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White House Criticizes HIV-Neuropathy Pot Study
 
 
  "People who smoke marijuana are subject to bacterial infections in the lungs," said David Murray, chief scientist at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. "Is this really what a physician who is treating someone with a compromised immune system wants to prescribe?"
 
Murray also questioned the statistical relevance of study with just 50 participants in the test.
 
Marijuana eases pain in HIV patients: study
Drug eased form of chronic foot pain associated with AIDS, study shows, but White House Office of National Drug Control Policy is not convinced.

 
CNNMoney.com
February 12 2007: 4:46 PM EST
 
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -- Smoking marijuana eases a type of chronic foot pain in people with the AIDS virus, according to a study published Monday that the researchers touted as demonstrating marijuana's medicinal benefits.
 
But the White House drug policy office said the research was flawed and offered only "false hope."
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The study, appearing in the journal Neurology, focused on sensory neuropathy - a kind of severe nerve pain usually felt as aching, painful numbness and burning in the feet - associated with human immunodeficiency virus infection.
 
HIV-infected people who smoked marijuana reported a 34 percent reduction in daily pain from this condition, compared to a 17 percent decline among those who smoked placebos.
 
Fifty HIV-infected adults, mostly men, who had this pain but otherwise were in stable health took part from 2003 to 2005. All were previous marijuana smokers but were not considered drug abusers. They were told to stop using it prior to the study.
 
Half of them smoked marijuana cigarettes three times a day for five days. The other half smoked placebo cigarettes that were identical other than having had the cannabinoids - the primary active components of the plant - extracted. Generic drugs concoct their next move
 
Half the marijuana smokers said their pain level had declined by more than 30 percent, while a quarter of the placebo group reported similar pain reduction. The volunteers had no serious side effects.
 
Sensory neuropathy affects about a third of HIV-infected people, making walking or standing hard.
'Smoke screen'
 
Lead researcher Dr. Donald Abrams, one of the first doctors to study AIDS at the start of the epidemic, said the research demonstrated in a carefully conducted clinical trial that smoking marijuana provides some benefit to these patients.
 
"I think that there are people out there who say there is no evidence that marijuana is medicine, that this is all just a smoke screen," Abrams, of San Francisco General Hospital and the University of California, San Francisco, said in an interview.
 
Abrams said he hoped his findings would provide evidence "to help answer this question in an intelligent fashion."
 
There is a fierce debate over whether marijuana, an illegal drug under federal law, should be legal for medical uses like treating pain or nausea in AIDS or cancer patients.
 
David Murray, the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy's chief scientist, said the suffering of AIDS patients is an issue of great concern.
 
"Unfortunately, this particular study is not terribly convincing," Murray said, citing what he saw as methodological problems.
 
"Unfortunately, it will lead many people into a false hope that street marijuana is somehow going to be the thing I can use that will make me feel better and won't jeopardize my health. Now that is a fraud and a dangerous one," he told Reuters.
 
The study found the relief from smoking marijuana was comparable to that provided by pills now used to treat this nerve pain. But some patients are not helped by these antiseizure medications, and others cannot tolerate them, drawing interest in marijuana as an alternative.
 
Californian Diana Dodson, a 50-year-old grandmother who got AIDS via a contaminated blood product, said some pain medications leave her in a stupor.
 
"I just want people to understand that this is about sick people who deserve a quality of life. If it's something that can help us, we should have safe access to it," Dodson, one of the patients in the study, said of marijuana.
 
Pot eases pain for HIV patients, study says
Landmark trial to gauge medicinal benefits draws White House criticism

 
Newsweek
Updated: 6:07 p.m. CT Feb 12, 2007
 
SAN FRANCISCO - Smoking marijuana eased HIV-related pain in some patients in a small study that nevertheless represented one of the few rigorous attempts to find out if the drug has medicinal benefits.
 
The Bush administration's Office of National Drug Control Policy quickly sought to shoot holes in the experiment.
 
The study, conducted at San Francisco General Hospital from 2003 to 2005 and published Monday in the journal Neurology, involved 50 patients suffering from HIV-related foot pain known as peripheral neuropathy. There are no drugs specifically approved to treat that kind of pain.
 
Three times daily for nearly a week, the patients smoked marijuana cigarettes machine-rolled at the National Institute of Drug Abuse, the only legal source for the drug recognized by the federal government.
 
Half the patients received marijuana, while the other 25 received placebo cigarettes that lacked the drug's active ingredient, tetrahydrocannabinol. Scientists said the study was the first one published that used a comparison group, which is generally considered the gold standard for scientific research.
 
Thirteen patients who received marijuana told doctors their pain eased by at least a third after smoking pot, while only six of those smoking placebos said likewise. The marijuana smokers reported an average pain reduction of 34 percent, double the drop reported by the placebo smokers as measured with a widely accepted pain scale.
 
"These results provide evidence that there is measurable medical benefit to smoking cannabis for these patients," said Dr. Donald Abrams, the University of California at San Francisco professor who led the study.
 
Many critics of smoked marijuana agree THC has promise as a painkiller, but they argue the smoke itself is harmful.
 
"People who smoke marijuana are subject to bacterial infections in the lungs," said David Murray, chief scientist at the Office of National Drug Control Policy. "Is this really what a physician who is treating someone with a compromised immune system wants to prescribe?"
 
Murray also questioned the statistical relevance of study with just 50 participants in the test.
 
 
 
 
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