The evidence continues to mount that cannabinoids — the unique, active components in marijuana — fight cancer. The latest such study , just published in the Journal of Clinical Investigation, shows that THC can kill glioma cells through a process known as autophagy. Gioma is a particularly deadly form of brain cancer that afflicts, among others, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy (D-Mass.).

The good news is that this study got a decent amount of media attention. The bad news is that much of the coverage lacked context or presented information in a confusing or misleading way. Case in point: the April 1 story from the Reuters wire service.

Reuters reporter Michael Kahn presents the finding as if it were something brand new, failing to note the extensive evidence accumulated since the 1970s that cannabinoids fight various types of tumors. It reports that “studies have suggested” that marijuana may cause cancer, omitting the fact that the largest, most well-controlled studies have found precisely the opposite.

And finally, in a warning of possible risks of cannabinoid drugs, the article hopelessly jumbles cannabinoids — drugs like THC and its plant and synthetic cousins — with drugs designed to block the CB1 receptor through which these substances operate, mistakenly referring to these CB1-blocking drugs as cannabinoids. In fact, they’re more like anti-cannabinoids, and if anything the harmful effects of these CB1 blockers (increased rates of depression and anxiety, for example) reaffirm that cannabinoids often have good and helpful effects.

The Michigan Coalition for Compassionate Care, the committee backing Proposal 1 on the state’s November ballot, has gone on the air with its first TV spots. One commercial features George Wagoner, M.D., whose wife Beverly died of ovarian cancer in 2007. The other features Deb Brink, a registered nurse and four-time cancer survivor.

The initiative has been endorsed by many of the state’s leading newspapers, including the Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, and Lansing State Journal. MCCC has assembled a collection of recent news clips, including the endorsements.

A new article in the European Journal of Cancer Care answers medical marijuana opponents who claim that cancer patients don’t need marijuana to relieve the nausea and vomiting from chemotherapy. Opponents claim that while studies in the past showed THC to be roughly comparable to other anti-nausea drugs, it wasn’t substantially better. Since those studies, they argue, better anti-nausea drugs have come into use, making medical marijuana irrelevant. In any case, they add, THC is available in pill form as Marinol. [Read more →]

The New York Senate adjourned yesterday, effectively ending this year’s legislative session, but that will come as no relief to seriously ill New Yorkers who rely on medical marijuana to ease their suffering.

The senators went home without considering a bill that would have allowed people like Burton Aldrich, a Kingston quadriplegic who needs medical marijuana to control his spasms and constant pain, to use the drug with a doctor’s recommendation without fear of arrest.

It’s difficult to explain the lack of enthusiasm in the Senate for protecting patients who wish to use a proven safe, effective medicine to ease their suffering after other options had failed.

It shouldn’t have been fear that voters would disapprove of their compassion and common sense: 76% of New Yorkers said they supported a medical marijuana bill in a poll conducted in 2005. The Senate’s counterparts in the Assembly didn’t appear to suffer any political catastrophes after passing a similar bill last week, 89-52, or last year, 92-52.

The press, with several notable exceptions, often appeared more interested in the horserace aspects of the bill’s chances rather than its merits. Paradoxically, members of the press often saw the Senate’s reluctance to take the bill seriously as a reason not to take it seriously themselves. I was told more than once by reporters that as long as it appeared unlikely that the Senate would take up the medical marijuana bill, their editors weren’t inclined to give it much coverage.

The real story was the patients who were counting on the Senate to protect them. Many of them risked their health to advocate for the bill, going to Albany to talk to their senators, writing letters to their local papers, and granting interviews to the media.

I don’t know if their efforts ever got the attention they deserved, so I’d like to thank some of them here: Bruce Dunn of Otsego County, who suffers chronic pain from a vehicle accident in 1988; Barbara Jackson, a cancer survivor from the Bronx who was arrested for using marijuana to treat dangerous appetite loss; Richard Williams of Richmondville who has battled HIV for 20 years and also has hepatitis C; Joel Peacock of Buffalo, a Conservative Party member who suffers chronic pain from a 2001 car accident; Glenn Amandola, a medically retired New York City police officer who suffers from chronic pain and a seizure disorder after being injured on the job; Jeannine Zagiel of Oneonta, who was disabled in a work injury in 2001; Dr. Kevin Smith, a Saugerties psychiatrist who suffers from a painful genetic defect that causes his immune system to attack his spine and hips as though they were foreign bodies; and Sherry Greene of Cedarhurst, who suffers from fibromyalgia.

There are many, many more.

They will spend this next year as they spent the last: in pain, frustrated by a ridiculous law that makes them criminals if they try to get better. Even so, many will be back next year to fight for their right to make their own health care decisions with their doctors.

Some, however, won’t be around to fight next year. For them, the Senate’s lack of urgency will mean spending their last days in avoidable pain.

Then again, many of New York’s senators may not be back next year either. Like the suffering patients they ignored, they too may find themselves on Election Day wishing they’d had the courage and good sense to pass this bill when they had the chance.