Hello everyone? What is the second largest cause of mortality in the world? Cancer. Cancer is the second leading cause of mortality behind cardiovascular disease. Module A provides a basic overview of cancer and then focuses on why cancer patients have increasingly turned to cannabis. To understand why cancer patients might use cannabis, it's important to understand what a cancer patient experiences. As you can probably imagine, there's a great deal of anxiety and stress after the initial diagnosis, during treatment, and for some years after treatment. The cancer itself often involves pain, and even if the cancer itself is not causing pain, it often involves surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation, all of which can be a significant source of pain. As you already learned, research suggests that cannabis has some modest benefits with respect to pain. So pain management is one obvious reason that cancer patients may use cannabis. The painful chemotherapy induced neuropathies that develop in the extremities is a good example of this. In addition, chemotherapy often makes people nauseated, which is another treatment side effect that may be addressed with cannabinoids. In a nutshell, cancer patients report using cannabis for pain, nausea, and vomiting, and anxiety or negative mood. Having said that, one of the most important learning objectives for this module is to talk about some of the myths about Cannabis and cancer, and why it is so so important that people do not mistake the potential benefits of cannabis for symptoms of cancer with the idea that cannabis is a treatment for cancer. It is true that cannabinoids can suppress the proliferation of tumors in cells in a dish and in mouse models of cancer, but there's no solid research evidence yet that cannabis products have any cancer killing properties in humans. To the extent that it causes a cancer patient to delay a visit to their oncologist or delay traditional cancer treatment, the notion that cannabis may treat cancer is very dangerous. In summary, it is clear that many cancer patients report that cannabis products may help them cope with cancer, but we still need a lot more information on which products, which formulations, and which ratio of cannabinoids are least risky and most beneficial in this population. We will cover these issues and hear from two leaders in the field of oncology during this module. I hope you enjoy it