And with that being said lets get into Hemp oil
that’s been going around social media as “proof” that cannabis cures cancer. This case report describes a 14-year-old girl, PK, who presented with symptoms of “weakness, shortness of breath and bruising when she was taken to the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada, on the 10th March 2006.” She was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) and underwent standard chemotherapy for ALL for six months. Upon analysis, she was found to be positive for a mutation in the Philadelphia chromosome, which is found in 2-10% of pediatric ALL cases.
Philadelphia chromosome-positive ALL tends to have a poorer prognosis than other ALL. PK underwent a bone marrow transplant but was noted to have blast cells six months after treatment and therefore underwent aggressive chemotherapy along with a tyrosine kinase inhibitor. After more recurrences and more treatment (such as radiation therapy to the brain for a presumed, but never completely documented, infiltration of the brain by leukemia, it was stated in the case report:
On the 4th February 2009, blood was noted in the patient’s stools and a blood cell count revealed the presence of blast cells. As a result, all treatment including the disatinib was suspended and the patient’s medical staff acknowledged failure in treating her cancer. It was charted by the patient’s hematologist/oncologist that the patient ‘suffers from terminal malignant disease. She has been treated to the limits of available therapy… no further active intervention will be undertaken’. She was placed in palliative home care and told to prepare for her disease to overwhelm her body and from which she would suffer a stroke within the next 2 months.
The family found articles on how cannabis supposedly cures cancer, and found their way to Rick Simpson, who has been featured in utterly credulous articles in High Times and
SF Weekly (the latter of whose editors really should have known better) as the man who can cure cancer with hemp oil, who provided her with hemp oil mixed with honey (because of the bitter taste and viscous nature of hemp oil). This was administered in daily doses. It is claimed in this case report that there was a strong correlation between increasing dose of the hemp oil and decreases in PK’s blast count (a measure of leukemia cells in the blood), but looking at Figures 1, 2, 3, and 4, I have a hard time seeing it. Figure 1 shows increasing doses of hemp oil from what was called the “chronic” strain. That’s the closest we see to decreasing blast counts correlating with hemp oil dose. By day 15, the chronic strain was gone, and PK started taking Hemp Oil #2 from an outside source. In actuality in Figure 2, we see the blast count increasing with increasing dose until day 27, when it starts falling. Figure #3 shows Hemp Oil #3 (Afghan/Thai strain) from days 44 to 49. Given that the blast count stayed the same one can’t say much about this. Then Hemp Oil #4 was tried from day 50 to day 67, and her blast counts started rising. Finally, Hemp Oil #5 was tried and PK’s blast count fell between days 69 and 78. During that time, PK suffered the psychotropic effects of the hemp oil, including euphoria, disoriented memory, and the like.
Unfortunately, PK developed gastrointestinal bleeding and bowel perforation with peritonitis on day 78 and passed away. So, basically, she lived two and a half months after being placed on hospice. The authors assert that a dose-response curve was achieved, but to my eye I really don’t see it, except perhaps at the beginning, nor do I really buy the claim that the bumps in blast counts correlate with using “lower potency” strains. They also assert because PK was treated for tumor lysis syndrome (a syndrome in which the waste products of tumor breakdown, often seen after intense chemotherapy in hematopoietic malignancies, injure organs such as the kidneys), it must mean that the hemp oil was effective.
Unfortunately, even if a mild dose-response effect was observed that would not rule out spontaneous remission. Spontaneous remission is known to occur in ALL, although it is usually temporary, and spontaneous tumor lysis syndrome has been reported, although it is rare. In any case, one has to wonder whether the patient’s bone marrow was petering out near the end, something that is hard to determine because almost no laboratory values other than blast counts are presented, except at the end, when she had a very low platelet count (8K; normal 150K to 450K), a low white blood cell count (1.4, normal 4.5-13.0), and severe anemia (hemoglobin 8.2; normal: 13 to 16). It wasn’t established how the diagnosis of tumor lysis syndrome was made other than that the patient had elevated urate levels. Indeed, the entire case report seemed to have been written with the belief that it was the hemp oil that accounted for the decrease in blasts. A lot of information has been left out about the patient’s clinical course. All we know is that, after being placed in hospice, she was fortunate to have her blast count fall, developed a central line infection, and was treated for tumor lysis syndrome. We can also infer that she was still having considerable issues with her gut because she was on total parenteral nutrition (being fed by vein) and had trouble when they started to try to feed her orally again.
It should also be remembered that, whether or not hemp oil was responsible for the decline in blasts (which is possible but not convincingly demonstrated by this case study) or whether it was “burnout” of the bone marrow in the terminal phase of the disease or even spontaneous remission, the patient still died. She still developed GI bleeding and a GI perforation with peritonitis and died of it only 78 days after going on hospice. There’s no way of knowing whether hemp oil prolonged her life. Probably it did not, as a two to three month survival after going into hospice after being declared terminal for leukemia is well within what is expected. In other words, this case report is mighty thin gruel indeed.
Of course, the sad story of PK and the treatment of her terminal relapsed ALL with hemp oil is probably the highest quality cancer cure testimonial out there, and unfortunately its quality is not that high at all. The rest of the anecdotes I ran into tended to be about as convincing to someone familiar with cancer as nearly all the other alternative cancer cure testimonials I’ve found; i.e., not very. If you don’t believe me, take a look at this article, in which Rick Simpson claims his success rate for patients with terminal cancer is around 70% and says:
“The ones that can’t be saved are usually the ones who’ve had the most chemotherapy and radiation, or wait too long to start the treatment,” he says. “They have to be able to stay alive long enough for the oil to start to work.” In fact, most patients who undergo chemotherapy die from the treatment, not the disease.
No, it is not a “fact” that most patients who undergo chemotherapy die from the treatment, not the disease. It’s a lie. In any case, Rick Simpson is just like cancer quacks the world over, who have no firm evidence to back up their miraculous-sounding cure rates and excuse their failures by claiming that the treatment patients had before prevented the quackery from working. Quacks like Rick Simpson do those who think that cannabinoids have promise in treating cancer no favors.