You guys who are talking about stressing plants by some trimming... can you back up your claims of stress? It's not like it's trying to mend a broken bone, plants get nibbled on in nature all the time. They've evolved to heal up the wound and push growth where they can. What he doesn't want to do is cut into harvest, but at this point don't you think it's better if he gets what remains of the root system to support a slightly less dense mass of foliage (or get some of that trimmed stuff to take as clones, just in case he can't get the plants themselves going)? I'm not talking about completely defoliating, just some judicious trimming, which also keeps entry sites for disease to a minimum as well as providing options should the first method not work out so well.
That's how I see it, anyway, compared to any other plant I've grown.