health - and notes that various belief systems have recognized this value of balance as well -

and, come to think of it, it's supposedly the organizing principle behind our democracy with a balance of powers and the legislative capacity to correct imbalances of power...but I digress...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilya_Prigogine

Melamede is now the president of Cannabis Science, a company dedicated to cannabis research. Here's his take on cannabis after years of study on its effects on humans (this is a transcription from another video)

People are generally aware that Omega-3's are good for you and they inhibit various cardiovascular problems. What most people are not aware of is that (Omega-3s) are participating directly in the endocannabinoid system, in that they make a variety of our endocannabinoids, and they are part of the bigger picture of lipid metabolism of which the endocannabinoid system is kind of a central focal point.

So there are numerous benefits from these essential fatty acids that we can help modulate. We can change our biochemistry by our nutritional intake. But going beyond that, (there are) certain limitations to how much you can vary your endocannabinoid activity from that nutritional point of view. So that for many, many, many people with a whole huge spectrum of illnesses, ranging from cardiovascular disease, skeletal disease like osteoporosis, cognitive dysfunction from neurological deterioration associated with aging, and literally all the auto-immune diseases, and many cancers - they all have free radicals as part of their ideology. And cannabinoids, be they the ones we make or the ones we take in, benefit those.

I wanted to post this here because, so often, people have doubted the brain cancer-killing aspect of cannabinoid in therapeutic applications and this video shows part of the evidence for this claim.

And I thought Obama was in favor of science-based evidence to help make public policy.

Maybe not.


Thank you for posting this.

Recommended.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compassionate_Investigational_New_Drug_program

Irvin Rosenfeld, who joined the program in 1983, is the most public of the remaining patients and has been using legal federal marijuana for the longest amount of time. He has been featured in numerous print articles and on the Penn & Teller: Bullshit! cable television series. Rosenfeld has had the disease Multiple Congenital Cartilaginous Exostoses since childhood. It is a painful disorder which causes bone tumors to form at the joints, stretching the surrounding tendons and veins, making movement almost impossible. Rosenfeld has had 30 tumors removed in six operations. He still has 200 tumors, some too small to remove, yet in the 30 years he has been smoking marijuana, he says, he has not had a new tumor. Irvin Rosenfeld is a successful stockbroker working and living in South Florida. He is also the author of My Medicine, a 2010 book detailing his lifetime history of medical issues, his use of cannabis to manage them, and his interactions with the legal and medical authorities.<3>

Rosenfeld is one of the medical marijuana patients that receives his medicine from the U.S. government.

Congress needs to act on the latest federal decriminalization bill and let states choose whether to allow medical cannabis. What state would choose to continue a law that prohibits medical care because of 70 years of racism? (I hope the answer to that is none.)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x599118

as Rosenfeld notes - the federal govt has refused to even study the effects on those who are using federally supplied medical marijuana because their policies are such lies they can't be bothered with actual research. hey, they don't need no stinkin' research. it interferes with their bullshit lies.

(though I no longer expect it in my lifetime).

all the work that people have been doing for years to bring some evidence-based policy-making to the govt. will eventually so embarrass those who try to defend the WoD that it will be supplanted with something that benefits another group - in this case, the American people.

If you present the American people with evidence of the medical value of cannabis - most of them get it - most of us get it now.

But, apparently, federal pols and bureaucrats are infected with reefer madness - the real kind - that cannot accept evidence and who are willing to harm the American people with their intransigence.

it's just incredibly stupid - or corrupt.

http://tpmmuckraker.talkingpointsmemo.com/2011/07/feds_take_3194_days_to_decide_they_still_dont_like_marijuana.php?ref=fpc

In a little-noticed ruling in Friday's federal register, the Drug Enforcement Administration denies the request to downgrade marijuana's classification. It was the third time that DEA has responded to petitions to reschedule the drug (one in 1992 and once in 2001), DEA spokeswoman Barbara Carreno told TPM.

In a letter from DEA Administrator Michele M. Leonhart, the agency said that based on the recommendation of the Department of Health and Human Services they were denying the request because marijuana a has "a high potential for abuse, has no accepted medical use in the United States, and lacks an acceptable level of safety for use even under medical supervision."

"There is evidence that individuals are taking the substance in amounts sufficient to create a hazard to their health or to the safety of other individuals or to the community," the government argued in the report.

So, is Leonhart stupid? Is she so ignorant that she cannot look at what is, in reality, more than 30 years worth of research into the medical viability of cannabis? (Thirty plus years considering the early research that was censored in this nation that showed tumor reduction)

Are these people in the halls of govt so fucking stupid they cannot understand the most basic ways in which peer-reviewed and evidence-based science works? Are they so totally worthless and undeserving of their positions that they cannot bother to read actual research?

I guess most of us recognize this answer to the rescheduling question is not because they're so fucking stupid - tho, who knows, maybe that plays a part in this ruling. The reality seems to be that these people are so irresponsible that they would prefer to continue to allow people to suffer and die so that a few organizations can profit from it.

That's even worse than being a stupid fuck.

There's a pdf link to the full report at the article, above.

these folks have shown they are some of the most disgusting little shits I could ever imagine.

anyone who respects "power" is a fool.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=385&topic_id=599009&mesg_id=599009

The Truth About Medical Marijuana

You can hear Dr. Donald Abrams, at about 30 minutes in, talk about his research - the way the govt here tried to deny him funds or material for that research unless the govt was assured the purpose was to try to find something bad about cannabis and other medicines, and how the esteemed New England Journal of Medicine had readers for Abrams' work who were so blinded by propaganda that they couldn't accept evidence-based science that proved their prejudices wrong.

Dr. Abrams is a Professor of Clinical Medicine at UCSF, Asst. Director of the AIDS program at San Francisco General Hospital and medical researcher who has conducted clinical trials with medicinal marijuana since 1997.

from Dr. Ethan Russo

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x598826

Russo claims that cannabis is the most useful plant on earth.

He's also the one doctor who did a patient study on Irvin Rosenfeld and other federally-supplied medical marijuana patients. Russo noted that the govt supplied cannabis is really inferior. The govt claims they have better product but it clogs up the rolling machines b/c it's so sticky. well, we all know those rolling machines are also more important than patient health and there is no other delivery system available to those patients. /snark.