U.S. Government Suppressed Marijuana-Tumor Research

error"then the body count alone will make this one of the biggest holocausts in recorded history. Virtually all federal drug policy makers of both parties since 1975 -- including legislators, presidents, and the DEA -- will be complicit and criminally liable.
That's why they don't want this story covered.

To learn the history of cannabis prohibition, read www.jackherer.com.
To read my story, type in the address at the beginning of this segment.

Raymond Cushing: raymondcushing@ireland.com




U.S. Government Suppressed Marijuana-Tumor Research
reprinted from 25th Anniversary Edition Censored 2001

featuring 25 Years of Censored News and the Top Censored Stories of
the Year

by Peter Phillips & Project Censored

http://www.projectcensored.org/

Author: Raymond Cushing

www.alternet.org/print.html?StoryID=9257

A Spanish medical team's study released in Madrid in February 2000
has shown that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active chemical in
marijuana, destroys tumors in lab rats. These findings, however, are
not news to the U.S. government. A study in Virginia in 1974 yielded
similar results but was suppressed by the DEA, and in 1983 the
Reagan/Bush administration tried to persuade U.S. universities and
researchers to destroy all cannabis research work done between 1966
and 1976, including compendiums in libraries.

The research was conducted by a medical team led by Dr. Manuel
Guzman of Complutence University in Madrid. In the study, brains of 45
lab rats were injected with a cancer cell, which produced tumors. On
the twelfth day of the experiment, 15 of the rats were injected with THC
and 15 with Win-55, 212-12, a synthetic compound similar to THC. The
untreated rats died 12-18 days after the developoment of the tumors.
THC treated rats lived significantly longer than the control group.
Although three were unaffected by the THC, nine lived 19-35 days,
while tumors were completely eradicated in three others. The rats
treated with Win-55, 212-12 showed similar results.

In an e-mail interview for this story, the Madrid researcher said he had
heard of the Virginia study, but had never been able to locate
literature on it. "I am aware of the existence of that research. In fact I
have attempted many times to obtain the journal article on the
original investigation by these people, but it has proven impossible,"
Guzman said. His response wasn't surprising, considering that in 1983
the Reagan/Bush administration tried to persuade the American
universities and researchers to destroy all 1966-76 cannabis research
work, including compendiums in libraries, reports Jack Herer. "We know
that large amounts of information have since disappeared," he says.

Guzman provided the title of the work -- "Antineoplastic Activity of
Cannabinoids," an article in a 1975 Journal of the National Cancer
Institute -- and author Raymond Cushing obtained a copy at the UC
Medical School library in Davis, California, and faxed it to Madrid. The
1975 article does not mention breast cancer tumors, which were
featured in the only newspaper story ever to appear about the 1974
study in the local section of the Washington Post on August 18, 1974.
The headline read, "Cancer Curb Is Studied," and was followed in part
by, "The active chemical agent in marijuana curbs the growth of three
kinds of cancer in mice and may also suppress the immunity reaction
that causes rejection of organ transplants, a Medical College of Virginia
team has discovered. The researchers found that THC slowed the
growth of lung cancers, breast cancers, and a virus-induced leukemia
in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36
percent."

Drug Enforcement Agency officials shut down the Virginia study and all
further cannabis research, according to Jack Herer, who reports on
these events in his book, The Emperor Wears No Clothes. In 1976,
President Gerald Ford put an end to all public cannabis research and
granted exclusive research rights to major pharmaceutical companies.
These companies set out -- unsuccessfully -- to develop synthetic
forms of THC that would deliver all the medical benefits without the
"high."

UPDATE BY RAYMOND CUSHING: When I was a cub reporter twenty-
eight years ago at the daily Advocate in Stamford, Connecticut, my first
city editor -- a white-haired veteran of the International Herald Tribune
named Marian Campbell -- told me that the cure for cancer was the
holy grailn of all news stories.

"Unless they discover the cure for cancer," she would say over the
clackety-clack of the manual typewriters, "this paper goes to press on
time."

What I found out a quarter-century later is that not even the cure for
cancer is a big enough story to crack the Berlin Wall of media
censorship in this country. Toss in the facts that the cure appears to
be a benign substance that has been illegal for 63 years, and that the
government has knowlingly suppressed evidence of its curative powers
for 25 years, and you get twice the story and twice the censorship.

I won't name the "investigative journalists" who didn't respond when I
sent them this story. I won't list the numerous "progressive"
publications that ignored it. I won't describe the forbidding sense of
professional isolation I endured in the months I tried to place this story.

Suffice it to say that it's what one would expect in a society that has
criminalized its own young for two generations around the cannabis
issue simply because we are told to do so.

Thousands of innocent people who are in U.S. prisons for possessing
or selling "the cure for cancer" await liberation and reparations.
Someday our grandchildren will look back and ask, "What did you do to
set the cannabis prisoners free?"

Here's what any responsible journalist should be doing:

Go to primary sources when evaluating cannabis research. The AP and
other news organizations love to elevate "bad science" and suppress
"good science" when it comes to cannabis. You have to read the
original research articles yourself and make your own judgments.

Investigate and report on the war on children that is a major
component of the war on drugs. The marijuana laws are the main tool
the police use to persecute minors. No other policy affects more
families in more insidious and devastating ways than cannabis
prohibition.

Learn about the history of cannabis prohibition and about the
pharmaceutical, liquor and tobacco giants that are behind it. If you
don't know the history of cannabis and hemp prohibition, you're too
ignorant to justifiably call yourself a journalist.

If it turns out -- as my story would seem to indicate -- that cannabis is
the cure for cancer and the government suppressed this information
for 25 years (and continues to suppress it), then the body count alone
will make this the biggest holocaust in recorded history. Virtually all
federal drug policy makers of both parties since 1975 -- including
legislators, presidents, and the DEA -- will be complicit and criminally
liable.

That's why they don't want this story covered.

To learn the history of cannabis prohibition, read www.jackherer.com.
To read my story, type in the address at the beginning of this segment.

Raymond Cushing: raymondcushing@ireland.com

...geminiwalker


To learn more about me, go to:
http://www.geminiwalker-ink.net/