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Cannabis Pill Helped Me Walk Again |
A 64 year old Multiple sclerosis sufferer says he was able to step out of his wheelchair for the first time in seven years because he was taking part in a trial of a tablet containing cannabis.
| Tony Withers, believes the tablet could be an important breakthrough in helping the 85,000 Britons with the condition.
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| The former RAF navigator, of Petersham Drive, Alvaston, who has used a wheelchair since 2000, took part in a 12-week trial of tablets containing cannabis extracts.
He said his symptoms, which include pain, spasms, sleeplessness and having no control over his lower body, showed such an improvement that he was able to stand and give a speech to medical students for 10 minutes.
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| Mr Withers said it was at his final assessment with doctors that the effect was most obvious.
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"The professor had three students with him and he asked me to talk to them about MS.
"I was so stable that I was able to get out of my chair and talk to the students, holding my sticks out to my side, something I had not been able to do for a long time.
"The doctors were absolutely gobsmacked by the improvement.
"It gave me so much more control over my body, more control of my life."
MS is a neurological condition which affects peoples' central nervous system.
It is thought cannabis can help by reducing, muscle spasms and pain in some sufferers.
In normal circumstances, the body produces natural cannabinoids, which bind to nerve receptors. The scientists believe this mechanism controls body movement and is disrupted in MS sufferers.
Other forms of cannabinoids are found in cannabis.
Derby MS sufferers said the effects of the treatment on Mr Withers gave them new hope.
Billy Hare, of Sinfin, who has to use crutches to walk, said: "I think it is fantastic."
And Paul Gates, chairman of the Derby MS Society, said: "It seems very encouraging.
"If it helped Tony sleep, then that is a huge thing because that is something that a lot of MS sufferers struggle with."
Professor Chris Constantinescu, consultant neurologist at Queen's Medical Centre, Nottingham, who is involved in the trial, said that if the drug had helped in such a dramatic way, "then it is a very exciting study".
The trial is still continuing and 400 people aged between 18 and 64 will eventually take part. It was run by German company Weleda AG in conjunction with the German Institute for Clinical Research and the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth.
It was a placebo-controlled trial, meaning not all applicants received the drug, with some given a harmless substitute.
But Mr Withers is convinced he had been taking the real thing.
"It was a blind trial so it could have been a placebo or the real stuff. But there is no doubt in my mind it was the real thing because of the difference it made."
Mr Withers said that, for pain relief, he used to eat Canna-choc - chocolate laced with cannabis which he would get from a couple in Cumbria, Mark and Lezley Gibson. They provided it free for MS sufferers but had to stop after being charged. They appeared in court in January 2007 and were given suspended prison sentences.
Mr Withers said that it was not until he had been taking the drug for a couple of weeks that he noticed a difference.
"My spasms became few and far between. I went from being in a wheelchair to be able to stand.
"But once I stopped taking them, I reverted back very quickly to the condition I was in before."
His doctor, Margaret Phillips, asked him to take part in the clinical study.
Dr Phillips, an honorary consultant in rehabilitation medicine at Derby City Hospital, said: "If this study shows that it is of benefit to people with MS, then I think it should be made available to sufferers as a doctor's prescription."
"If it offers benefits, we need to look at it closely."
http://www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk
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Of course the problem is, for every person who succeeds using cannabis, the pharmaceutical industry, those that stand to lose most from the legalisation of cannabis for medical use, will fight that much harder to keep cannabis "underground".