Comment #21 posted by ElPatricio on January 13, 2006 at 18:25:55 PT:
http://www.cannabisnews.com/news/thread21482.shtml#21

Thanks, BGreen

Thank you for informing Cannabis News readers about Dr. Connors' expert knowledge of Steve Kubby's rare medical condition, compared to the ill-informed Dr. Fred Harvey, who was quoted in an Auburn Journal article.

As a former city editor [Pat McCartney] of that Placer County newspaper, who also attended much of Steve Kubby's trial in 2000-01, I can add more medical information about Steve's condition from a physician who first examined Steve more than 20 years ago.

Dr. Vincent DeQuattro was a professor of medicine at the busy USC Medical Center in Los Angeles, where he directed the hypertension unit and became a leading specialist in malignant pheochromocytoma, or adrenal cancer. He wasn't the first physician to diagnose Steve's condition, but he had seen more than 100 other patients with the 1-in-a-million illness, making him one of world's experts. When Steve saw DeQuattro in the mid-1980s, Steve's high-blood-pressure symptoms had returned, and his tumor had spread to his liver. Previous surgeries to remove the tumors had initially appeared to work. In benign adrenal cancer, the tumors never return, but in Steve's case they did.

Steve Kubby was part of a cohort of malignant adrenal cancer cases that DeQuattro referred to the Mayo Clinic for experimental therapy. He lost track of Steve and, as he testified at his trial, assumed he had died along with the rest of the group he'd sent to the Mayo.

After Steve and Michele Kubby's 1999 arrest, DeQuattro conducted a battery of tests on Steve, and concluded that Steve still had tumors, and that he had potentially fatal blood levels of adrenaline. As he testified at the trial, if you put a quart of Steve's blood in someone else, they could die.

Incidentally, and because it's never been published elsewhere, Dr. DeQuattro tested hair samples of each Kubby for the presence of any drug except cannabis, and found nothing. That supports the Kubbys' contention that they did not know about the peyote buds found in the guest bedroom.

Anyhow, Placer County prosecutors appeared convinced that Kubby did not have have malignant form of adrenal cancer. They instead took the word of an untrained jail matron that Steve was faking his symptoms while in custody. At the trial, they tried to have their expert medical witness, Dr. Rees Jones, testify that cannabis had nothing to do with Kubby's survival of a disease that usually kills in less than 10 years and has no effective treatment. The medicine patients take to control the high blood pressure turns them into zombies, and if they are lucky enough to survive more than 10 years, the side effects include Parkinson-like symptoms, DeQuattro told me.

By the way, expert witness Rees Jones is well known for his anti-marijuana views, and has taught at classes for the California Narcotics Officers Association.

Even after the trial, Placer County prosecutors argued in court pleadings that Kubby was merely a recreational potsmoker whose life was not at risk if he was jailed without access to cannabis for his medicine. They said even his doctor's tests showed that pot had no effect on Kubby's blood pressure. When I shared that informatiion with DeQuattro in an e-mail, he was livid.

"THAT IS THE OPPOSITE OF MY TESTIMONY."

I quoted to DeQuattro from the Placer County brief: "Dr. DeQuattro did conceded [sic] that the defendant may not be currently suffering from malignant pheochromocitoma. The defendants [sic] motion to terminate probation should be denied."

DeQuattro's response: "WHY DO THESE MISERABLE REPRESENTATIVES OF THE PEOPLE DISTORT THE FACTS SO WILLFULLY AND THEN CAST STONES.???"

Dr. DeQuattro and I exchanged e-mails a week or so before he left on vacation in Hawaii. While there, he died in a snorkeling accident. So, as I told the Refugee Board in Vancouver, those were his last words about Steve Kubby's medical condition.

It just goes to show you how a belief in the war on drugs can predispose otherwise reasonable people to remain ignorant and believe hogwash rather than believe anything favorable about cannabis. Sadly, it can also destroy their humanity.

Pat McCartney Auburn, California

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