Update: I am still seeking permission to embed this video directly onto this page. I really like this 3 min clip, but clicking through to the Healio Rheumatism site will require entering some information to get free access.
In 2016, I was invited to give a keynote presentation on the biological rationale for using cannabinoids to treat rheumatic disease. This was so thrilling! It was a Friday night dinner session keynote for the Clinical Congress of Rheumatology, with 500-some physicians listening to a talk on cannabis as medicine! The sponsors for this conference was a literal who’s who of big pharma companies that sell “biologics”… meaning, antibody-based therapies that have tremendous immunosuppressive side effects that make patients highly vulnerable to opportunistic infection, and which do nothing to slow down disease progression. I bet the CCR got plenty of feedback from them!
This was huge inspiration to me that times were starting to change, yet here we are in 2022 (at present writing to fill out this webpage), and there has yet to be a significant clinical trial on the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis with cannabis-based medicines. ??
Anyway, given where I was and the demeanor of the event, I feel like I did a nice job distilling down my main points for the brief interview you can find on the link below. I have asked permission to embed the video directly onto this page, and will do that if allowed.
‘”DESTIN, Fla. — At the Clinical Congress of Rheumatology Annual Meeting, Gregory L. Gerdeman, Ph.D., spoke about the research on the use of cannabinoids for the treatment of rheumatic diseases. He said there needs to be more preclinical research with a patient population that has been using cannabis.”
