December 3, 2009 – Marijuana is a complex substance containing over 60 different forms of cannabinoids, the active ingredients. Cannabinoids are now known to have the capacity for neuromodulation, via direct receptor-based mechanisms at numerous levels within the nervous system. These have therapeutic properties that may be applicable to the treatment of neurological disorders; including anti-oxidative, neuroprotective, analgesic and anti-inflammatory actions; immunomodulation, modulation of glial cells and tumor growth regulation. This article reviews the emerging research on the physiological mechanisms of endogenous and exogenous cannabinoids in the context of neurological disease.

Introduction
Over the past few decades, there has been widening interest in the viable medicinal uses of cannabis. The National Institutes of Health, the Institute of Medicine, and the Food and Drug Administration have all issued statements calling for further investigation. The discovery of an endogenous cannabinoid system with specific receptors and ligands has led the progression of our understanding of the actions of cannabis from folklore to valid science. It now appears that the cannabinoid system evolved with our species and is intricately involved in normal human physiology, specifically in the control of movement, pain, memory and appetite, among others. The detection of widespread cannabinoid receptors in the brain and peripheral tissues suggests that the cannabinoid system represents a previously unrecognized ubiquitous network in the nervous system. Dense receptor concentrations have been found in the cerebellum, basal ganglia and hippocampus, accounting for the effects on motor tome, coordination and mood state. Low concentrations are found in the brainstem, accounting the remarkably low toxicity. Lethal doses in humans has not been described.

The Chemistry of Cannabis
Marijuana is a complex plant, with several subtypes of cannabis, each containing over 400 chemicals. Approximately 60 are chemically classified as cannabinoids. The cannabinoids are 21 carbon terpenes, biosynthesized predominantly via a recently discovered deoxyxylulose phosphate pathway. The cannabinoids are lipophilic and not soluble in water. Among the most psychoactive is D9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the active ingredient in dronabinol (Unimed Pharmaceuticals Inc). Other major cannabinoids include cannabidiol (CBD) and cannabinol (CBN), both of which may modify the pharmacology of THC or have distinct effects of their own. CBD is not psychoactive but has significant anticonvulsant, sedative and other pharmacological activity likely to interact with THC. In mice, pretreatment with CBD increased brain levels of THC nearly 3-fold and there is strong evidence that cannabinoids can increase the brain concentrations and pharmacological actions of other drugs.

Two endogenous lipids, anandamide (AEA) and 2-aracidonylglycerol (2-AG), have been identified as cannabinoids, although there are likely to be more. The physiological roles of these endocannabinoids have been only partially clarified but available evidence suggests they function as diffusible and short-lived intercellular messengers that modulate synaptic transmission. Recent studies have provided strong experimental evidence that endogenous cannabinoids mediate signals retrogradely from depolarized post synaptic neurons to presynaptic terminals to suppress subsequent neurotransmitter release, driving the synapse into an altered state. In hippocampal neurons, depolarization of postsynaptic neurons and the resultant elevation of calcium lead to transient suppression of inhibitory transmitter release. Depolarized hippocampal neurons rapidly release both AEA and 2-AG in a calcium-dependent manner. In the hippocampus, cannabinoid receptors are expressed mainly by GABA-mediated inhibitory interneurons. Synthetic cannabinoid agonists depress GABAA release from hippocampal slices. However, in cerebellar Purkinje cells, depolarization-induced elevation of calcium causes transient suppression of excitatory transmitter release. Thus endogenous cannabinoids released by depolarized hippocampal neurons may function to downregulate GABA release. Further, signaling by the endocannabinoid system appears to represent a mechanism enabling neurons to communicate backwards across synapses in order to modulate their inputs.

There are two known cannabinoid receptor subtypes; subtype 1 (CB1) is expressed primarily in the brain, whereas subtype 2 (CB2) is expressed primarily in the periphery. Cannabinoid receptors constitute a major family of G protein-coupled, 7-helix transmembrane nucleotides, similar to the receptors of other neurotransmitters such as dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine. Activation of protein kinases may be responsible for some of the cellular responses elicited by the CB1 receptor.

Neuromodulation and neuroprotection
As we are developing an increased cognizance of the physiological function of endogenous and exogenous cannabinoids it is becoming evident that they may be involved in the pathology of certain diseases, particularly neurological disorders. Cannabinoids may induce proliferation, growth arrest or apoptosis in a number of cells, including neurons, lymphocytes and various transformed neural and non-neural cells. In the CNS, most of the experimental evidence indicates that cannabinoids may protect neurons from toxic insults such as glutamatergic overstimulation, ischemia and oxidative damage. The neuroprotective effect of cannabinoids may have potential clinical relevance for the treatment of neurodegenerative disorders such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), multiple sclerosis (MS), Parkinson.s disease, cerebrovascular ischemia and stroke. Both endogenous and exogenous cannabinoids apear to have neuroprotective and antioxidant effects. Recent studies have demonstrated the neuroprotective effects of synthetic, non-psychotropic cannabinoids, which appear to protect neurons from chemically-induced excitotoxicity. Direct measurement of oxidative stress reveals that cannabinoids prevent cell death by antioxidation. The antioxidative property of cannabinoids is confirmed by their ability to antagonize oxidative stress and consequent cell death induced by the powerful oxidant, retinoid anhydroretinol. Cannabinoids also modulate cell survival and the growth of B-lymphocytes and fibroblasts.

The neuroprotective actions of cannabidiol and other cannabinoids have been examined in rat cortical neuron cultures exposed to toxic levels of the exitatory neurotransmitter glutamate. Glutamate toxicity was reduced by both CBD (non-psychoactive) and THC. The neuroprotection observed with CBD and THC was unaffected by a cannabinoid receptor antagonist, indicating it to be cannabinoid receptor-independent. CBD was more protective against glutamate neurotoxicity than either ascorbate (vitamin C) or a-tocopherol (vitamin E).

Cannabinoids have demonstrated efficacy as immune modulators in animal models of neurological conditions such as MS and neuritis. Current data suggests that the naturally occurring, non-psychotropic cannabinoid, CBD, may have a potential role as a therapeutic agent for neurodegenerative disorders produced by excessive cellular oxidation, such as ALS, a disease characterized by excess glutamate activity in the spinal cord.

It is not yet known how glutamatergic insults affect in vivo endocannabinoid homeostasis, including AEA, 2-AG, as well as other constituents of their lipid families, N-acylethanolamines (NAEs) and 2-monoacylglycerols (2-MAGs). Hansen et al used three in vivo neonatal rat models characterized by widespread neurodegeneration as a consequence of altered glutamatergic neurotransmission and assessed changes in endocannabinoid homeostasis. A 46-fold increase in cortical NAE concentration and a 13-fold increase in AEA was noted 24 h after intracerebral NMDA injection, while less severe insults triggered by mild concussive head trauma or NDMA receptor blockade produced a less pronounced NAE accumulation. In contrast, levels of 2-AG and other 2-MAGs were unaffected by the insults employed, rendering it likely that key enzymes in biosynthetic pathways of the two different endocannabinoid structures are not equally associated with intracellular events that cause neuronal damage in vivo. Analysis of cannabinoid CB1 receptor mRNA expression and binding capacity revealed that cortical subfields exhibited an upregulation of these parameters following mild concussive head trauma and exposure to NMDA receptor blockade. This suggests that mild-to-moderate brain activity via concomitant increase of anandamide levels, but not 2-AG, and CB1 receptor density. Panikashvili et al demonstrated that 2-AG has an important neuroprotective role. After closed head injury (CHI) in mice, the level of endogenous 2-AG was significantly elevated. After administering synthetic 2-AG to mice following CHI, a significant reduction of brain edema, better clinical recovery, reduced infarct volume and reduced hippocampal cell death compared with controls occurred. When 2-AG was administered together with additional inactive 2-acyl-glycerols that are normally present in the brain, functional recovery was significantly enhanced. The beneficial effect of 2-AG was dose-dependently attenuated by SR-141716A (Sanofi-Synthélabo), an antagonist of the CB1 receptor [30]. Ferraro et al looked at the effects of the cannabinoid receptor agonist WIN-55212-2 (Sanofi Winthrop Inc) on endogenous extracellular GABA levels in the cerebral cortex of the awake rat using microdialysis. Win-55212-2 was associated with a concentration-dependent decrease in dialysate GABA levels. Win-55212-2 induces inhibition was counteracted by the CB1 receptor antagonist SR-141716A, which by itself was without effect on cortical GABA levels. These findings suggest that cannabinoids decrease cortical GABA levels in vivo.

Sinor has shown that AEA and 2-AG increase cell viability in cerebral cortical neuron cultures subjected to 8 h of hypoxia and glucose deprivation. This effect was observed at nanomolar concentrations, was reproduced by a non-hydrolyzable analog of anandamide, and was unaltered by CB1 or CB2 receptor antagonists. In the immune system, low doses of cannabinoids may enhance cell proliferation, whereas high doses of cannabinoids usually induce growth arrests or apoptosis.

In addition, cannabinoids produce analgesia by modulating rostral ventromedial medulla neuronal activity in a manner similar to, but pharmacologically distinct from, that of morphine. Cannabinoids have been shown to produce an anti-inflammatory effect by inhibiting the production and action of tumor necrosis factor (TNF) and other acute phase cytokines. These areas are discussed in great detail in a recent paper by Rice.
Glia as the cellular targets of cannabinoids

There is now accumulating in vitro evidence that glia (astrocytes and microglia in particular) have cannabinoid signaling systems. This provides further insight into the understanding of the therapeutic effects of cannabinoid compounds. Glial cells are the non-neuronal cells of the CNS. In humans they outnumber neurons by a factor of about 10:1. Because of their smaller average size they make up about 50% of the cellular volume of the brain. Glial cells of the CNS fall into three general categories: astrocytes, oligodendrocytes and microglia. Schwann cells and the less well-recognized enteric glia are their counterparts in the peripheral nervous system. Glia are ubiquitous in the nervous system and are critical in maintaining the extracellular environment, supporting neurons, myelinating axons and immune surveillance of the brain. Glia are involved, actively or passively, in virtually all disorders or insults involving the brain. This makes them logical targets for therapeutic pharmacological interventions in the CNS. Astrocytes are the most abundant cell type of the CNS. They express CB1 receptors, and take up and degrade the endogenous cannabinoid anandamide. The expression of CB2 receptors in this population appears to be limited to gliomas and may be an indicator of tumor malignancy. Two recent studies suggest that some of the anti-inflammatory effects of cannabinoids, such as the inhibition of nitric oxide (NO) and TNF release are mediated by CB1 receptors on astrocytes.

