Pot may help cure cancer?

Wow, strong words there. Came across this little bit of OMG, really? news on NORML, The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws. Who knew there was actually an organization with this as their agenda? Very interesting. I actually found it by chance as there's a link to it on Still Is Still Moving, a Willie Nelson fan site. I am actually one who is all for legalizing and taxing marijuana and so it's interesting to me that there's a group who is trying to do just that, but I didn't go out actively looking for a website like this.

I think the government should be taking these claims of possible cancer fighting or curing effects seriously and get to studying that. You can read the actual article here without actually having to go to the NORML website.

Okay, I'm not endorsing pot smoking here so don't worry, just an interesting bit of cancer news.

Headline of the day

Girl, 6, Recovering After Having Half Her Brain Removed

A 6-year-old Texas girl is recovering after she had surgery Wednesday to remove the right side of her brain, WFAA-TV reported.

Jessie Hall, who lives in Aledo, Texas, has Rasmussen’s encephalitis, a rare illness that eats away at the brain and causes seizures and reduced mobility. In Jessie's case, she lost the use of her left arm.

Read this whole article with photos here and video here

Not to offend anybody or anything, but...

Perez Hilton did one of his posts on this article which he of course did in a sort of funny, make-fun-of-it sort of way, but I actually read the whole article and was very interested and surprised. The article heading is "Oral sex blamed for throat cancer rise."

I wouldn't normally talk about something like that here, that would be more left for my MySpace where it's more a personal blog and I can talk about those sorts of things, except this is actually a serious medical thing so I thought I would go ahead and post it here, I mean we are all adults after all. :o)

Anyway, the article starts out talking about a girl who had to go through five months of treatment for a life-threatening case of throat cancer caused by HPV (human papillomavirus) which is causing increasing concern among some researchers who think it is causing a small-scale epidemic of throat cancer.

With 6,000 cases per year and an annual increase of up to 10 per cent in men younger than 60, some researchers say the HPV-linked throat cancers could overtake cervical cancer in the next decade.

This is so scary and just goes to show that people really need to educate themselves and their children on the importance of safe sex, not just intercourse, but all sexual contact.

The makers of Gardasil, a vaccine for HPV, hopes to submit an application this year to the US Food and Drug Administration for use of its HPV vaccine in males.

Read the whole story here.