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“IMPROVING MICROBIAL DETECTION STANDARDS FOR CANNABIS”
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The full article in O’Shaunessy’s is recommended. I’ve extracted a few parts.
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“If the government is going to tax us, in return they’ve got to provide us with needed services. And that means well-equipped analytic test labs run by disinterested technicians.” [emphasis mine]
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“Let’s make measured changes before another patient is harmed while demanding peer reviewed science is used to guide the regulatory process. In an era of fake news, science by press release with “beliefs” derived from companies that have a vested interest in seeing more cannabis safety testing should be hyper scrutinized.”
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“I think the cannabis-testing labs should be operated by the Department of Public Health, overseen by Commissioner Raber (and equally proficient chemists in every city and state) and staffed by well trained and well paid technicians whose pensions are secure.”
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The importance is that many patients who are immunosuppressed use medical marijuana, and need to use it safely because nothing else helps as well, including those who are immunosuppressed and don’t know it. For example, many do not know that diabetics are immunosuppressed. Those with autoimmune diseases, chronic renal disease, may be using medical cannabis and should demand testing be done with their taxed dollars as should we all. This has been one of the most useful herbs in history, for thousands of years, and can give balm and relief even to shattered nerves, especially now that healthcare insurers are denying to pay for pharma’s gobsmacking overnight billious costs.
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gobsmacking billious costs
vs
getting up to speed on legal cannabis &
research on endocannabinoid systems
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This is a timely issue. Discuss with your doctor, get your representatives to help to legalize it nationwide. It may be the only thing that can help, or the only one that doesn’t constipate or cause erectile dysfunction or interact with other drugs. We don’t want our medication infected, even if we want to use cannabis for relaxation and pleasure. The Xanax’s and Ativan’s could be improved upon if only the right science is funded.
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“On February 7, the Daily Mail reported a cancer patient in northern California died from a fungal infection that authorities suspect was caused by the inhalation of contaminated medical cannabis.”
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snip
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“Furthermore, molecular techniques can be used to assess whether this cancer patient’s infection was actually cannabis derived. This is possible by using PCR and sequencing as performed by Remington et al. on the cannabis material and on the patient to confirm such an event.”
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“Rather than jumping to conclusions from a news story about cannabis contamination (which may in fact be the case), officials should confirm, via molecular methods, that a fatal infection occurred from the consumption of contaminated Cannabis or from another source, such as a hospital acquired infection. Once confirmed, the scientific data can help drive the appropriate regulations forward to ensure patient safety. Unfortunately, most regulations passed to date for microbial detection do not appropriately address patient safety and often suggest the use of antiquated, inaccurate technologies. For instance, we have peer-reviewed evidence that the currently accepted 48-hour Petrifilm-based method currently in use fails to detect some of the most harmful microbes found on cannabis. The State of Colorado has recently come to similar conclusions and has moved their Petrifilm detection times from 48 hours to 60-72 hours while referencing a paper suggesting 120 hours may be required. And even with these adjustments to the regulations, Petrifilms will never give as accurate results as PCR.” [emphasis mine]
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“All technologies used to ensure product quality and patient safety should be peer reviewed. DNA-based methods are imperative to patient safety, as they are accepted, peer reviewed, and have been used for decades in other industries for similar purposes.”
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“Kits to perform qPCR-based microbial testing on cannabis are commercially available at medicinalgenomics.com. We hold the largest sequence database of microbes found on cannabis and have kits that perform these tests in hours as opposed to days.”
[emphasis mine]
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“The technology exists to ensure safer cannabis for patients. Let’s make measured changes before another patient is harmed while demanding peer reviewed science is used to guide the regulatory process. In an era of fake news, science by press release with “beliefs” derived from companies that have a vested interest in seeing more cannabis safety testing should be hyper scrutinized. This extends to our own work at Medicinal Genomics and underscores our publication history in this space.”