The most recent therapeutic role for cannabinoids in the CNS evolved from the discovery that cannabinoids selectively induce apoptosis in glioma cells in vitro and that THC and other cannabinoids lead to a spectacular regression of malignant gliomas in immune-compromised rats in vivo. The mechanism underlying this is not yet clear but it appears to involve both CB1 and CB2 receptor activation. A recent study comparing the antiproliferative effects of cannabinoids on C6 glioma cells suggests the involvement of vanilloid receptors.

Microglia are the tissue macrophages of the brain. In variance from other immune tissue but in accordance with their place in the CNS microglia appear to lack CB2 receptors on protein and RNA levels. Similar to their effect on peripheral macrophages, cannabinoids inhibit the release of NO and the production of various inflammatory cytokines in microglia. Interestingly, the inhibition of NO release seems to be CB1 receptor- mediated, whereas the differential inhibition of cytokines is not mediated by either CB1 or CB2 receptors, suggesting as yet unidentified receptors or a receptor independent mechanism. Irrespective, the potential of cannabinoids on inflammatory processes such as a mouse model of MS or future experiments on brain tumors in immunocompetent animal.

Nothing is known of the effects of cannabinoids on oligodendroglia. In the light of the clinical and experimental evidence suggesting the beneficial effects of cannabinoids in MS, investigations in this direction appear promising.

Future trends
A growing number of strategies for separating the sought-after therapeutic effects of cannabinoid receptor agonists from the unwanted consequences of CB1 receptor activation are now emerging. However, further improvements in the development of selective agonists and antagonists for CB1 and CB2 receptors are needed. This would allow for the refinement of cannabinoids with good therapeutic potential and would facilitate the design of effective therapeutic drugs from the cannabinoid family. Customized delivery systems are also needed; as the cannabinoids are volatile, they will vaporize at a temperature much lower than actual combustion. Thus heated air can be drawn through marijuana and the active compounds will vaporize and can easily be inhaled. Theoretically this removes most of the wealth hazards of smoking, although this has not been well studied. Recently, pharmacologically active, aerosolized forms of THC have been developed. This form of administration is achieved via a small particle nebulizer that generates an aerosol which penetrates deeply into the lungs.

From a regulatory perspective, the scientific process should be allowed to evaluate the potential therapeutic effects of cannabis, dissociated from the societal debate over the potentially harmful effects of non-medical marijuana use. This class of compounds not only holds tremendous therapeutic potential for neurological disease but is also confirmed as having remarkably low toxicity. Source.

Benefits of Cannabis Use

AuthorMapper, an online tool for visualizing scientific research, enables document discovery based on author locations and geographic maps. Integrating content and mapping technology, AuthorMapper provides an easy-to-use, dynamic interface that allows

• Explore patterns in scientific research
• Identify new and historic literature trends
• Discover wider relationships
• Locate other experts in your field

AuthorMapper searches the springer journals collection and offers access to nearly one hundred fifty years’ of articles from more than 1,900 journals available on Springer Link. Comprehensive coverage includes both current and archival content in all major subject areas including life science, medicine, engineering, mathematics, computer science, business, and law, contributed by the world’s best academics and researchers. AuthorMapper is a powerful knowledge discovery tool that provides unique insights into scientific literature.

For more details http://www.authormapper.com

contented calf browsing hedge after TB testing summer 07

Okay, here goes. The paper which landed on Robert’s desk the week of our TB test wasn’t a recent publication…in fact it was published in 2006. It never receive the coverage it should have at the time. Strangely its arrival had nothing whatsoever to do with the farm or our impending TB test. It was forwarded to Robert because of his involvement in all things hedge (being  chair of the national hedgerow Biodiversity Action Plan group, Hedglink and co-chair of the Devon Hedge Group).

Robert popped his head around my office door “You should take a look at this.”

“What?” I looked up at him

“A paper on bovine TB linked to hedges”

“Hedges?”I scratched the top of my head and twiddled the hair “What…hedges decrease, increase the incidences?” As always when another study is published on bTB my reactions are mixed…hope, doubt, excitement, negativity and a kind of destructive inevitability.

“Decrease apparently”

“Oh something went wrong around here then!” I said wryly “Us being one of the most heavily hedged landscapes in Britain with some of the worst incidences of TB.”I leant back in my chair “So how do you mean? Good thick boundaries between contiguous farms?” I went on pre-empting his explanation “I didn’t know this…but the spread of disease from cattle to cattle out in the field is apparently quite unusual. The vet said a TB infected animal has to have developed lesions in the head and lungs and to hawk violently onto an area of grass just before it’s ingested by another animal to get cross contamination. Interesting…I always thought it was a much more tenuous encounter” I stretched “So, what’s its claim then? The paper? Where was the research carried out?” adding tongue-in-cheek “The hedgeless, stockless arable wastes in the east of the country?”

“No. Here. In North Devon. And on the Hereford/Gloucestershire boarder!” He grinned “I’ll send you a link. Have a look for yourself!”

So I did.

The study covered 120 dairy farms, 60 with recently infected herds and 60 without, and looked at the influence of various factors on the incidence of bovine TB.  These factors were farmland habitat, topography (landform), badger density, proximity of farms with breakdowns, stocking density and herd size.

As expected bTB incidence was found to be linked to herd size and distance to nearest infected farms.  In line with some other studies but not all, incidence was not found to be closely linked to badger density.  It was also not closely linked to the extent or configuration of deciduous woodlands nor to the extent of pasture (both favoured badger habitats).

What was new was that hedgerow characteristics were found to be strong predictors of breakdown incidence.   Hedgerow abundance, the number of hedgerow gaps, and the number of ungrazed field boundaries were all important.  For example, a ‘hedge-poor’ farm (as defined in the paper) would be expected on average to have a 1.6 times greater risk of bTB than a ‘hedge-rich’ farm.  Considering just total hedgerow length, an increase of 1 km per 100 ha was associated with a decrease in the risk of breakdowns by about 12.5%:  in absolute terms this equates to the annual risk of bTB changing from 9.2% to 8.1% for herds in the West of England: an annual reduction of 251 infected herds (based on 2004 figures).  These figures were controlled for herd size and distance to next bTB case: it is not simply the case that farms with plenty of good hedgerows have a lower stocking density.

The authors conclude that habitat management appears important to a farm’s bTB risk. ‘Nature friendly’ management practices – the presence of ungrazed wildlife strips, and the greater availability, width and continuity of hedgerow – are all associated with reduced bTB incidence.

They could only speculate on the mechanism through which hedgerows may reduce incidence of bTB, but  suggest it could be due to one of two factors.  The first is that hedge-rich farms are managed differently – for example they have different crop rotations which reduce the likelihood of cattle eating contaminated grass.  The second (and more likely) is that the presence of hedges reduces badger-cattle transmission because a higher proportion of contaminated grass is kept out of the reach of cattle.  Badgers preferentially use hedgerows as movement corridors and for their latrines, so where cattle are excluded from these areas by either hedge growth or fences, contact with the bacteria is reduced.

Given the practical difficulties associated with badger culling, and the fact that to be effective it has to be carried out over large areas (because of the perturbation effect), the authors suggest that improving habitat features such as hedgerows and ungrazed wildlife margins might be a more cost effective strategy to reduce infection.

So there you have it. A piece of research I had no idea existed. And the one thing we have on this farm? Exceptional density of hedges…with very few gaps; in fact we  have many more hedges now than were present on the 1840 Tithe Map.

Could this be (and I hardly dare think it, let alone say it) a reason why we ‘continue’ (whispered very quietly) to go clear?

...so! hedges are good for something other than browsing?

Climate change will have profound effects on the Arctic ecosystem, and those effects may be felt around the world. Skidaway Institute of Oceanography professor Marc Frischer is launching a three-year project to examine the effects of rising temperatures in the Arctic and how those changes will impact the marine food web.

The project is funded by a $356,139 grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

“We know global climate change is impacting the fragile Arctic environment,” said Frischer. “Atmospheric concentrations of heat absorbing greenhouse gases including carbon dioxide are rising; the Arctic sea ice and permafrost are melting; and models are predicting significant changes in precipitation patterns in the Arctic.

“What we don’t know is how living systems will respond or adapt to those changes and how, ultimately we as humans will have to adapt to those changes.”

The work will be conducted in Point Barrow, the northernmost location in the US, at a NSF supported research station operated by the Barrow Arctic Science Consortium.

Pt. Barrow, Alaska, in winter

The landscape at Point Barrow is tundra that sits on top of as much as 1,300 feet of permanently frozen soil called “permafrost.” The concern is that with climate warming this permafrost will begin to melt and release an enormous amount of organic material into the coastal ocean.

“What you have now is have is up to 1,300 ft deep frozen soils consisting of ancient forest peat locked in the permafrost,” said Frischer. “What will happen when the permafrost starts to melt and that material, called humic acid, is released into groundwater, streams, rivers and ultimately into the ocean? That is what we want to know.”

Frischer’s focus will be on the microscopic organisms that comprise the very bottom of the Arctic Ocean food web. They include a wide variety of tiny organisms. On one end are the autotrophs, organisms that consume inorganic material and produce energy through photosynthesis, like plants. At the other end are the heterotrophs that consume organic material and obtain their energy from what they eat, like animals.

