A Tribute to a Cannabis Hero
What One Man Has Done For All of Us
Dr. Raphael Mechoulam
As
it now stands the CMA (Canadian Medical Association) would rather the following
interview be kept secret?
Why?
To acknowledge this man’s brilliant
and positive findings re Cannabis; is to expose
their President: Dr. Louis
Hugo Francescutti;
to be an
IGNORANT ASSHOLE IN TOTAL DENIAL OF
THE TRUTH
He has publicly declared that
Cannabis has no validated curative powers and has advised all his members
to refuse to help any applicant for Medical Marijuana.
Cannabis
not only cures Cancer but has multiple benefits in the treatment of manifold
illnesses and disabilities! Unfortunately for all members of the misnamed AMC (Association
of Medical Corporations) this would result in a terrible business disruption
and loss of profits.
On
his website http://www.drlou.ca/ , Dr. Lou,
as he prefers to be called, shows himself as an arrogant, egotistical,
narcissist only interested in promoting himself as “God’s gift to Humanity”. If
you should doubt this statement go to his website and be inflicted by an
onslaught of self praising adjectives that demonstrate the fact. The man has no
humility at all,
Dr. Lou made his “Denial of Benefit” statement following this CNN interview of Dr. Raphael Mechoulam by Dr. Sanjay Gupta in early March. It is in effect a justification and support of Dr. Gupta’s change of opinion as declared in his earlier CNN documentary Weed.
Dr. Lou had to be aware of both of these positive reports and his “Denial of Benefit” is a total crock of shit! He should be removed from any position or role in deciding the future of Medical Marijuana, but for the time being we are stuck with the arsehole.
Read on and see what he is missing with his blinders on:
Medical Marijuana and 'The Entourage Effect'
By Dr. Sanjay Gupta,
CNN chief medical correspondent
Tue
March 11, 2014
STORY HIGHLIGHTS
- Scientist Raphael Mechoulam has made studying marijuana his life's work
- There are more than 480 natural components in the cannabis plant
- "The entourage effect" means those components may work best together
After reading the literature on cannabis, he was
surprised to see that while the active compound in morphine had been isolated
from opium poppies 100 years before and cocaine isolated from coca leaves
around the same time, the active component of marijuana was still unknown.
This simple observation launched his life's work.
That young Israeli researcher, Raphael Mechoulam, is
now a heavily decorated scientist, recently nominated for the prestigious
Rothschild Prize. More than 50 years ago, however, he had trouble starting his
scientific journey.
For starters, he needed cannabis to study and didn't
know how to obtain it. Eventually, he obtained his research supply from friends
in the police department. The young scientist was in a hurry, and didn't want
to wait to cut through the red tape required by Israel's Health Ministry.
"Yes, I broke the law," he told me when I
met with him in Tel Aviv last year, "but I apologized and explained what I
was trying to do."
It's a good thing the
Israeli government didn't stall his progress, because Mechoulam was moving at
breakneck speed.
By 1963, he determined the structure of cannabidiol (CBD), an important component
of marijuana. A year later, he became the first person to isolate delta-9
tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive
ingredient in marijuana. Over the ensuing decades, Mechoulam and his team
continued to isolate numerous compounds from the cannabis plant.
Their work also went a long way toward illuminating
how the drug works in the brain. When Mechoulam's team identified the first
known endogenous cannabinoid, a chemical actually made by the brain itself, he
named it "anandamide." In the Sanskrit language, ananda means
"supreme bliss," which gives us some insight into what Mechoulam
thinks of cannabinoids overall.
It was halfway through our long afternoon discussion
that Mechoulam, now 83, pulled out a paper he had written in 1999, describing
something known as "the entourage effect."
Think of it like this: There are more than 480
natural components found within the cannabis plant, of which 66 have been
classified as "cannabinoids." Those are chemicals unique to the
plant, including delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiols. There are,
however, many more, including:
-- Cannabigerols (CBG);
-- Cannabichromenes (CBC);
-- other Cannabidiols (CBD);
-- other Tetrahydrocannabinols (THC);
-- Cannabinol (CBN) and cannabinodiol
(CBDL);
-- other cannabinoids (such as cannabicyclol (CBL), cannabielsoin (CBE), cannabitriol (CBT) and other miscellaneous
types).
Other constituents of the cannabis plant are:
nitrogenous compounds (27 known), amino acids (18), proteins (3), glycoproteins
(6), enzymes (2), sugars and related compounds (34), hydrocarbons (50), simple
alcohols (7), aldehydes (13), ketones (13), simple acids (21), fatty acids
(22), simple esters (12), lactones (1), steroids (11), terpenes (120),
non-cannabinoid phenols (25), flavonoids (21), vitamins (1), pigments (2), and
other elements (9).
Here is the important point. Mechoulam, along with
many others, said he believes all these components of the cannabis plant likely
exert some therapeutic effect, more than any single compound alone.
While science has not yet shown the exact role or
mechanism for all these various compounds, evidence is mounting that these
compounds work better together than in isolation: That is the "entourage
effect."
Take the case of Marinol, which is pure, synthetic THC. When the drug became
available in the mid-1980s, scientists thought it would have the same effect as
the whole cannabis plant. But it soon became clear that most patients preferred
using the whole plant to taking Marinol.
Researchers began to realize that other components,
such as CBD, might have a larger role than
previously realized.
To better understand the concept of the entourage
effect, I traveled to the secret labs of GW Pharmaceuticals, outside London. In developing Sativex,
a cannabis-based drug to treat multiple sclerosis, the company's chairman, Dr.
Geoffrey Guy, told me the company ran into some of the same obstacles that
Marinol faced.
More than a decade of experiments revealed that a
whole plant extract, bred to contain roughly the same amounts of THC and CBD in addition to the other
components in the plant, was more effective in reducing the pain and spasms of
MS than a medication made of a single compound.
It could be that multiple individual compounds play a
role, or it could be due to their interaction in the body; it could also be
combination of both, Guy said.
Now, maybe this all sounds obvious. After all, eating
real fruits, vegetables and other plants provides better nutrition than just
taking vitamin pills with one nutrient or mineral in each. Science is showing
us that we can likely say the same about cannabis.
As we move forward with creating medicines, like Charlotte's Web, for the patients
who can benefit from cannabis -- this is an important point to keep in mind.
Unlike other drugs that may work well as single
compounds, synthesized in a lab, cannabis may offer its most profound benefit
as a whole plant, if we let the entourage effect flower, as Mechoulam suggested
more than a decade ago.
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That,
I think, establishes the fact that Dr. Lou is practicing Politics not Medicine.
I thought Stephen Harper was a scum sucking bottom feeder but this guy is even
lower and feeding off Harper’s crap.
I’ve gotta quit here!
I’m feeling NAUSEOUS just thinking
about it!
Yuk!
Blaine Barrett
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