One drop of hemp oil a day, no chemotherapy, no radiotherapy, cancer cured? Is this story from Australia true?

True points:

Shona's story was reported back in 2018, and if it were that magical, there must have been a large number of cancer patients who used hemp oil to cure cancer, but there was none. There are currently no clinical data to support the effectiveness of hemp oil in treating cancer. In addition, some studies have found that in the immunotherapy of cancer, the final treatment effect of using marijuana on patients will be worse.

Verifier: A section of Ginger 丨 Associate Professor of Research in the Department of Pathology and Experimental Medicine, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

An Australian marketing number recently pushed an article with the headline: "Drink a drop of oil a day, and the cancer cells are all killed!" Just now, an Australian cancer patient exposed: hemp oil saved my life..."

Cannabis oil actually has such a magical function? Although there are many chicken soup articles on the Internet, compared with this cannabis oil article, the chicken soup article is simply boiled water.

So, is it true that hemp oil treats cancer?

First, the stories listed in the online article are full of doubts

The case mentioned in the online article is a resident of Queensland, Australia, named Shona Leigh. According to the online article, Shona was diagnosed with cervical cancer stage 2, she did not choose chemotherapy and radiation therapy, but bought cannabis oil from a nurse to take it herself. As a result, after 8 months of taking hemp oil, a miracle occurred, and the cancer cells in the body were killed! However, after a few months of stopping the drug, Shona noticed a fist-sized lump on her left chest, and because of her first experience, Shona did not hesitate to take the product containing hemp oil again, and as a result, two months later, the lump in her chest also disappeared! The article also wrote that Shona was "100% sure that her illness was cured by drinking hemp oil." ”

When readers see such a story, they may find it exciting to think that cancer can be conquered! However, if we analyze it carefully, we will find many doubts.

First of all, it's not something that "just happened"! The story was reported in February 2018 by an Australian newspaper called The Courier-Mail. What kind of media is this? According to a 2018 poll in Australia, The Courier-Mail was rated as the least trustworthy source, with 44 per cent of respondents believing it was untrustworthy.

Leaving aside the credibility of the media for the time being, we only need to discuss the facts and find a few doubts in Shona's story:

Question 1: What exactly was Shona treated? The story only says that Shona did not receive chemotherapy and radiation, but does not say whether she underwent surgery or not. Shona's cervical cancer is stage 2 and is an early stage cancer, for such patients, surgery is the preferred treatment option. If the surgical excision is relatively clean, there are no cancer cells in the patient's body and it can be cured. However, in many cases, surgery does not completely remove cancerous tissue, especially in some patients with a high risk of recurrence, chemotherapy and radiation therapy are required after surgery in order to prevent recurrence.

In the clinic, even if a patient has a risk of recurrence, it is not necessarily necessary to recur, so even if the patient refuses chemotherapy after surgery, it is indeed possible that there will be no recurrence in the end, which can only mean that the patient is lucky. Unfortunately, not every patient will be so lucky.

Some readers may ask, if the surgical excision is relatively clean, why is the blood indicator still abnormal? In fact, these cancer-related blood indicators, just an indicator, is not a cancer "Buddha-figure", many other factors will also lead to its abnormality, such as trauma caused by surgery, inflammation, generally after surgery, patients need a certain amount of time to recover, blood indicators will gradually return to normal. Therefore, after taking hemp oil, Shona's indicators are normal, not necessarily the efficacy of hemp oil.

Doubt 2: Shona's chest lump after four months, what exactly is it? Shona didn't provide the results of any medical tests, and she didn't say whether the lump was a tumor or not. A lump is found on a woman's chest, which may be breast cancer or a benign lesion. Some benign lumps will disappear on their own and do not require any treatment, so after Shona drank cannabis oil again, the lump disappeared, which may have nothing to do with drinking cannabis oil.

It should be pointed out that if you find that you have a lump in your chest, you should not prescribe medicine for yourself, but should go to a regular hospital for examination to rule out the possibility of breast cancer.

Suspicious point three: Shona's story was reported as early as 2018, if it is really so magical, there must be a large number of cancer patients who use hemp oil to cure cancer, but there is not.

Second, is there any medical evidence for the treatment of cancer with hemp oil?

It is true that in vitro trials have found that the active substance cannabidiol in cannabis can induce the death of breast cancer cells . But this is only an in vitro experiment, which requires direct addition of cannabidiol to the nutrient solution that grows cancer cells to see such an effect. If cannabidiol enters the body, can an effective drug concentration be achieved? Can it also cause cancer cells to die of cancerous tissue? It's not clear.