The humic acid material is rich in carbon, but lacks nitrogen, a key element that both autotrophs and heterotrophs need to make use of the carbon in the humic material. For every carbon molecule an organism uses, it will also need nitrogen.

“If you are going to grow more things, then that nitrogen has to come from somewhere,” said Frischer. “Our hypothesis is that as this humic material enters the coastal Arctic, there will be a greater demand for nitrogen at the base of the food web.”

Whoever gets that nitrogen, whether it will be the plant-like autotrophs or the animal-like heterotrophs, will determine how much organic production ends up farther up the food web in larger marine animals and eventually humans.

“This will all be set by whoever wins the war for nitrogen,” said Frischer.

Over the course of the project, Frischer and his team will travel to the Arctic several times a year. While in the Arctic, Frischer’s team will focus on making observations of the system and conducing experiments to determine what organisms are growing, which organisms are using the humic material, and determining where they are getting their nitrogen from and how they are doing it.

“We will manipulate the nutrients in the water samples and see how the different micro-organisms react,” said Frischer. “From that we should be able to project how the natural environment will react and ultimately contribute new data that help us understand and predict the biological effects of climate warming in the Arctic.”

Frischer will be working with two collaborators on the project, Patricia Yager from the University of Georgia, and Deborah Bronk from the Virginia Institute of Marine Science. Both Yager and Bronk received independent grants from NSF to participate in the study.

AuthorMapper, an online tool for visualizing scientific research, enables document discovery based on author locations and geographic maps. Integrating content and mapping technology, AuthorMapper provides an easy-to-use, dynamic interface that allows you to:

• Explore patterns in scientific research
• Identify new and historic literature trends
• Discover wider relationships
• Locate other experts in your field

more details visit http://www.authormapper.com/

November 26, 2009 – Alberta Canada is going green, but not in the way some might think. Just outside the town of Vegreville, the Alberta Research Council is working to add hemp farming to Alberta’s list of lucrative industries.

The Vegreville nursery is home to the largest research and production facility of hemp in North America. Industrial hemp grown in Alberta can be used in a number of products ranging anywhere from textiles to fibreglass. Products made from hemp have less environmental impact than those made from glass or plastics, and in many cases are more energy efficient.

Jan Slaski, breeder and plant physiologist at the Vegreville facility, explained why this is the case.

“Bio composites produced from hemp are more environmentally friendly. Replacing glass fibre with bio-fibre produces a much lighter product. A lighter product means that your car, boat, or airplane is lighter and uses less fuel. High-end European car manufacturers, particularly German manufacturers, use bio-composites in their panels,” he said.

Historically, hemp has been grown in Canada for hundreds of years, but was banned in 1938 due to the associations hemp has with marijuana. This ban was later lifted in 1998. Industrial hemp, unlike marijuana, does not contain high levels of THC, the compound in marijuana that causes intoxication.

According to Slaski, Canada has very strict guidelines for hemp farmers.

“Cultivating hemp in Canada is regulated by Health Canada,” he stated. “The hemp that can be grown in Canada is strictly industrial hemp, and can only contain less than 0.3 per cent THC.”

This amount of THC is not enough to associate industrial hemp with narcotics. Such a low amount of chemical in industrial hemp should take the negative drug associations out of the industry.

The varieties of hemp currently grown in Alberta have mostly European origins. Researchers at the ARC have adapted European varieties to thrive in Alberta’s climate. Researchers have tested about 80 different cultivars (or plant varieties) from different regions to distinguish which varieties grow best in Alberta soil. The ARC has identified a Polish cultivar, also known as the Silesia variety, which has a 20–40 per cent higher crop yield than the cultivars presently allowed for cultivation in Canada. The group owns the sole rights to this variety of hemp in North America, and covers all aspects of hemp from development to processing to production, which is a benefit to the Alberta economy.

“ARC is offering solutions from seeds to the final product. This means we work with hemp to develop new cultivars and new agricultural practices. The new cultivars have a high yield and are adapted to our Alberta climate conditions,” Slaski said “We then take the hemp stock to our facilities in Millwoods, and soon we will have a processing facility in Vegreville, and process it.

The ARC oversees the hemp from seed to the final product. This means that all research, farming, and processing of the fibres is done locally keeping jobs and revenue within Alberta.

Slaski argued that this is a huge benefit to Alberta farmers and the overall economy. It’s also a benefit to individual farmers because hemp is a very lucrative crop.

“Farmers here in the province look for cash crops. They want something they can finally start making money on and hemp provides that opportunity,” Slaski said. Because industrial hemp is relatively new to Alberta, bio-composites are a bit more expensive, but the ARC is setting industry standards.

“At this point, it is a niche market,” Slaski said. “Working with mainstream industry, working with auto industries, buildings, textiles, it means we can get a much larger volume of materials produced and we can re-establish hemp as a valuable crop to Alberta.” By Krista Allan. Source.

This week’s staff breakfast was given by Nick Ashton, and concerning the AHOB 3 – or the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain Project. The project receives funding from the Leverhulme Trust, and will run run for the next three years in partnership with the Natural History Museum and several Universities in the UK, as well as one in the States, and in the Netherlands. The project aims to track the dispersal of early humans into northern Europe against the backdrop of global climate change over the last million years. Nick Ashton’s talk concentrated on three aspects of the project:

Module 1: First pioneers in northern Europe. 1.0 – 0.5 million years ago.

Module 2: Neanderthals and the North Sea Basin: Demography and technology, 420,000 – 40,000 years ago.

Module 3: Modern migrants. 50,000 – 11, 000 years ago.

Theories which have been held for over 20 years are now being reconsidered, including the initial population of Britain being dated to 700 or even 800,000 BP, rather than the 500,000 years ago previously thought.

More excavations and research will take place in years to come – certainly looks very interesting!

November 24, 2009 – Marijuana. It’s a small word that generates a large reaction (for better or for worse). People are polarized on the topic. Yes, there is a definite social stigma surrounding this infamous, leafy plant. Consequently, the potential for cannabis-based drugs has been greatly hindered by legal and political considerations – obstacles that researchers and pharmaceutical companies do not normally find themselves battling. After all, it’s not everyday that research and development teams are looking to create novel drugs from a Schedule I substance – a substance that by definition is not considered to have a legitimate medical use. However, with the recent recommendation by the American Medical Association (AMA) that marijuana’s Schedule I drug classification be reconsidered in order to facilitate research and development of cannabinoid-based medications, could this be the dawn of a new era?

I believe that the AMA’s recommendation is right on the mark. From the limited number of clinical trials conducted on smoked cannabis, the description conferred by a Schedule I classification – namely, that there is no legitimate medical use – no longer appears to apply. According to the executive summary of the Council on Science and Public Health’s (CSAPH) report accompanying the new recommendation, trials have suggested that smoked cannabis can reduce neuropathic pain, improve caloric intake and appetite in patients with reduced muscle mass, and possibly reduce pain and improve spasticity in patients with multiple sclerosis. Thus, it seems plausible that cannabis-based medicines could be developed. The re-classification of marijuana from its current Schedule I status is a necessary step to take if we hope to further explore and take advantage of the ameliorating properties of cannabis.

The question then becomes, should pharmaceutical companies dedicate some of their research and development budgets to cannabis-based drugs? From a scientific perspective, the answer is a resounding yes. Scientists steer their investigations based on preliminary experiments and promising results, and as articulated in the CSAPH report, preliminary trials suggest a variety of medicinal uses for cannabis. Furthermore, assuming that there are legitimate medicinal applications for cannabis, the development of cannabis-based medicines (in the form of pills, for example) would work to neutralize much of the stigma associated with medicinal marijuana (only 13 states even allow the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes). Cannabis-based drugs, a few steps removed from the plant itself, would allow patients access to the therapeutic effects of cannabis, while distancing the treatment from the contentious issue of smoked marijuana. This is, of course, in addition to the obvious advantage that an efficacious cannabis-based pill or other medication medium is much safer than toxic, unrefined smoke.

So what is the greatest obstacle threatening to hinder the development of cannabis-based drugs? Ironically, it is the same thing that I just mentioned above: medicinal marijuana. While the current guidelines regarding medicinal marijuana leave much to be desired – and in fact invite the development of safer, easier-to-regulate cannabis-based treatments – the fact of the matter is, pharmaceutical companies are looking to make a profit. Nobody is going to invest the funds necessary to get a drug on the market unless there is a foreseeable fortune to be made on that product. Drug companies are in the business of “blockbusters,” after all. As long as the raw marijuana plant is legal in some states for medicinal purposes, there really isn’t a market for other cannabis-based treatments. (At least, not the financially-fruitful market for which drug companies are always on the lookout.) A consequence of the legalization of marijuana for medicinal purposes is the creation of numerous, often poorly-regulated marijuana shops and boutiques (just look at the 800+ dispensaries in California). Given the diversity of outlets from which to purchase the plant, as well as the wide variety of plant strains and price range for medicinal marijuana, patients in need could no doubt find a cheaper alternative to expensive pills. Thus, if cannabis-based drugs are ever to be developed, not only does the federal classification of marijuana need to be changed, the availability of the raw plant for medicinal purposes needs to be restricted. It’s a game of supply and demand – and that’s a game that pharmaceutical companies are looking to win. Source.

2029 india

They can woo you with more jobs, better facilities, lesser taxes etc. But is this all that we expect from the government? Is this what will make India of your dreams? What about stance on protecting girl child? Provision of enough resources for employment ? Better education and hygenic environment ? Eradication of pollution and traffic problems ? Eradicating corruption and caste partiality ? Communal riots ? These issues never go in manifestos but affect our live one way or the other. Are we looking for a government which gives us just conveniences and merely carries us through their 5-year term? Or do we want a progressive government who would give an open environment to the next generation? A government which makes sure India would be first in scientific research or let’s say top in man-made wonders. Are we looking for just a convenient government? Not your demands, but put your dreams on government manifestos.

