Rick Simpson Oil Sucks. Here's the Science and a Better Way Forward.

Rick Simpson Oil Sucks. Here's the Science and a Better Way Forward.

You've heard the stories. Whispered in online forums, shared in desperate late-night searches, and championed in viral documentaries. A man cures his own skin cancer with a homemade cannabis concoction, then gives the recipe away for free, claiming it's a cure the world needs to know about. It's a compelling narrative, and for thousands of cancer patients facing a terrifying diagnosis, Rick Simpson Oil (RSO) represents one thing: hope.

Let's be blunt: that hope is built on a foundation of scientific quicksand.

While the patient-led movement behind RSO is born from a valid and desperate need, the protocol itself is a dangerous, unscientific relic. It's a folk remedy masquerading as medicine, and it's time we say it out loud: RSO sucks. It's toxic, unreliable, and stands in the way of real progress.

However, dismissing it entirely would be a mistake. Buried within the folklore is a kernel of truth that preclinical science is now proving to be incredibly powerful. The future isn't RSO. It's taking that kernel of truth and building a real, evidence-based therapeutic. It's time to move from a backyard brew to a botanical drug. It's time for Seshat's Oil.

Why the 'Cure' Might Be Worse Than the Disease: The Chemistry of RSO

The most damning indictment against the RSO protocol isn't about whether cannabinoids can fight cancer—we'll get to that. It's about the production method, which is a toxicological nightmare. The protocol encourages people—often sick, vulnerable people—to manufacture a potent drug in their kitchens using industrial solvents.

The recommended solvents include things like naphtha and petroleum ether. Let's be crystal clear about what these are. Naphtha is a primary component of camping fuel. These are volatile, flammable, and explosive petroleum products. Worse, toxicological reports identify them as potential neurotoxins and cancer hazards.

Read that again. The original RSO protocol recommends using known carcinogens to produce an anti-cancer treatment. This is a staggering contradiction that should immediately disqualify the method from any serious consideration. The process relies on crudely boiling these solvents off in a rice cooker, with no way to guarantee that toxic residues aren't left behind in the final product. You are not making medicine; you are risking poisoning yourself.

The 'Miracle' You Can't Measure: RSO's Standardization Problem

Even if you ignore the profound safety risks, homemade RSO fails at the most basic requirement of any medicine: standardization.

The final concentration of THC, CBD, and other compounds in a batch of RSO is a complete mystery. The THC content can swing wildly from 70% to over 90%.

Imagine your doctor prescribing "one pill" for your heart condition, without knowing if that pill contains 10 milligrams or 1,000 milligrams of the active drug. It would be malpractice. Yet, this is the accepted reality for RSO. This variability makes consistent dosing impossible and renders every single anecdotal "cure" scientifically meaningless. Without knowing the precise chemical composition of the oil used in any given case, you cannot draw any valid conclusions about its effects. It's a story, not data.

Buried Treasure in a Toxic Waste Dump: The Scientific Rationale RSO Stumbles Upon

Here is the great irony: Rick Simpson was accidentally right about one big thing. The idea of using a full-spectrum, whole-plant extract is where the real therapeutic potential lies.

For decades, pharmaceutical development focused on isolating single molecules, like THC, which led to drugs like Marinol. But a huge body of preclinical research, along with a concept known as the "entourage effect," suggests this is the wrong approach. The theory posits that the hundreds of compounds in cannabis—cannabinoids, terpenes, flavonoids—work together synergistically, producing a therapeutic effect greater than any single compound could alone.

This isn't just a theory anymore. It's been scientifically validated. In a landmark 2018 study, the pioneering cancer researcher Dr. Cristina Sánchez and her team at Complutense University of Madrid directly compared the effects of pure THC against a full-spectrum cannabis extract on breast cancer models.

The results were stunning: the full-spectrum extract was significantly more potent than pure THC at killing cancer cells, stopping tumor growth, and preventing metastasis in animal models. Dr. Sánchez's work provides the hard, scientific evidence that the core idea behind RSO—using the whole plant—is correct. RSO is just the worst possible way to do it.

From Backyard Brew to Pharmaceutical Grade: The Seshat's Oil Framework

If the problem with RSO is its hazardous and inconsistent production, the solution is to replace it with a rigorous, safe, and reproducible pharmaceutical process. This is the framework for Seshat's Oil: a standardized, full-spectrum therapeutic agent designed for clinical investigation.

