Non-invasive Testing for Acute Marijuana Intoxication
The state of California cannot afford to allow the valuable marijuana crop to remain an illegal and untaxed source of income. Prohibition did not work in the 1930’s for alcohol nor does it work today. The combination of the critical loss of services and funding criminal organizations decreases the quality of life in California.
California current allows for the medical use of marijuana. There is a growing awareness that the propaganda against marijuana is without basis in fact. Marijuana is much safer and has more benefits than alcohol.
Propaganda films such as Reefer Madness appear ridiculous today but played a significant role in the legal war against both marijuana and its relative hemp. Hemp had been a crucial plant in the American colonies from the beginning second only in importance to tobacco. Hemp has less than 1% THC. Marijuana does have significant risks for the user that requires limiting its use to adults. This is significant because of the continuing brain development in the frontal lobes that takes place during adolescence. Both alcohol and marijuana impair performance during driving and other activities. Society has the right and the obligation to protect itself from harm done by intoxicated individuals.
The breathalyzer allows detection of alcohol immediately during a traffic stop. At the present time, there is no parallel detection method for acute marijuana intoxication. The development of a test that immediately and non-invasively detects acute marijuana intoxication will go a long way toward ensuring our collective safety. Such a test will help parents, employers, police, and marijuana users themselves.
On July 1, 2003 the United States Patent Office issued patent US 6,585,646 B2 to Stuart Mark Berlin M.D. for the diagnostic use of apocrine sweat. Apocrine glands are present in the armpit and groin at the root of every hair shaft. The patent was granted on the basis of data documenting that the evolutionary function of the apocrine gland was to concentrate biomarkers from blood to apocrine sweat during multiple physiologically abnormal states. This function of the apocrine gland is the product of 130,000 years of co-evolution with dogs. Concentrated biomarkers in apocrine sweat break down into volatile components with little heat and bacterial action. The morphology of the hairs in the armpit and groin create a local smell chamber. This is the physiology that allows dogs to detect cancer, heart attacks and seizures in their masters. Evolutionarily dogs became the carriers of an enhanced sense of smell for humans. The compound that causes intoxication during marijuana use is THC (delta 9- tetrahydrocannibanol). Serum levels of THC greater than 100 ng/ml peak within minutes and then fall rapidly. Serum levels of THC of 5 ng/ml do not cause impairment. Levels between 5 and 10 ng/ml may also be safe for driving . Blood testing is invasive and not practical in the field. It is also a violation of individual rights.
Urine testing does not test for THC but for its carboxy metabolite which is not psychoactive and remains present in urine for long periods of time. A positive urine test demonstrates marijuana use in the recent past but does not give any information as to current intoxication.
Apocrine sweat concentrates the parent compound THC to five times its blood level during an intoxicated state. Any time the body concentrates against a chemical gradient requires active transport and the use of ATP, costing the body energy. The body only does this for important evolutionary benefit. Eccrine sweat or the sweat glands on the rest of the body do not concentrate THC but has only one fifth the blood level of THC. This natural concentrating function of the apocrine gland of THC during acute intoxication means that a non-invasive test of acute marijuana intoxication that gives immediate results in a field setting testing the thin film of sweat in the armpit can now be made.
The technology for the test is the same as the technology for urine pregnancy tests. Therefore any company that makes urine pregnancy tests can immediately make apocrine sweat tests for THC.
The patent for apocrine sweat testing is available for immediate licensing. There is a very large market that needs this test including police, employers and parents. Marijuana users themselves would also be a large market as they would for the first time be able to test themselves and determine when it was safe for them to drive or operate dangerous machinery or return to work.
Universal Cancer Biomarker and Vaccine
One of the things I enjoyed most about my pediatric career was making hospital rounds, whether at Childrens Hospital or Cedars Sinai. A child was sick enough to be in the hospital, a common everyday experience for
the doctor but a life challenging ordeal for the child. Everyone who has ever spent a night in a hospital as a child never forgets the experience. The key to being on rounds is listening to the story with your intellect and training but also with your imagination. Using all of your skills can bring to the story something that makes everything fit, a diagnosis. Listening to the story a possible diagnosis comes to mind and then you recommend a test that can prove the diagnosis. Medical tests are not equal, a negative test gives much less information that a positive diagnostic test.
On July 6, 2009 journalist Jill Adams wrote two articles in the Health section of the Los Angeles Times discussing cancer vaccines. Despite years of development and incredible promise as therapeutic breakthrough cancer vaccines have been a disappointment. She described that three cancer vaccines, against prostate cancer, melanoma, and lymphoma have achieved positive results in clinical trials. Reading this article with the same mindset as listening on rounds I realize the essential flaw in the current system of cancer vaccine development, every cancer needs its own unique vaccine.Thinking imaginatively what if there was a universal cancer biomarker coating the surface of every cancer cell? A universal cancer biomarker would make a universal cancer vaccine possible. Is this fantasy or a hypothesis? If there is a universal cancer biomarker coating the plasma membrane of every cancer cell why hasn’t all the years of biomedical research and the billions of dollars spent every year discovered it?
I remember being on rounds once and being praised by a white haired old doctor who said that in order to diagnose something you must think of it. In order to discover the universal cancer biomarker you must think outside the box.
Those who have read my book and my online newsletters know about my patent for the diagnostic use of apocrine sweat and my search for a cancer biomarker that would be diagnostic for cancer in a non-invasive test that can be self administered. What I have never shared in writing before is that I believe and hypothesize that this universal cancer biomarker would also make possible a universal cancer vaccine. My loss of licensure and access to a lab and patients has prevented me from making this discovery but it is also true that my desire to own this biomarker has also prevented me from giving this vision to the world in its fullness.
The apocrine gland is present in the armpit and groin at the base of every hair shaft. It is the reason we still have hair in our armpits and groin. I have documented that PSA, urea nitrogen, THC (from marijuana), breast cancer biomarker CA 15-3, and a patented tumor stroma biomarker are all concentrated in apocrine sweat from blood. I have seen with my own eyes the biomarker I seek in an apocrine sweat specimen that was frozen for six months and then dessicated. It was present as a large amount perhaps 30% of the precipitate in the sample.
Dogs are able to detect cancer in their masters. Apocrine sweat is the physiology that allows dogs to smell that their masters have cancer. The biomarkers deposited on the hair shaft break down into volatile components that travel in the air to the dog’s nose. The biomarker breaks down with just a little heat and bacterial action. This means that the biomarker is a very fragile protein.
Perhaps by putting this information out in this form, openly, someone who has access to cancer patients and a proteomics lab will want to go forward with my research. Maybe someone working with cancer vaccines will see the merit in my hypothesis. The magic of science is that it will prove or disprove a hypothesis. All it takes is collecting the apocrine sweat of a patient with active cancer in their bodies and doing proteomics analysis of that specimen. My universal cancer biomarker is either there or it isn’t. If it is then a universal cancer vaccine will also be there as well.
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