Excellent post, ep’s take on "climate-gate," and the corruption of science by politics. - Ilene

Shocked, Shocked to Find That Fraud is Going on in Here

*****

What is "finem respice"?
A. Near as anyone can tell, finem respice seems to have been the motto of Chilo of Sparta, engraved on the Temple of Apollo in Delphi. The most literal translations are "look to the end," "have regard for the end," or "consider the end," reminders that actions and deeds have consequences and that forethought is important. This is a concept that, of late, seems to have lost meaning in the Western world… more here.

Scientific research wasn’t left out of this year’s stimulus plan to the tune of $21 billion, and a federal website tracks all that stimulus.

From the link:

The stimulus plan passed by the US Congress earlier this year provided $21 billion for scientific R&D to be allocated through the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Energy, and other agencies. (The full text of the bill is available in this large pdf file.) The debate still rages amongst politicians and economists about just how many jobs the $787 billion bill has created. In the meantime, the government has launched an interesting website detailing where that scientific R&D money went.

Call it propaganda–the site is called ScienceWorksForUS–but it’s interesting to browse through the detailed list and see which research projects were funded and for how much.

Picture from We Heart It

I am feeling the tension between the popular and scientific worlds (again!) which is why I started this blog in the first instance. It’s an interesting tension because academic researchers [1] are warning commercial researchers [2] to dampen down their expansive claims about Emotional Intelligence. Popular interest in Emotional Intelligence has sky rocketed while scientific interest has putt- putted along cautiously.  Academic researchers’ concern is that entrepreneurs have taken the pig to market before it has been fattened up.

Good science sells really well, so why the premature rush to promote Emotional Intelligence in the workplace?

The problem is that the science behind the commercial EI (also referred to as EQ) test development is not available for independent review or verification.

 Goleman’s [2] Emotional Intelligence data is locked up in a proprietry database. That’s ok if you want to keep the family recipe for your southern fried chicken a secret. It’s not ok if you are making expansive claims about a test that promises to provide the pathway to Utopia; that highly emotionally intelligent people have an out and out advantage in life. There is good evidence that scores on these tests correlate highly with personality and cognitive test scores. This suggests that an aspect of personalityis being measured rather than Emotional Intelligence[3].  

Emotional Intelligence has many definitions. You can find them and the development of the construct here. Broadly, Emotional Intelligence looks alot like the person who manages their emotions, has empathy, listens to others feelings, has self control, cooperates, reciprocates in relationships and deals well with conflict.

Could it be that the commercialized construct of Emotional Intelligence is really only interpersonal skills sexily updated and rebranded?

Interpersonal skills have always been important for success. We knew them as manners, decorum, etiquette, and social graces. All tactics to achieve and maintain status.

When the social sciences took an interest in them they became an important indicator of mental health.  We then heard about communication skills, social skills, and interpersonal skills.

Interpersonal skills are key for succeeding at work. It is foolhardy to imagine that your high IQ alone will win you success in today’s workplace .

Emotions have only recently entered into the definition of interpersonal skills. Probably because emotions are difficult to pin down and therefore measure.

Try it. Ask yourself “What is an Emotion?”  If you fail to find a succinct answer to that question then you will appreciate why emotions are not easily discussed.

 I am encouraged that interpersonal skills are now tied to emotional processes. This union raises the awareness of the influence and the importance of emotions in the workplace.  We don’t leave our emotions at home when we go to work. Stress, depression and anxiety are all emotional processing problems that go to work with people every day.

These problems influence performance and work relationships. Open conversations about feelings, good listening skills, and two-way relationships have to make the workplace better. 

However, I’m an  advocate of the scientific method for getting to the core of how we process emotion, and for discovering what processes make up Emotional Intelligence.

That is what my thesis is about.

This work will make slow progress because emotions are about self awareness. The ability to recognise our own and others’  feelings is a problem of consciousness [4]. The study of emotion is difficult because a good deal about emotion is not available to consciousness. People are not very good at recognising where their sadness, anger etc came from. We act in ways that are driven by emotions operating at unconcious levels.

Accessing and measuring how well people manage and use emotional information is difficult and it is why empirical evidence for Emotional Intelligence is still in the very early stages. Interestingly Goleman has recently started to refer to Emotional Intelligence as Emotional Competencies.

With my skeptic’s hat on I see the danger in jumping on the bandwagon without questioning the underlying evidence for Emotional Intelligence. Many of the EI tests endorsed in occupational settings are self-report measures, so they are really only measuring your estimates of your own emotional intelligence.  There is money to be made with these tests, so there are rewards for endorsing them. Commercialization of Emotional Intelligence runs the gamut from expensive psychometric tests to cuddly toys.   Is it dangerous to categorise people and then select or reject them on the basis of their self rated performance on these tests? Probably, because there are no right or wrong answers in an EQ test, so results are open to someone else’s interpretation. 

That said an awareness of how you process emotion is undoubtedly very valuable and useful information. I don’t want the Emotional Intelligence baby thrown out with the Commercialized bath water.

[1] Mayer, J.D., Salovey, P. & Caruso, D.R. (2008). Emotional Intelligence: New ability or eclectic traits, American Psychologist, 63, 6, 503-517

[2]Goleman, D. (1998). Working with emotional intelligence. New York: Bantam Books

[3] Davies, M., Stankov, L., & Roberts R. (1998). Emotional Intelligence: In search of an elusive construct. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 75, 989-1015.

[4] Damasio, A. (1999). The feeling of what happens: Body and emotion in the making of consciousness. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Publishing

See also

Landy, F.J. (2005). Some historical and scientific issues related to research on emotional intelligence. Journal of Organizational Behavior
 26 (4).
 Knapp, M. & Daly, J. (2002). Handbook of Interpersonal Communication. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications

November 17, 2009 – The active ingredient in marijuana may stall decline from Alzheimer’s disease, research suggests.

Scientists showed a synthetic version of the compound may reduce inflammation associated with Alzheimer’s and thus help to prevent mental decline.

They hope the cannabinoid may be used to developed new drug therapies.

The research, by Madrid’s Complutense University and the Cajal Institute, is published in the Journal of Neuroscience.

The scientists first compared the brain tissue of patients who died from Alzheimer’s disease with that of healthy people who had died at a similar age.

They looked closely at brain cell receptors to which cannabinoids bind, allowing their effects to be felt.

They also studied structures called microglia, which activate the brain’s immune response.

Microglia collect near the plaque deposits associated with Alzheimer’s disease and, when active, cause inflammation.

The researchers found a dramatically reduced functioning of cannabinoid receptors in diseased brain tissue.

This was an indication that patients had lost the capacity to experience cannabinoids’ protective effects.

The next step was to test the effect of cannabinoids on rats injected with the amyloid protein that forms Alzheimer’s plaques.

Those animals who were also given a dose of a cannabinoid performed much better in tests of their mental functioning.

The researchers found that the presence of amyloid protein in the rats’ brains activated immune cells.

However, rats that also received the cannabinoid showed no sign of microglia activation.

Using cell cultures, the researchers confirmed that cannabinoids counteracted the activation of microglia and thus reduced inflammation. Video:

Creating healthier lives is a core tenet of Shaklee’s company philosophy of providing products that are created by harnessing the power of nature and science. To ensure the quality of its health and wellness products, Shaklee has invested more than $250 million into product research and development and clinical trials. Approximately 83,000 laboratory and quality assurance tests are performed on Shaklee’s nutritional products and their ingredients every year.

To maintain this ideal balance of nature and science, Shaklee works with scientific review and assessment of third-party research and independent clinical studies. As part of the research and development process, Shaklee also consults a Scientific Advisory Board, a team of nationally recognized scientists from some of America’s leading academic and medical institutions. Shaklee is committed to the scientific integrity of all its products.

Click on the following link to view a list of Shaklee’s clinical research studies. The first section identifies studies performed on ingredients in Shaklee’s current products and the second section lists studies pertaining to earlier versions of Shaklee’s products.

By: Emily Taft’s Shaklee

Polygraph testing is supported by most informed scientists.  This is because they have read some or all of the scientific research that establishes polygraph’s accuracy rate.

Scientific research into polygraph accuracy has been going on since 1917, when a Harvard psychologist named William Marston published the first-ever experiments dealing with polygraph-based lie detection.  Since then, thousands of experimental reports and articles have been published around the world, in some of the most prestigious scientific journals. 

What this research tells us is that if a polygraph exam is done properly, by a skilled and experienced examiner, using the best methodologies, techniques and equipment, accuracy can be as high as 96%.

Dr. Rovner is a polygraph examiner with a private practice in Los Angeles, California.

Most of us live under the illusion that we make good decisions based on the data at hand.  The reality is it takes a long time for people to change their minds.  Even longer to change behavior.

Ralph Nader called on auto manufacturers for decades before seat belts were finally offered as standard equipment.  Once they were available it took legislation to get people to actually use them.  In the early ’80’s I remember once being ridiculed by a friend for buckling up.  He was a working class hero who snorted, “You know studies show that college educated people are far more likely to use seatbelts.”  This was supposed to be an insult.  Everyone knew it was safer to wear seatbelts, but the very idea of wanting to be safe was considered uncool in those days. In some circles it still is.

By now everyone knows it’s unsafe to use your cell phone to talk or text while driving.  Has the data changed your habits?  How about the other drivers?

Even scientists are resistant to their own data.  Many of us know doctors who smoke or who are overweight. But that’s just their personal behavior.  As with seatbelts it can take decades for life-saving ideas to be implemented. Seth Godin discussed when data and decisions collide in his blog a few days ago. He notes:

“It took Ignaz Semmelweis more than twenty years (he died before it happened, actually) to persuade doctors that washing their hands could save the lives of mothers giving birth. He had the data, he had the proof, but that wasn’t enough to change minds.”

