Acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) is a cancer of the white blood cells. Usually treatment includes combination chemotherapy over a specified course of time.

Remission rates in standard oncology care, after five years in children is 94% and 30 to 40% in adults.

With Leukemia genetic studies are done on the cancer cells to determine patient prognosis as well as the varying types of named mutations. It is a known fact that patients who have ALL with Philadelphia Chromosome mutation do not have good survival rates.

A 14-year-old-girl was diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia on the 10th of March 2006. After six months of treatment it was found that she had the Philadelphia Chromosome mutation. After standard treatment was not successful she was given a bone marrow transplant.

On Television we have seen marketing of this treatment and one is left with a feeling of high success rates and a treatment that is not that bad. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Very high dose chemotherapy and or radiation are used to kill the bone marrow/immune system. After this the patient gets their new bone marrow and stay in isolation for months while watching to see if the body accepts the new cells. It is a very arduous treatment and from previously watched documentaries, does not have a high success rate.

Nine months after her bone marrow transplant cancer cells showed up again. Another bone marrow transplant was not advised. Different chemotherapy was used twice a day. Even with this new treatment cancer cells were found in her brain and ten treatments of radiation were completed.

In 2009 cancer cells were found again and all treatments suspended. This patient had “been treated to the limits of available therapy.”  She was sent home and her parents were told to prepare for her disease to overwhelm her body and from which she would suffer a stroke within the next 2 months.

With no other options available the family sought help in an organization known as Phoenix Tears, led by Rick Simpson who had treated several cancers with hemp oil, an extract from the cannabis plant. Rick worked with the family to help them prepare the extract. Two charts below illustrate the success of this unconventional treatment.

Note: Blast cells are the cells that are cancerous.

 

 

In light of all treatment she had been through and failed, this story in my opinion is nothing short of miraculous.

If you would like to see the actual article on PubMed here is the web address  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3901602/

For the full story of treatment via conventional and cannabinoid, all details are outlined in this article; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3901602/

With stories like these starting to abound and legislation moving forward in the United States and internationally, we are now seeing another ray of hope for the many thousands of people suffering with terminal diseases.

 

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References:

Case Rep Oncol. 2013 Sep-Dec; 6(3): 585–592.

Published online Nov 28, 2013. doi:  10.1159/000356446

PMCID: PMC3901602

Cannabis Extract Treatment for Terminal Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia with a Philadelphia Chromosome Mutation

Yadvinder Singha,* and Chamandeep Balib