Mar 05 2020 18 mins 1
When Dr. Vincent Maida first starting recommending medical cannabis to cancer patients over two decades ago, he was viewed as an outcast by many of his colleagues in the medical community. “There was zero [cannabis] curricula when I went to medical school,” Dr. Maida told The Cannabis Enigma Podcast. “And of course, the way medical students are socialized — it’s to think in a certain way, and if you try to think outside of those parameters, you’re deemed a bit of a heretic.” Fast forward a few years, and Dr. Maida, today an associate professor at the University of Toronto, started to wonder whether cannabis could help solve a problem most of his palliative patients were suffering from: intractable and chronic wounds. As many as 6% of the world population suffers from chronic wounds of one type of another. His company, VinSan Therapeutics, is developing a cannabis-based treatment for those wounds, for which modern medicine doesn’t have a cure. “My findings and the results in my Phase I trial have been nothing short of dramatic. I’ve seen elderly dying patients completely heal wounds,” Dr. Maida said. “People with big gaps in their body regenerate tissues.” Edited by Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man. Produced by Michael Schaeffer Omer-Man, Elana Goldberg, and Matan Weil.
