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Ted Kennedy Diagnosed with Brain Tumor.

It’ll be all over the nightly news, but it seemed significant enough to post about here: After having been taken to the hospital for seizures this weekend, Senator Ted Kennedy has been diagnosed with a malignant brain tumor.

I’d like to wish him well. After everything that guy’s family has been through, it’d be nice to see at least one of them enjoy a long, happy retirement and eventually go peacefully in their sleep.

  1. Vincent says:

    I had the same reaction, Tim.

  2. Timothy says:

    Tana – Umm…what the hell are you even talking about?

  3. Tana says:

    Vincent, Timothy — Doesn’t it bother you that the government suppresses research — of any kind? Do you want the government to be controlling the information that you receive? As conservatives, aren’t we interested in having the best information possible to make sensible decisions?

  4. Chris Holman says:

    Nah, I’m not a hippie. I could’ve easily said that one might not want the shadow of celebrating death hanging over their head and it would get the same point across. I just figured karmic balance is something that most people understand, even if they hate hippies.

  5. Timothy says:

    Chris: Karma? What are you, some kind of hippie?

  6. Sakaki says:

    Put him in for next year’s death pool. With the type of tumor he has, and the way it works, he’s probably gone in a year to a year and a half.

    And I’m not saying that to be snide. I know about gliomas. It’s a death sentence. Now it’s just a matter of how long he’s going to fight.

  7. Chris Holman says:

    LOL Vincent! So true.

    Isn’t that a copyright violation? : )

  8. Vincent says:

    Why would we need to view the story at Alternet since you’ve been so kind to post it in its fucking entirety on this blog?

  9. Chris Holman says:

    Interesting. Honestly, I think the government should just legalize less-harmful drugs (read: on par with alcohol and cigarettes) and tax them. There would still be a black market of course, but a lot of people would buy from the state considering that their current output is very high grade. I imagine that legalization would also employ a lot of hapless hippies while frustrating them at the same time for being employed by the man. If the state flooded the market with great weed, it would drive down the price on the black market as well and awesome pot could be smoked by all.

    And apparently our cancer epidemic would be ameliorated to a degree as well.

  10. Jack Herer says:

    Pot Shrinks Tumors; Government Knew in ’74
    By Raymond Cushing, AlterNet

    http://www. alternet. org/story/9257/

    The term medical marijuana took on dramatic new meaning in February, 2000 when researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.

    The Madrid study marks only the second time that THC has been administered to tumor-bearing animals; the first was a Virginia investigation 26 years ago. In both studies, the THC shrank or destroyed tumors in a majority of the test subjects.

    Most Americans don’t know anything about the Madrid discovery. Virtually no major U.S. newspapers carried the story, which ran only once on the AP and UPI news wires, on Feb. 29, 2000.

    The ominous part is that this isn’t the first time scientists have discovered that THC shrinks tumors. In 1974 researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice — lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.

    The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor research, according to Jack Herer, who reports on the 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, who set out — unsuccessfully — to develop synthetic forms of THC that would deliver all the medical benefits without the “high.”

    The Madrid researchers reported in the March issue of “Nature Medicine” that they injected the brains of 45 rats with cancer cells, producing tumors whose presence they confirmed through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). On the 12th day they injected 15 of the rats with THC and 15 with Win-55,212-2 a synthetic compound similar to THC. “All the rats left untreated uniformly died 12-18 days after glioma (brain cancer) cell inoculation … Cannabinoid (THC)-treated rats survived significantly longer than control rats. THC administration was ineffective in three rats, which died by days 16-18. Nine of the THC-treated rats surpassed the time of death of untreated rats, and survived up to 19-35 days. Moreover, the tumor was completely eradicated in three of the treated rats.” The rats treated with Win-55,212-2 showed similar results.

    The Spanish researchers, led by Dr. Manuel Guzman of Complutense University, also irrigated healthy rats’ brains with large doses of THC for seven days, to test for harmful biochemical or neurological effects. They found none.

    “Careful MRI analysis of all those tumor-free rats showed no sign of damage related to necrosis, edema, infection or trauma … We also examined other potential side effects of cannabinoid administration. In both tumor-free and tumor-bearing rats, cannabinoid administration induced no substantial change in behavioral parameters such as motor coordination or physical activity. Food and water intake as well as body weight gain were unaffected during and after cannabinoid delivery. Likewise, the general hematological profiles of cannabinoid-treated rats were normal. Thus, neither biochemical parameters nor markers of tissue damage changed substantially during the 7-day delivery period or for at least 2 months after cannabinoid treatment ended.”

    Guzman’s investigation is the only time since the 1974 Virginia study that THC has been administered to live tumor-bearing animals. (The Spanish researchers cite a 1998 study in which cannabinoids inhibited breast cancer cell proliferation, but that was a “petri dish” experiment that didn’t involve live subjects.)

    In an email 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. Hence, the Nature Medicine article characterizes the new study as the first on tumor-laden animals and doesn’t cite the 1974 Virginia investigation.

    “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.

    In 1983 the Reagan/Bush Administration tried to persuade American universities and researchers to destroy all 1966-76 cannabis research work, including compendiums in libraries, reports Jack Herer, who states, “We know that large amounts of information have since disappeared.”

    Guzman provided the title of the work — “Antineoplastic activity of cannabinoids,” an article in a 1975 Journal of the National Cancer Institute — and this writer obtained a copy at the University of California medical school library in Davis and faxed it to Madrid.

    The summary of the Virginia study begins, “Lewis lung adenocarcinoma growth was retarded by the oral administration of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabinol (CBN)” — two types of cannabinoids, a family of active components in marijuana. “Mice treated for 20 consecutive days with THC and CBN had reduced primary tumor size.”

    The 1975 journal article doesn’t mention breast cancer tumors, which 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.

    Under the headline, “Cancer Curb Is Studied,” it read in part:

    “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.”

    Guzman, writing from Madrid, was eloquent in his response after this writer faxed him the clipping from the Washington Post of a quarter century ago.

    In translation, he wrote:

    “It is extremely interesting to me, the hope that the project seemed to awaken at that moment, and the sad evolution of events during the years following the discovery, until now we once again draw back the veil

  11. Vincent says:

    I’m with Chris on this one. I’m no fan of Senator Kennedy, but I don’t wish him dead, especially by a brain tumor.

  12. Chris Holman says:

    I might go so far as to say that this, to some, could be a restoring of the karmic balance for the ol’ Senator. Still, I’m not so sure that many want to chance denting their own karma to cheer the iminent death of an important person in American politics regardless of where you sit ideologically.

    : ()

  13. Timothy says:

    Am I the only one who thought, “Well, I guess sometimes dreams do come true”? Man, you guys are getting soft.

  14. Kai Davis says:

    Sad day 🙁
    I wish him the best.

  15. Chris Holman says:

    No kidding. At least experimental treatments are getting pretty far these days in being able to treat some tumors effectively. A friend of mine had/has brain tumors and he’s messed up but the treatment at University of SanFrancisco worked.

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