Here is an interesting TEDtalk on the subject “Are We In Control of Our Decisions?” by Dan Ariely, author of Predictably Irrational.

Predictions are often the result of pressure and sensalisation by the media.Normally a Scientist is reluctant to predict as he knows the imponderables always exist and he is extra cautious.
Claims of immediate results and break throgh sre often made by adminstrators of a research facility where the Scientist in charge,who is more of an adminstrator than a scientist;he does so to ensure funds, with out realising he is hurting the scientific community in the long run.This does not mean scientists are above board.
Barring few exceptions ,people take scientific research as a profession not as a vocation.
Few have the passion of a Newton,Einstein.
When your future hinges on immediate results,which is not possible in research,professional scientists engage in fabricating resutls to save their career.
Another reason for immediate results not coming forth as before is too much of formal education has dulled intutive perception, which underlies great findings like Clarke’s Table,Relativity,Laws of motion.
Story:
A South Korean postage stamp issued in 2005 depicts a scene that is reminiscent of the iconic human evolution cartoon in which a stooping ape evolves, in six or so steps, into an upright, bipedal Homo sapiens. It shows a paraplegic man climbing slowly out of his wheelchair, standing up straight, and then performing a giant leap of celebration. Placed next to an image of an ovum undergoing the technique of nuclear transfer, the message was clear: Thanks to the groundbreaking publications of Hwang Woo-Suk, therapeutic cloning was a medical miracle that had as good as happened. The trouble is, it hadn’t happened. And nearly 4 years on, it still hasn’t.

South Korea was understandably proud of Hwang’s achievements and, like the rest of the world, excited by his claims and those of researchers worldwide that his human embryonic stem cell (hESC) techniques were set to provide therapies for not only spinal injuries, but Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and a host of other degenerative diseases. The rest is history. By January 2006, it was clear that Hwang’s pioneering papers had been fabricated and that the eleven individualized human stem cell lines he claimed to have established did not exist. Hwang left Seoul National University and was subject to criminal investigation, the stamp was withdrawn from circulation, and the world still awaits approval for the first hESC therapeutic application.

It can sometimes feel as if cures for diseases are forever 10 years off, while nuclear fusion seems to have been 50 years away from practical reality for about half a century now. It doesn’t take anything so extreme as scientific fraud to scupper what may have seemed, at the time, to be a well-grounded scientific prediction. At its most enthusiastic, science has always been prone to promise rather more, and sooner, than it has managed to deliver. It can sometimes feel as if cures for diseases are forever 10 years off, while nuclear fusion seems to have been 50 years away from practical reality for about half a century now. It might be easy to look back and laugh at claims that eugenics would spell the end for not only heritable diseases, but also of social problems such as vagrancy and crime, but a 1989 Science editorial’s claim during the run-up to the human genome project that the new genetics could help reduce homelessness by tackling mental illness1 is perhaps fresh enough to make biologists’ toes curl with embarrassment.

Meanwhile, in bleaker moments, scientific authorities have predicted the end of the world and civilization as we know them at the hand of pandemics or environmental catastrophe. And yet we are still here, in defiance of Thomas Malthus’s eighteenth-century warnings about overpopulation and ecologist Paul Ehrlich’s prophesy in his 1968 book The Population Bomb that “In the 1970s and 1980s hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in spite of any crash programs embarked upon now.”

Related ArticlesAuthors of Our Own Misfortune

The Future of Public Engagement

The Scientist as Politician
Of course, scientists have a strong incentive to make bold predictions—namely, to obtain funding, influence, and high-profile publications. But while few will be disappointed when worst-case forecasts fail to materialize, unfulfilled predictions—of which we’re seeing more and more—can be a blow for patients, policy makers, and for the reputation of science itself.

In 1995, for example, an expert panel on gene therapy convened by the U.S. National Institutes of Health’s then-director Harold Varmus2 concluded: “Expectations of current gene therapy protocols have been oversold. Overzealous representation of clinical gene therapy has obscured the exploratory nature of the initial studies, colored the manner in which findings are portrayed to the scientific press and public, and led to the widely held, but mistaken, perception that clinical gene therapy is already highly successful. Such misrepresentation threatens confidence in the field and will inevitably lead to disappointment in both medical and lay communities.”

cientists have been making predictions for as long as there have been scientists. Indeed, without speculating about the future, it would be impossible to make decisions about how best to proceed. But there is reason to believe that promises are becoming more central to the scientific process.

Sir Ian Wilmut, leader of the Roslin Institute team that cloned Dolly the sheep, says that a “soundbite” media culture that demands uncomplicated, definitive, and sensational statements plays a significant role. “It’s [the media] who put the most pressure on scientists to make predictions,” he says. And in a radio or TV interview that allows perhaps only 10 or 20 seconds for an answer, “it’s very easy then to inadvertently mislead.”

But it might also pay scientists—financially and politically—to go along with such demands, and to indulge in what Joan Haran, Cesagen Research Fellow at Cardiff University, UK, diplomatically calls “discursive overbidding,” whereby they talk up the potential value of work for which they seek the support of funds, changes in legislation or public approval.

“Since the late 20th century, scientists no longer quite have that quality that we used to speak of as scientists being disinterested. They are now very interested,” says Hilary Rose, professor emerita of the sociology of science at the University of Bradford, UK and Gresham College London. “Many clearly manage to rise above this, but the basic culture of science has changed.”

Various developments such as the 1980 Bayh-Dole Act in the United States, and the rise of the spin-out companies from universities, mean that research has become more intrinsically bound up with the commercial world. Many biotech companies are now led by financial directors rather than scientific directors, says Nik Brown, co-director of the Science and Technology Studies Unit, University of York, UK. The past decade has seen a rise in the number of financial experts appointed to influential positions in biotech companies, for instance. And since the end of the Cold War, he says, the central role of science has become less about security and more about economy, with science and technology becoming central to many nations’ economic strategy.

Some famous (and infamous) predictions YEAR PREDICTION RIGHT OR WRONG?
1869 Dmitri Mendeleev’s periodic table left spaces for elements that he predicted would be discovered. Three of these (gallium, scandium, and germanium) were subsequently discovered within his lifetime. RIGHT
1964 Physicists predict the existence of the Higgs Boson. If CERN’s Large Hadron Collider finds no evidence for the existence of this massive fundamental particle, working models of the material universe might require a fundamental rethink. PENDING
1965 Intel cofounder Gordon E. Moore predicts that the number of transistors on a computer chip would double every two years. The industry has so far managed to keep up (despite many predictions over the years about the law’s imminent demise). RIGHT
1968 Entomologist Paul Ehrlich predicts that hundreds of millions of people will starve to death in the next two decades. WRONG
2002 At the website longbets.org, astronomer Sir Martin Rees, president of the Royal Society, predicts that “By 2020, bioterror or bioerror will lead to one million casualties in a single event.” Also at Long Bets, entrepreneurial engineer Ray Kurzweil bets $10,000 that by 2029 a computer will have passed the Turing Test for machine intelligence. PENDING
2003 Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory sponsored GeneSweep, a sweepstakes on the number of human genes. While bids averaged around 60,000 genes, it was eventually won by a bid of 25,947—the lowest of the hundreds received. WRONG
2007 The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change’s 4th Assessment Report projects that global surface air temperatures will increase by between 1.1 and 6.4°C over preindustrial levels by the end of the century. PENDING
http://www.the-scientist.com/2009/11/1/28/1/

November 10, 2009 – The American Medical Assn. changes its policy to promote clinical research and development of cannabis-based medicines and alternative delivery methods.

The American Medical Assn. on Tuesday urged the federal government to reconsider its classification of marijuana as a dangerous drug with no accepted medical use, a significant shift that puts the prestigious group behind calls for more research.

The nation’s largest physicians organization, with about 250,000 member doctors, the AMA has maintained since 1997 that marijuana should remain a Schedule I controlled substance, the most restrictive category, which also includes heroin and LSD.

In changing its policy, the group said its goal was to clear the way for clinical research, develop cannabis-based medicines and devise alternative ways to deliver the drug.

“Despite more than 30 years of clinical research, only a small number of randomized, controlled trials have been conducted on smoked cannabis,” said Dr. Edward Langston, an AMA board member, noting that the limited number of studies was “insufficient to satisfy the current standards for a prescription drug product.”

The decision by the organization’s delegates at a meeting in Houston marks another step in the evolving view of marijuana, which an AMA report notes was once linked by the federal government to homicidal mania. Since California voters approved the use of medical marijuana in 1996, marijuana has moved steadily into the cultural mainstream spurred by the growing awareness that it has some beneficial effects for chronically ill people.

This year, the Obama administration sped up that drift when it ordered federal narcotics agents not to arrest medical marijuana users and providers who follow state laws. Polls show broadening support for marijuana legalization.

Thirteen states allow the use of medical marijuana and about a dozen more have considered it this year.

The AMA, however, also adopted as part of its new policy a sentence that admonishes: “This should not be viewed as an endorsement of state-based medical cannabis programs, the legalization of marijuana, or that scientific evidence on the therapeutic use of cannabis meets the current standards for a prescription drug product.”

The association also rejected a proposal to issue a more forceful call for marijuana to be rescheduled.

Nevertheless, marijuana advocates welcomed the development. “They’re clearly taking an open-minded stance and acknowledging that the evidence warrants a review. That is very big,” said Bruce Mirken, a spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. “It’s not surprising that they are moving cautiously and one step at a time, but this is still a very significant change.”

Advocates also noted that the AMA rejected an amendment that they said would undercut the medical marijuana movement. The measure would have made it AMA’s policy that “smoking is an inherently unsafe delivery method for any therapeutic agent, and therefore smoked marijuana should not be recommended for medical use.”

Dr. Michael M. Miller, a psychiatrist who practices addiction medicine, proposed the amendment. “Smoking is a bad delivery system because you’re combusting something and inhaling it,” he said.

Reaction from the federal government was muted.

