But many doctors are afraid to recommend it because the federal government has threatened to prosecute them. Dr. Dreher, who has researched marijuana use for many years, spoke in an interview of one of her nurses' experience with the father of a man with cancer. The father told the nurse that marijuana had eased his son's nausea and pain at home. Taking the hint, the nurse rigged the son's intravenous tubing to a wheelchair to allow them to go off while the son smoked a marijuana cigarette. The therapy allowed the son a more comfortable death.
All drugs have both potential hazards and benefits.
But a critical problem in the case of marijuana is that doctors and nurses have not been trained in its medical use. With her husband, Al Byrne, Ms. Mathre founded Patients Out of Time, a nonprofit group based in Virginia that promotes the legal use of medical marijuana and that helped organize the conference. The American Medical Association supported the conference by awarding doctor participants credits toward their continuing education. No government officials were among the 250 patients, doctors, nurses and lawyers who attended the conference here and at telecasts in seven medical centers in the United States and Canada. Dr. David Satcher, the surgeon general of the Public Health Service, declined an invitation, Ms. Mathre said.