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snip
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O’Shaughnessy’s retro message:
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“Medicinal Genomics’s qPCR technology is undoubtedly superior and would have picked up the aspergillus that may have been fatal to the California patient. But how widespread is the danger, really? In San Francisco in the ’90s, many thousands of AIDS patients whose immune systems were beyond “compromised” smoked untested crude herb, and I only heard of one rumored instance in which aspergillus may have been involved in a death. Donald Abrams, MD, might be able to confirm or correct my reassuring recollection.”
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“That said, of course the labs testing cannabis should employ the best available technology. The question, is who should pick up the tab?” [emphasis mine]
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“When I was working for the San Francisco District Attorney in ’01 or ’02 I called on Josh Bamberger at the city health department on Grove Street and asked if their lab would take on the testing of cannabis being sold at dispensaries. He said he didn’t have the budget or the personnel. In the years ahead I was surprised that nobody from the movement/industry ever made the demand —not even the request— that a government agency take responsibility for testing medical cannabis. No patient advocate declared, “If the government is going to tax us, in return they’ve got to provide us with needed services. And that means well-equipped analytic test labs run by disinterested technicians.” [emphasis mine]
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“All around the world, PRIVATIZATION is the overwhelming socioeconomic trend of our time. The Power Elite have done such a thorough job of selling off the commons and undermining the public sector that everybody now simply assumes that for-profit labs can and should take on the responsibility of protecting public health. “
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“I think the cannabis-testing labs should be operated by the Department of Public Health, overseen by Commissioner Raber (and equally proficient chemists in every city and state) and staffed by well trained and well paid technicians whose pensions are secure. And while we’re at it, how about free public education and single-payer medical care?”
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I keep getting the suspicion billions are being funneled rapidly down new rabbit holes using fear to prevent science. We must be able to do more than just prescribe opioids for severe pain. Opioids cause inflammation which causes more pain. Cannabis is anti-inflammatory, analgesic, etc etc etc, and not allowed in hospitals, SNFs, or in facilities that seniors can only dream of retiring to when they can no longer manage at home. We need medical better choices.
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Medicinal cannabis is a healing plant with cannabinoids like ones that your body makes that helps you feel healthy and somehow influences the immune system more than any other system, while also lifting mood. Wouldn’t it be nice to know? It has 400 chemicals, not just two synthetic ones pharma makes. An exciting new cosmos in the body’s realm of more than just neuroscience. We have more cannabinoid receptors than any other kind in our body. We need to learn.
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Stop this Schedule I nonsense. Legalize cannabis. Privatize and regulate it like big alcohol, but keep it apart from big pharma, and endow strong university ties. For pete’s sake, fund the research immediately. We need it. The immune system needs it. The pain matrix needs it. Why should we allow euthanasia when we can treat pain and symptoms. Grandmothers used to know how. We are living in the dark ages with cannabinoid systems science. It is in starving infancy, Israel’s Mechoulam lab pioneering this blossoming for decades.
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Don’t forget to tell your representatives that you hear you may benefit from medical marijuana. Cannabis, marijuana, just may help, as it helped so many little children having hundreds of seizures each day, helped by just one of the cannabinoids in the plant: CBD. It has been reported to almost completely stop the hundreds of daily seizures in possibly 50% —wouldn’t it be important to do research on it?
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CBD has no psychoactive power. There is no high, no hallucinations. It actually blocks the psychoactive power of THC. It should be legal. The plant should be legal. It helps many medical conditions. I have posted an astonishing case months ago 100% relief with CBD. Instead it, just the other day, CBD got clearly classified as Schedule I. This must go to the courts. This insanity about a healing plant can be sanely managed, just like alcohol is managed. Without privatized prison systems that waste taxpayer dollars.
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We see new funnels of big money going down the rabbit hole. The urgency to privatize. We have a lot of people who cannot afford the American medical system, cannot afford doctors, who may get some relief even as a muscle relaxant or for sleep or anxiety.
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How can anyone respect a legal system that does not even allow research on a healing plant so important to the immune system?
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No amount of billions can buy CBD if it is classed as Schedule I.
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Pain Management Specialist in San Diego & La Jolla 
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