Dawn Dearden, a spokeswoman for the Drug Enforcement Administration, said, “At this point, it’s still a Schedule I drug, and we’re going to treat it as such.” The Food and Drug Administration declined to comment.

In a statement, the office of the White House drug czar reiterated the administration’s opposition to legalization and said that it would defer to “the FDA’s judgment that the raw marijuana plant cannot meet the standards for identity, strength, quality, purity, packaging and labeling required of medicine.”

The DEA classifies drugs into five schedules, with the fifth being the least restrictive. Schedule II drugs, such as cocaine and morphine, are considered to have a high potential for abuse, but also to have accepted medical uses.

Several petitions have been filed to reschedule marijuana. The first, filed in 1972, bounced back and forth between the DEA and the courts until it died in 1994. A petition filed in 2002 is under consideration.

Kris Hermes, a spokesman for Americans for Safe Access, said that advocates hoped the petition would receive more attention. “Given the change of heart by the AMA, there is every opportunity for the Obama administration to do just that,” he said.

In a report released with its new policy, the AMA notes that the organization was “virtually alone” in opposing the first federal restrictions on marijuana, which were adopted in 1937. Cannabis had been used in various medicinal products for years, but fell in to disuse in the early 20th century.

Sunil Aggarwal, a medical student at the University of Washington, helped spark the AMA’s reconsideration after he researched marijuana’s effect on 186 chronically ill patients. “I had reason to believe that there was medical good that could come from these products, and I wanted to see AMA policy reflect that,” he said.

The AMA is not the only major doctors organization to rethink marijuana. In 2008, the American College of Physicians, the second-largest physician group, called for “rigorous scientific evaluation of the potential therapeutic benefits of medical marijuana” and an “evidence-based review of marijuana’s status as a Schedule I controlled substance.”

Last month, the California Medical Assn. passed resolutions that declared the criminalization of marijuana “a failed public health policy” and called on the organization to take part in the debate on changing current policy. By John Hoeffel. Source.

November 7, 2009 – The use of marijuana (cannabinoids) may be helpful in treating patients who have post-traumatic stress disorder, according to a new study released by the University of Haifa’s Department of Psychology. Post-traumatic stress disorder is especially a concern among war veterans.

Post-traumatic stress disorder:
Nearly 7.7 million Americans have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) at any given time, according to the National Institute of Mental Health, which also notes that about 30 percent of men and women who have spent time in war zones experience the disorder. PTSD is a debilitating condition that often follows a horrifying emotional or physical event, which causes the individual to have persistent, terrifying memories and thoughts, or flashbacks, of the situation. PTSD was once referred to as “shell shock” or “battle fatigue” because of its high prevalence among war veterans.

For people who have PTSD, the most prominent symptoms include reawakened trauma, avoiding anything that could recall the trauma, and psychological and physiological disturbances. It is difficult to treat PTSD patients because they are frequently exposed to additional stress, which hinders their efforts to overcome the trauma.

Marijuana and PTSD study
In the study from the University of Haifa, the researchers examined the efficiency of cannabinoids as a medical treatment for coping with the symptoms of PTSD. The researchers used a synthetic form of marijuana that has properties similar to those in the natural plant, and chose a rat model.

During the first stage of the experiment, the researchers noted how long it took for rats to overcome a traumatic experience without any intervention. Briefly, the experiment involved placing some rats in a cell colored white on one side and black on the other. The rats were placed in the white area, but when they moved to the black area, which they prefer, they received a light electric shock. The researchers brought the rats to the white area over a series of days. Immediately after the rats were exposed to the shock, they stopped moving to the black area voluntarily. However, after a few days of not receiving further electric shocks in the black area, they moved there without hesitation.

During the second phase of the experiment, a second group of rats were placed on a platform after receiving the electric shock, which added stress to the traumatic situation. The rats avoided the black area for a much longer time, which showed that exposure to additional stress hinders the process of overcoming trauma.

The third phase of the experiment involved another group of rats that were exposed to the electric shock and additional stress, but before they were placed on the platform they received an injection of synthetic marijuana in the amygdala area of the brain, which is connected to emotional memory. These rats returned to the black area after the same amount of time as the first group, which indicated that the marijuana eliminated the symptoms of stress. Even when the researchers administered marijuana injections at different times to additional groups of rats, the stress symptoms did not return. When the researchers examined hormone levels in the rats during the experiment, they found that synthetic marijuana prevented the release of the hormone produced by the body during times of stress.

The University of Haifa investigators believe their results indicate that marijuana can have an important role in treating stress-related conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder. Individuals who worry that using marijuana for PTSD may encourage illicit drug use can turn to another study in which researchers examined the relation between PTSD symptom severity and motives for marijuana use among 103 young adult marijuana users. After considering other variables, including cigarette and alcohol use, the investigators found PTSD symptom severity was significantly related to marijuana use coping motives but no other motives for its use. Source.

SOURCES:
Bonn-Miller MO et al. Journal of Traumatic Stress 2007 Aug; 20(4): 577-86
University of Haifa news release

Troy Dawson acaba de anuciar a versão 5.4 do Scientific Linux, uma distribuição compilada dos pacotes do Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4, mas otimizado com pacotes científicos extras: “O Scientific Linux 5.4 é distribuido para as arquiteturas i386 e x86_64. Há pacotes que tivemos de adicionar ao Scientific Linux, que já estão no Enterprise 5, e não há necessidade de instala-los à parte. O FUSE, e seus módulos do kernel, estão agora disponíveis pelos repositórios da Red Hat. O suporte ao chipset wireless Atheros também está disponível nos repositórios. Nós adicionamos o iwlwifi 5150 ucode (firmware), bem como o pacotes atualizados 3945, 4945, e 5000 ucode. O Lua também foi adicionado à versão. O Scientific Linux 5.4 é baseado em RPMs reconstruídos de SRPMs do Enterprise 5 Server e Client, que também é beneficiado pelas correções de erros e bugs até 1 de Novembro de 2009″.

Scientific Linux 5.4

O Scientific Linux é uma versão recompilada do Red Hat Enterprise Linux, co-desenvolvida pelo Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory e pela European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN). Não obstante, ele é completamente compatível com o Red Hat Enterprise Linux, e também fornece os pacotes adicionais não encontrados na distribuição comercial da Red Hat; o mais notável entre eles é o suporte a vários tipos de sistemas de arquivos, incluindo o Cluster Suite e o Global File System (GFS), FUSE, OpenAFS, Squashfs e Unionfs, o suporte a wireless com firmware Intel, MadWiFi e NDISwrapper, Sun Java e Java Development Kit (JDK), ambiente gráfico lightweight IceWM, R – uma linguagem e ambiente de desenvolvimento para computação estatística, e ocliente de email Alpine.

Veja o anúncio de lançamento e as notas da versão para maiores detalhes.

Download: SL.54.110309.DVD.i386.disc1.iso (4,027MB, MD5), SL.54.DVD.x86_64.iso (4,151MB, MD5).

Tradução livre de matéria disponível em: http://distrowatch.com/?newsid=05751

The old adage says we learn from our mistakes.

Recent studies suggest otherwise.

“Success has a much greater influence on the brain than failure,” says Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist Earl Miller, who led the research.  In learning trials with monkeys, even after an animal had mastered a task, one mistake would drop its performance level in the next trial to no better than chance.

On the other hand the monkey’s performance tended to improve following a successful attempt.  The theory is that the surge of dopamine resulting from a perceived success creates pleasure feeling. The theory is this signals brain cells to keep doing whatever they did that created the successful feeling.

November 6, 2009 – The symptoms and side effects of reefer madness are now clearer than ever.

Politicians, even those who never inhaled, suffer paranoid delusions. Over the past century, Canada’s ludicrous and draconian marijuana policies wasted billions in criminal-justice resources.

Crime gangs got rich and recreational marijuana users–about as dangerous as contented cats–were fined and jailed by the thousands.

But that’s only half of it. What we now know is that the government’s marijuana paranoia cost this country a cash crop of boundless potential.

I don’t mean marijuana, though some of us wish pot was grown and taxed by government so the windfall could enrich society instead of gangsters.

I refer instead to hemp, a benign super-plant and casualty of Canada’s war on drugs.

Fortunately, hemp is finally making a comeback, in part because of the work of the Alberta Research Council.

ARC plant physiologist Jan Slaski is as keen on hemp as he is tired of reefer jokes.

Slaski isn’t laughing, he says, because the jokes only perpetuate a bad myth.

Hemp, or industrial hemp as Slaski calls it, is not marijuana. Two different plants.

Slaski says the hardy hemp plant has been cultivated for more than 8,000 years. Its plant fibres were used in everything from clothes to shoes to rope. Its seed oil is rich in health Omega-3 and Omega-6 fatty acids.

When Ukrainian settlers came to Canada, they brought hemp seeds. One record in the archives talked about pioneers using hemp to create a soothing tea.

But while industrial hemp has some of the psycho-active THC found in marijuana, the amounts are far less intoxicating than all-ages, de-alcoholized beer.

Slaski says THC concentrations in hemp are a fraction–one per cent or less–of that in marijuana. You’d die of smoke inhalation trying to get high.

Still, one of the research council’s aims is to breed a hemp plant with no detectable THC. Why? Because of marijuana paranoia.

In 1998, 60 years after the feds prohibited the growing of hemp as part of its war on drugs, controlled plots were again allowed.

Modern hemp growers had to jump through high hoops, including a criminal record check and detailed license application to Health Canada.

The lingering hemp hysteria is summed up nicely by one of Health Canada’s rules: No hemp can be grown within one kilometre of a school.

So why is the research council working so hard to redeem hemp? Well, because of its potential to not only give Alberta farmers an economic edge, but also help save the environment.

Hemp literally grows like a weed. It can reach or exceed three metres in height during our short growing season.

It produces biomass–usable plant material–like nothing else.

Researchers have yet to identify a pest threat to hemp. It’s early season vigour allows it to out-compete weeds. So unlike cereal crops, hemp is organic, requiring no pesticide applications.