1. Gold-Standard Extraction: Instead of flammable carcinogens, Seshat's Oil uses supercritical CO_{2} extraction. This method uses non-toxic, non-flammable carbon dioxide to safely pull the full chemical profile from the plant. By "tuning" the pressure and temperature, you can preserve the delicate terpenes and cannabinoids essential for the entourage effect, leaving behind zero residual solvent. It is the cleanest, purest method available.
2. Precision Decarboxylation: The acidic cannabinoids in the plant (like THCA) must be heated to become active (THC). RSO does this crudely. The Seshat's Oil protocol uses a vacuum oven at precisely controlled, lower temperatures. This ensures full activation of the cannabinoids while preserving the volatile terpenes that would be destroyed by high heat. The vacuum also prevents THC from degrading into less active compounds.
3. Absolute Standardization: Every single batch of Seshat's Oil is subjected to rigorous analytical testing (like High-Performance Liquid Chromatography) to quantify its precise chemical makeup. This guarantees that every dose is the same, making a real clinical trial possible.

Supercharging the Entourage: Why Seshat's Oil Aims Higher

Simply making a clean version of RSO isn't enough. Science has moved on. In 2019, researchers discovered two new cannabinoids, \Delta^{9}-tetrahydrocannabiphorol (THCP) and cannabidiphorol (CBDP). These molecules are structurally similar to THC and CBD, but with a longer carbon side chain.

This small change has a massive impact. That longer chain allows THCP to bind to the human CB1 receptor with 33 times the affinity of THC. It's like going from a regular key to a master key for the endocannabinoid system. While research is nascent, preliminary evidence has already suggested that CBDP's longer chain multiplied its effects in the treatment of breast cancer.

The Seshat's Oil framework isn't just about replication; it's about optimization. The goal is to create a full-spectrum base oil and then fortify it with precise amounts of these hyper-potent novel cannabinoids. This is how we rationally design an agent that is engineered to be safer, more consistent, and potentially far more effective than the crude folk remedy that inspired it.

The Only Path Forward: A Real Clinical Trial 🧪

The impassioned debate around cannabis as a cancer treatment can only be settled by one thing: definitive clinical data.

The final step is to take this standardized, next-generation oil and test it with the full rigor of modern science. The proposed roadmap is a seamless, multi-phase (Ib/II/III) randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial.

• Phase Ib would establish the maximum tolerated dose in cancer patients.
• Phase II would look for a preliminary signal of efficacy, primarily measuring Progression-Free Survival.
• Phase III, the final step, would be a large-scale trial to determine if the oil can improve the gold standard of oncology endpoints: Overall Survival.

This is the only way to get real answers.

The RSO story gave patients hope, and that is a powerful thing. But hope is not a strategy. It's time to demand better. It's time to move this entire field out of the shadows of anecdote and into the clear light of science. It's time to evolve from RSO to Seshat's Oil and finally give patients the definitive answers they deserve.

For a deeper dive into the scientific framework and proposed clinical trial, you can read the full pre-experimental paper here: https://zenodo.org/records/17204194

References

• Toxicity of RSO Solvents:
  1. OSHA: Naphtha
  2. CDC NIOSH Pocket Guide to Chemical Hazards: Petroleum distillates
  3. American Cancer Society: Known and Probable Human Carcinogens
• The Entourage Effect:
  1. Taming THC: potential cannabis synergy and phytocannabinoid-terpenoid entourage effects (PubMed Central)
  2. The "Entourage Effect": Terpenes Coupled with Cannabinoids for the Treatment of Mood Disorders and Anxiety Disorders (PubMed Central)
  3. What is the entourage effect? (Medical News Today)
• Dr. Cristina Sánchez's Research:
  1. Appraising the "entourage effect": Antitumor action of a pure cannabinoid versus a botanical drug preparation in preclinical models of breast cancer (Biochemical Pharmacology via ScienceDirect)
  2. Cannabinoid Signalling Group, Complutense University of Madrid
  3. Therapeutic targeting of HER2-CB2R heteromers in HER2-positive breast cancer (PNAS)
• Supercritical CO_{2} Extraction:
  1. Extraction of Medicinal Cannabinoids through Supercritical Carbon Dioxide Technologies: A Review (ResearchGate)
  2. What is Supercritical CO2 Extraction? (Leafly)
  3. CO2 Extraction versus Other Methods (Reliant Beverage Carbonation)
• THCP and CBDP:
  1. A novel phytocannabinoid isolated from Cannabis sativa L. with an in vivo cannabimimetic activity higher than Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol: Δ9-Tetrahydrocannabiphorol (Nature Scientific Reports)
  2. What Is THCP? (Forbes Health)
  3. Newly Discovered Cannabinoids THCP And CBDP May Be 30 Times More Potent Than THC (IFL Science)

Additional Reading

• Cannabis and Cannabinoids (PDQ®)–Health Professional Version (National Cancer Institute)
• Cannabinoids in the treatment of cancer (Journal of Clinical Oncology)
• The Role of Cannabinoids in Cancer Therapy (Journal of the National Cancer Institute Monographs)