The human toxicity of marijuana:

a critique of a review by Nahas and Latour.

by Macdonald J. Christie & Greogory B. Chesher

Department of Pharmacology,University of Sydney,New South Wales,Australia

Introduction

Much of the scientific research which purports to show toxic effects from marijuana has come from one man, Dr. Gabriel Nahas. Dr. Nahas' research over the years has shown a number of bad effects, such suppression of the immune system, and various other toxic effects.

Dr. Nahas, however, is not without his critics. The following is an abstract of a review of some of Dr. Nahas' work which appeared in Drug and Alcohol Review.

The authors' address is: Department of Pharmacology, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia.

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"Drug and Alcohol Review (1994) 13:209-216

Commentary

The human toxicity of marijuana: a critique of a review by Nahas and Latour.

by Macdonald J. Christie & Greogory B. Chesher

Department of Pharmacology,University of Sydney,New South Wales,Australia

Abstract

A review entitled "The human toxicity of marijuana" was published in 1992 in the Medical Journal of Australia. The authors claimed that the adverse effects of cannabis use have been trivialised and that the effects are much more serious than earlier reported. We have made a careful study of this review and examined the claims made. We compared the claims of the authors with the information contained in the documents they cited and found that at least 28 of the 35 citations in this article were cited inaccurately.

Five of these publications were misquoted,or the findings of the study were not fully reported. Twenty-three citations contained other errors, leaving only six to eight (two citations could not be traced because of their obscurity) accurate citations among the 35. All of these inaccuracies operated in the direction of finding an adverse effect of marijuana.

Introduction

It is not a pleasant task to make an open criticism of a paper by colleagues, but we feel compelled to do so in the case of a paper published in the Medical Journal of Australia in 1992.. . etc "

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