PROJECT CBD

As I erect this website at the beginning of 2014, new laws affecting marijuana use are going into effect in some parts of the country. This fans the media flames for a short while, and people briefly discuss the pros and cons of this unnecessarily controversial botanical, and the discussion is accented with predictable chuckling "ooooh – dope!" tones that strike some folks as great fun and other folks as alarmingly symptomatic of an even further decaying social fabric.

After decades of watching this public display I am still bored with it. But I'm fascinated with the actual, proven medicinal value of the cannabis plant. I discuss this important and promising subject in CANCER FOR THE REST OF US and I unhesitatingly encourage people fighting cancer or preventing cancer to look into the medical science facts of cannabis and decide for themselves if it's something that may help them.

In the book I neglected to list the excellent Project CBD website as a resource, so here it is: http://www.projectCBD.org

CBD is short for cannabidiol, one of the chemical compounds present in the cannabis plant, and one that is of particular interest to researchers around the world because of the many powerful medicinal properties it has already clinically demonstrated.

If you visit the website above, you will find a long list of medical conditions known to be helped by cannabis. Click on Cancer, and you'll see a lengthy list of important studies, grouped according to cancer type. This is a wellspring of information, and the list will keep growing, because cannabis is serious medicine and researchers are on it.

The list of conditions also includes anxiety, depression, neuropathic pain, PTSD - unfortunately all too common features of the cancerland experience.

BAD PHARMA

I recently came across this book, also too late to recommend it in CANCER FOR THE REST OF US, so I include it here: Bad Pharma: How Drug Companies Mislead Doctors and Harm The Public by Ben Goldacre. The book fleshes out much of what I discuss in Chapter Two, The Cancer Industry, and elsewhere in CANCER FOR THE REST OF US, regarding drug research and the many problems with the integrity of testing, and it amplifies the sobering consequences for patients on the receiving end of this systemically flawed industry's products. Here's wikipedia's entry for Bad Pharma: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bad_Pharma