“It truly is a super crop,” Slaski says.

Forget hemp’s healthy food-oil potential for a moment. That may come if people can get over the fear of taking a trip on hemp-fried foods.

But the fibre from hemp could be used in everything from pulp-and-paper to textiles. Alberta is only one of many jurisdictions in the world that clear-cuts forests for pulp.

Forest companies must travel further and further from the pulp mill to retrieve feed stock, which then takes at least 60 years to regrow.

Put enough hemp in production and you’d get an annual, renewable fibre supply for paper production.

Hemp could also replace cotton, which requires large applications of pesticides. Hemp could also replace glass fibre, which is used in the making of composite materials, like plastics for the automotive industry.

Glass fibre requires high heat and energy in its industrial production. Hemp? Rain and sun. Glass fibres aren’t biodegradable like hemp. Hemp fibres are lighter. Lighter cars require less fuel.

The use of hemp in composite plastics is being studied in earnest by the ARC. Slaski has talked to automakers who say they’ll sign contracts if hemp composites meet strict requirements. And if production levels can be guaranteed.

The first requirement is being met ARC labs. But we’re a long way from widespread hemp farming, largely because of its undeserved reputation.

But then again, marijuana also has an undeserved reputation. It’s obvious to anyone who looks objectively at the facts that marijuana causes less harm than alcohol, both to the individual and society.

Is marijuana safe? Any psychoactive substance can be abused. But marijuana doesn’t kill brain cells or inspire violence like alcohol does.

So when you consider how this society promotes and celebrates the use of a more dangerous drug, alcohol, our marijuana policies appear silly.

But even sillier is that industrial hemp got caught up in the madness.

In case you’re wondering, the answer is no. I don’t smoke pot. I tried it as a teenager but I found it made me paranoid. By Scott McKeen. Source.

November 5, 2009 – The debate over its risks has split political and scientific opinion. But American mother Marie Myung-Ok Lee says cannabis isn’t only safe enough for her autistic son – it’s dramatically improved his condition.

My son, J, has autism. He’s also had two serious operations for a spinal cord tumour and has an inflammatory bowel condition, all of which may be causing him pain, if he could tell us. He can say words, but many of them – “duck in the water, duck in the water”, for instance – don’t convey what he means. For a time, anti-inflammatory medication seemed to control his pain. But in the last year, it stopped working. He began to bite and to smack the glasses off my face. If you were in that much pain, you’d probably want to hit someone, too.

J’s school called my husband and me in for a meeting about J’s tantrums, which were affecting his ability to learn. The teachers were wearing Tae Kwon Do arm pads to protect themselves against his biting. Their solution was to hand us a list of child psychiatrists. As autistic children can’t exactly do talk therapy, this meant using sedating, antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal.

Last year, Risperdal was prescribed for more than 389,000 children in the US – 240,000 of them under the age of 12 – for bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism and other disorders. Yet the drug has never been tested for long-term safety in children and carries a severe warning of side-effects. From 2000 to 2004, Risperdal, or one of five other popular drugs also classified as “atypical antipsychotics”, was the “primary suspect” in 45 paediatric deaths, according to a review of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data by USA Today. When I canvassed parents of autistic children who take Risperdal, I didn’t hear a single story of an improvement that seemed worth the risks. A 2002 study on the use of Risperdal for autism, in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed moderate improvements in “autistic irritation” – but the study followed only 49 children over eight weeks, which limits the inferences that can be drawn from it.

We met with J’s doctor, who’d read the studies and agreed: No Risperdal or its kin. The school called us in again. What were we going to do, they asked. As an occasional health writer and blogger, I was intrigued when a homeopath suggested medical marijuana. Cannabis has long-documented effects as an analgesic and an anxiety modulator. Best of all, it is safe. The homeopath referred me to a publication by the Autism Research Institute describing cases of reduced aggression, with no permanent side- effects. Rats given 40 times the psychoactive level merely fall sleep. Dr Lester Grinspoon, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who has been researching cannabis for 40 years, says he has yet to encounter a case of marijuana causing a death, even from lung cancer.

A prescription drug called Marinol, which contains a synthetic cannabinoid, seemed mainstream enough to bring up with J’s doctor. I cannot say that with a few little pills everything turned around. But after about a week of fiddling with the dosage, J began garnering a few glowing school reports: “J was a pleasure have in speech class,” instead of “J had 300 aggressions today.”

But J tends to build tolerance to synthetics, and in a few months we could see the aggressive behaviour coming back. One night, I went to the meeting of a medical marijuana patient advocacy group on the campus of the college where I teach. The patients told me that Marinol couldn’t compare to marijuana, the plant, which has at least 60 cannabinoids to Marinol’s one.

***

Rhode Island, where we live, is one of 13 states where the use of medical marijuana is legal. But I was resistant. My late father was an anaesthesiologist, and compared with the precise drugs he worked with, I know he would think marijuana to be ridiculously imprecise and unscientific. I looked at my son’s tie-dye socks (his avowed favourite). At his school, I was already the weirdo mom who packed lunches with organic kale and kimchi and wouldn’t let him eat any “fun” foods with artificial dyes. Now, I’d be the mom who shunned the standard operating procedure and gave her kid pot instead.

I thought back to when J was 18 months old. We were vacationing on the Cape, and, although he just had the slightest hitch in his gait, I was sure there was something wrong. His paediatrician laughed. I called back repeatedly until a different doctor agreed to see us. J was taken in for emergency surgery, to remove a tumour that was on the verge of inflicting irreparable damage. Sometimes, you just have to go with your gut.

And yet, I still hesitated. The Marinol had been disorienting enough – no protocol to follow, just trying varying numbers of pills and hoping for the best. Now we were dealing with an illegal drug, one for which few evidence-based scientific studies existed, precisely because it is an illegal drug. But when I sent J’s doctor the physician’s form that is mandatory for medical marijuana licensing, it came back signed. We underwent a background check with the Rhode Island Bureau of Criminal Identification, and J became the state’s youngest licensee.

Having a licence, however, is different from having access to marijuana. While California has a network of “compassion centres,” basically pharmacy-like storefronts that provide quality product from registered growers, Rhode Island’s Republican governor has consistently vetoed that idea, despite the local stories of frail patients being mugged in downtown Providence as they go in search of pot. We weren’t about to purchase street marijuana, which could be contaminated with other drugs, so we looked into growing the pot ourselves. But by law, medical marijuana must be grown indoors, and it requires a separate room with a complex system of hydroponics, fans and precise lighting schedules. (This made me wonder how much THC, the main psychoactive substance found in cannabis, was actually in the spindly plants the high school goofballs I knew grew in their closets).

The coordinator of our patient group introduced us to a licensed grower. A recent horticulture school graduate, he’d figured out how to cultivate marijuana using a custom organic soil mix. His e-mail signature even quoted Rudolf Steiner. The grower arrived at our house with a knapsack containing jars of herbs. We opened the jars to sniff the different strains of “bud” – Blueberry, which did smell fleetingly of wild blueberries, and Sour Diesel, which had a rich, winey scent. The grower had also cured some leaves for tea, and he brought a glycerine tincture, a marijuana distillate in olive oil (yes, organic), cookies (ditto), and a strange machine that looked, fittingly, like a lava lamp. Basically an almost-bong, this vaporiser heated the cannabis without producing carcinogenic smoke.

For most adults, the vaporiser is the delivery method of choice, as it allows the patient to feel the effects immediately and adjust the dose precisely. J gamely put his mouth on the valve and let us squeeze a little smoke into him. It shot right back out of his nose. He looked like Puff the Magic Dragon. The grower left us with a month’s worth of marijuana tea, glycerine, and olive oil – and a cookie recipe. No buds. We paid $80 (£50).

We made the cookies with the marijuana olive oil, starting J off with half a small cookie, eaten after dinner. J normally goes to bed around 7.30pm; by 6.30 he declared he was tired and conked out. We checked on him hourly. As we anxiously peeked in, half-expecting some red-eyed ogre from Reefer Madness to come leaping out at us, we saw instead that he was sleeping peacefully. Usually, his sleep is shallow and restless. J also woke up happy.

But in a few days, J decided he didn’t like the cookie anymore and smashed it with his fist. We brewed him the tea, which smelled funky and grassy. He slurped it down, but it didn’t seem to do much. Many of the psychoactive compounds in marijuana are fat soluble, so I added a dropperful of the oil that we used in the cookies. That made him sleepy-looking but still aggressive. It became clear that when J ingested pot orally, it took two hours to see the results, and by then there wasn’t much we could do to dial the dose up or down. The grower visited us again to give J another try at the bong, but with little success.

Perhaps J needed a little time to get off the Marinol. After two weeks, we noticed a slight but consistent lessening of aggression. And he wasn’t nervously chewing holes in his shirts.

***

A month or so into the treatment, it was still too early to know if we could find a dose and mode of delivery that would give us consistent results. Even if J could learn to use the vaporiser, it costs $600 and would leave the house reeking of pot. And we didn’t want to get too dependent, because of the inherent limitations. Though we’d love to calm J with pot so that he can visit his grandmother in Minnesota, bringing a controlled substance on the plane isn’t the best idea.

But since we started him on his “special tea,” J’s little face, which is sometimes a mask of pain, has softened. He’s smiled more. For most of the last year, his individual education plan at his special-needs school was full of blanks, recording “no progress” because he spent his whole day an irritated, frustrated mess. But soon after starting on the tea, his reports began to show real progress, including “two community outings with the absence of aggressions”.

My husband and I are both academics and writers (me, novelist and essayist; he, historian), given to close observation and note taking. It was these habits that finally helped us see our son’s allergic sensitivity to certain foods and seek advice from a gastroenterologist for his behaviours – aggression and chronic diarrhoea – instead of the recommended psychiatrist. (Gut pain and digestive problems, coined as “autistic entercolitis”, are now considered a common biological affliction of many autistic children).

