UK To Spend 3 Years And A Million And Half Dollars On Tests
To Find Out If Marijuana Helps MS Patients,
But Will Do No Research To See If Arresting Them Is Harmful.

(Marijuananews note: I am all for research on the medical use of marijuana and its constituents. However, it is absurd to talk about taking three years to discover what thousands of MS patients already know, marijuana helps them, arresting them does not.

The UK MS Society, unlike its DEAland counterpart has been supportive of patients who use marijuana. They estimate that over 1,000 are already doing so illegally. Rather than follow the advice of the House Of Lords Science Committee and make marijuana available to patients now, the UK government is sponsoring research as a stall. That is at least better than DEAland’s policy of stalling the research!)

UK team to test medicinal benefits of cannabis

LONDON, Dec 13 (Reuters) - A leading British research group announced plans on Monday to fund trials into the medical benefits of cannabis for patients with multiple sclerosis.

The Medical Research Council (MRC) said it had awarded a grant of 950,000 pounds ($1.5 million) to Dr John Zajicek, of Derriford Hospital in Plymouth, for the three-year trials.

"We hope the study will provide definite scientific evidence about whether or not taking cannabis is helpful to people with MS,'' Zajicek said in a statement.

Sufferers from diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS), which attacks the central nervous system, have been calling for a pain-relieving cannabis medicine for years and many have broken the law by buying the drug from street dealers.

A small group of volunteers had been legally taking cannabis under clinical conditions in order to determine the best dose.
See
A Few UK MS Patients To Be Allowed To Inhale Whole Cannabis Without Being Arrested – Next Year!
That’s Why They Are Called "Patients;" We Expect Them To Wait! -- 2 Articles

GW Pharmaceuticals, the British drug company running the trials, says it hopes to have a cannabis-based medicine ready to be prescribed by doctors within three or four years.
See
UK Firm Hopes to Have "a cannabis-based medicine ready to be prescribed by doctors
within three to four years." How Time Flies When You Are Not In Pain!

If its trials are successful, the Home Office is expected to change the law to allow prescription of cannabis-based medicine.
(Marijuananews note: But will it continue to arrest patients who choose to use the plant rather than its pharmaceutical derivatives? At least in the UK the government health program will presumably pick up the tab. In DEAland, patients are generally expected to pay for their own Marinol.)
See
A Medical Marijuana User Says That "Marinol Rescheduling Is Worthless" For Him.
He Simply Cannot Afford It. "My country is killing me."

The new MS study will involve 660 patients from across the country. Each patient will be randomly selected to receive capsules of either cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol, a constituent of cannabis, or a placebo.
(Marijuananews note: I think that this is malpractice. It will be immediately apparent to many patients what they are receiving. It is unethical to cause suffering in research. I suspect that it will not be possible to maintain this farce for very long.)

MS is an auto-immune disease in which the body's own immune system attacks and destroys a sheath which protects the nerve cells in the brain and spinal cord. It affects about one million people worldwide and 85,000 people in Britain.

(Marijuananews note: It is very likely that the world figures are very low. After all, the UK does not have eight percent of the world population.)

There is no cure. The most common treatment is injections with beta-interferon.
(Marijuananews note: This is enormously expensive and only marginally effective.)

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