It's like having studies that have found that tea can kill the new crown virus in vitro, but it can't rely on drinking tea to treat the new crown pneumonia.

Can cannabis cure cancer? Clinical trials are needed to validate. But so far, no formal clinical trial results have shown the effects of cannabis in cancer treatment. There was a Phase 1 clinical trial using THC to treat patients with recurrent glioblastoma, but the reported results showed that the patient's tumor was not significantly controlled and that the patient's survival was not significantly prolonged. In the other 7 clinical studies currently underway, although medical cannabis was used in cancer patients, it was only evaluated as a supportive regimen for cancer treatment, not as a direct anti-cancer effect, but to see if it could improve some of the patient's related symptoms.

Not only is there no supporting evidence of cannabis fighting cancer, but in some cases, cannabis can interfere with cancer treatment. A study in Israel found that in immunotherapy for cancer, giving patients marijuana the final treatment effect is worse.

Third, spread rumors with a mouth, and refute rumors and run and break legs

Since the anti-cancer effect of cannabis is not reliable, why do you still see so many online articles?

One study specifically analyzed rumors on the Internet about the treatment of cancer by hemp oil and found several interesting but helpless phenomena:

Phenomenon one: Where cannabis is used legally, whether it is for legal medical use or as a common food, more people will search the Internet for topics related to the treatment of cancer in cannabis. In the conversation on social media about "alternative" treatments for cancer, cannabis accounts for about a quarter of the traffic. The so-called "alternative" treatment is actually the treatment of informal medicine.

Phenomenon two: Compared with the article that debunks the rumors, the rumors of "cannabis cure cancer" are more widely spread! Several of the most widely circulated rumors have 4.26 million hits on social media, while even the most widely circulated rumor-busting articles have only 36,000 hits, less than one percent of the rumors!

Phenomenon three: formal cancer organizations and institutions are less likely to talk about cannabis, on the contrary, non-professional institutions and people will hype and promote the so-called "cannabis cure cancer". In fact, this is not difficult to understand, because cannabis is not a formal cancer treatment plan, and professional institutions and people cannot give up the opportunity of formal treatment and spend time on a treatment plan that lacks clinical evidence.

But for some, marijuana is a business that has to be talked about. For example, the Australian marketing article on hemp oil clearly mentioned that "on November 12, 2017, the whole country of Australia officially legalized cannabis food", and Shona Leigh's report also mentioned that she "provided cannabis oil to 50 patients", which is obvious that this cannot be provided free of charge.

Cannabis oil cannot be used as a substitute for regular cancer treatment, but is it possible to alleviate the pain of patients in treatment?

In addition to the story of Shona Leigh, the online article also tells the story of several other cancer patients using hemp oil for treatment.

Even if these are true stories, they can only be used as a case study in cancer treatment. Unfortunately, the online articles for the purpose of "storytelling" do not tell the patient's condition and all the treatments received in detail and objectively as professional case reports. So, like Shona Leigh's story, other stories are vague and more often with rhythm.

In the story of a patient with advanced liver cancer, the network article said that after the patient drank some kind of hemp oil, "he could only live for 3 months, but he has lived for more than a year", the patient felt "getting better and better", "Obviously felt that the pain in his body completely disappeared!" ”

When reading this, many readers may not necessarily notice that patients have previously said that they have received "a lot of chemotherapy, radiation therapy." Of course, the reader will not know who gave the patient the conclusion that he could only live for 3 months. In fact, if a certain type of cancer patient only lives for 3 months, it is only an average, and since everyone's situation is different, there will definitely be patients who survive longer than 3 months. If the patient receives chemotherapy and radiation therapy, a large number of cancer cells are killed, the disease will be controlled to a certain extent, and the overall survival of the patient will be longer than that of the patient without treatment, but how long it can be depends on the individual's treatment. A professional doctor cannot judge how long a specific patient will survive like a fortune teller.

However, it is certain that patients will feel very uncomfortable due to the side effects of chemotherapy and radiation therapy. So can hemp oil make patients feel better and less uncomfortable? As a narcotic, cannabis and its active substances, should mechanically have this function. As mentioned above, hemp or cannabis oil has also been used in some clinical trials, and these studies have observed improvements in pain, body function, sleep, etc. after patients use cannabis products, but also increase the risk of developing symptoms such as transient cognitive impairment, vomiting, drowsiness, lack of attention, nausea, dizziness, etc.

This article was edited by fycfeng

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