At first we weren’t sure if we were seeing results from the cannabis, but after about three months, which included weekly consultations with our grower as we experimented with different strains, we observed a much happier and outgoing child – who did not act or appear “stoned” in any way. Four months in, J came home from school and I noticed something different. Pre-pot, J ate the collars of his shirts, teasing his clothes apart and swallowing the threads. There’s a name for this disorder – pica (pregnant women sometimes chew on chalk). It got so bad he ate his pyjamas and we had to start dressing him in organic cotton shirts. Then one day he came home from school wearing a whole shirt.

J’s school reports improved too. At one parent meeting, his teacher produced the latest “aggression” chart, showing attempts or instances of hitting, kicking biting or pinching other people. For a year he had scored an average of 30 to 50 aggressions a day, with a high of 300. The latest data showed days, sometimes consecutive, with zero aggressions. And on the school bus, J has transformed from a child who has hit the driver in the face and bitten people into a sparkly eyed boy who says hi and quietly takes his seat.

***

There’s a twist to this happy story, though. The aggression has eased but J’s autism has become more distinct. His vocal outbursts – screams, barks, yips of happiness – still happen and while our home is no longer full of thrown food, broken dishes and scratched faces, we still see people in the local area react to a family that remains different – and not always to their liking. There’s a father on the next street who stops playing ball with his son when we approach. A mother won’t make eye contact and ignored a party invitation. Most people responded well to J but sometimes we feel we’re being shunned.

Marijuana isn’t a miracle cure for autism. But in our son’s case it eases his pain and inflammation so dramatically that he can participate in life and learning again. It also protects him from the sometimes dangerous side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs. We have settled on a good strain (White Russian, a favourite pain-reliever for end-stage cancer patients) and a good dose. And now he’s not in pain, J can go to school instead of a children’s psychiatric hospital, where all too many of his peers end up as a result of violent behaviour.

When I think of the embarrassment I may feel if my colleagues see this article, or teachers or parents at J’s school, or his less open-minded doctors, I pause. Although I occasionally smoked pot as a teenager (believe me, in northern Minnesota, there was not much else to do), now that I’m a law-abiding adult, all the scary anti-drug messages are flashing in my brain. But when I researched cannabis the way I did conventional drugs, it seemed clear that marijuana wouldn’t harm J, and might help. It’s strange that the virtues of such a useful and harmless botanical have been so clouded by stigma. Even the limited studies that have been done suggest marijuana’s potential as an adjunctive therapy for cancer. Marijuana, you need some re-branding. Maybe a cool new name.

One of the biggest tests for J through this journey was a visit from Grandma. The last time she came, over Christmas, J hit her during a tantrum. This time, we gave him his tea, mixing it with goji berries to mask any odour, although it occurs to me that my mother, a Korean immigrant, probably doesn’t even know what pot smells like (it actually smells a lot like ssuk, a Korean medicinal herb). She remarked that J seemed calmer. As we were preparing for a trip to the park, J disappeared, and we wondered if he was going to throw one of his tantrums. Instead, he returned with Grandma’s shoes, laying them in front of her, even carefully adjusting them so that they were parallel and easy to step into. He looked into her face, and smiled.

What are the downsides to this experiment?

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor

The first reaction of most parents to Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s story is likely to be one of surprise, shock, even horror. What is she doing turning her nine-year-old son into a pot-head? Has she not heard of the dangers of cannabis smoking to the mental health of adolescents, never mind the disorienting effects of an intoxicating substance on one so young?

Possibly this will be their second and third reactions, too. Ms Myung-Ok Lee was giving her son, J, cannabis to relieve pain (from his spinal tumour and inflamed gut), not just to treat his autism. Even so, the stigma that surrounds illegal drugs is so deeply entrenched, just because they are illegal, that many people are simply not prepared to weigh up their benefits and harms.

We have seen in the row this week over the sacking of the UK Government’s chief drugs adviser, Professor David Nutt, how the debate over drugs is driven more by fear, emotion and political calculation than by scientific evidence. The Labour Government, facing possible annihilation at the next election, is anxious to be seen to be tough on drugs – so the outspoken Professor Nutt had to go.

As an academic, Ms Myung-Ok Lee is perhaps better placed than many to resist the voices of unreason and take a cool look at the evidence. Cannabis, as she points out, is already prescribed as a pain killer, as an anti-nausea agent for cancer sufferers and as a treatment for multiple sclerosis. In all these areas it has been shown to be effective, though there is debate about just how effective. In the UK, it is available as Sativex, a spray taken under the tongue, which contains a cannabis extract. More than 1,200 patients in the UK have received it for relief of symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis. It is not, however, prescribed to nine-year-olds (or anyone under 18).

Ms Myung-Ok Lee started her son on medicinal cannabis, and then went a step further by giving him the herbal kind, as a tincture or baked in a cookie. This, too, is not without precedent – among adults. There have been frequent reports of patients smoking cannabis and gaining relief from pain or the spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis, and in the UK when they have been prosecuted for possession of a controlled drug, the courts have shown leniency.

But in trying herbal cannabis on her son, Ms Myung-Ok Lee and her doctor have stepped beyond even the anecdotal evidence, into the unknown. J became Rhode Island’s youngest ever patient licensed to use marijuana for medical reasons.

She acknowledges it is an experiment, but she reasons that as cannabis has low toxicity and is safer than most other drugs, the risks are low. Any parent, confronted with a screaming, suffering child who is so distressed that he smashes things, hits people and tears at his clothing with his teeth, must feel sympathy for her. In that situation, which of us would not try anything to ease our child’s pain? Moreover, the experiment appears to have worked – at least for the first few months.

The difficult questions are: will the effect last? Will there be a downside to using the drug in one so young? Is the effect real? The last question is the trickiest. Children grow and change and those with autism are no different from the rest. The changes his parents have noticed in J might have happened anyway, as part of his natural development. The cannabis could turn out to be a coincidental factor, with zero impact on his condition. It was coincidence that led to the scare over MMR and autism – because the first symptoms of the condition typically occur around 14 months which is the age at which babies receive their first MMR jab.

It would be a disaster if cannabis came to be seen as a panacea for children in the same situation, on the basis of this anecdotal report. As always in science, we need more evidence.

November 4, 2009 – With the national debate over how–or even whether–to legalize marijuana now hitting a fevered pitch, many eyes are focused squarely on Colorado, where lawmakers are now considering proposals to increase regulation of the state’s vibrant medical marijuana industry.

Unfortunately, emotion is trumping fact in too much of this public debate. In a guest column carried in today’s Denver Post (authored by Robert and titled “Stop the Medical Marijuana Madness”), as well as through previous commentary we’ve authored, we lament how a handful of powerful politicians, including some of our fellow Republicans, are using antecdotes, half-truths, and unfounded theories, to make their case for cumbersome regulation, including moratoriums that could prevent new dispensaries from opening at all.

In doing so, these officials are ignoring other critical public policy needs and basic facts proving that the hysteria around the tremendous growth in public demand for medical marijuana is not based in fact. While some regulation of any industry may be appropriate at times, medical marijuana is being unfairly villianized by those who disagree with the state’s voters, who have consistently and overwhelmingly maintained a commitment to patient access to such treatment.

From today’s Denver Post:

Most elected leaders have a good sense of proportion regarding this issue. A minority of politicians, however, avoid reasonable proposals to tax and regulate marijuana, and instead irresponsibly fear-monger in the worst tradition of Prohibition-era ‘Reefer Madness’ propaganda. We hear racially charged tales of ‘Mexican cartels’ supposedly running the medical marijuana business, when the truth is Colorado homegrown marijuana puts foreign cartels out of business, and it is law enforcement that enriches cartels through hostility to medical marijuana.

Even putting aside the state’s serious economic woes, any focus on medical marijuana should be far down the list when it comes to the serious health care concerns we face. Today, Colorado is one of more than a dozen states where fatal prescription drug overdoses now outnumber deaths from car accidents.

Doctors across the state mourn the epidemic of “doctor shopping,” powerless against preventing patients who have become addicted to prescription narcotics from seeking out multiple prescriptions from different doctors to feed their addictions. The game can become fatal very quickly. And despite this shocking trend, which has resulted in a three-fold increase in prescription drug deaths over just the last decade, anti-marijuana activists publicly express little, if any, concern.

Instead, they continue to blast medical marijuana dispensaries, ignoring their many benefits, including the revitalization of struggling communities, the addition of much needed jobs, as well as the significant tax revenue they provide for municipal coffers. More importantly, they ignore the value of businesses providing alternative medical treatment for our sick and dying, many of whom seek such treatment only after years of living in the haze of pharmaceutical narcotic addiction. While the vast majority of medical marijuana patients abide by the system to the letter of law, activists exploit the stories of a few battle apples as a way to enhance their pro-prohibition polemic.

For legislators eager to villanize medical marijuana providers and their patients, we’d suggest they proceed with caution. Most dispensary owners are astute business entrepreneurs; they welcome commonsense standards as a way to best serve their own economic interests, as well as the interests of the patients they serve. Attacking them without getting the facts will only stunt a productive dialogue on regulation.

In addition, legislators should expect resistance from voters in this era where public support for both medical marijuana and outright legalization has grown substantially over the last decade, and today is greater than ever before.

In 2000, a strong majority of voters first amended our state Constitution to allow for legal access to medical marijuana. In 2006, more than 40 percent supported a statewide initiative seeking outright legalization of adult marijuana use. While Republicans voters in Colorado still outnumber Democrats by a slim margin, the 2006 legalization effort received more voter support than that year’s Republican candidate for governor.

Nationally, polls show that a growing number of voters of all ideological persuasions in other states are interested in following Colorado’s lead. A national media survey conducted earlier this year shows that nearly half of Americans support legalization. If legalization advocates can convince just one more voter in every ten, marijuana prohibition could quickly become a thing of a past in many states, including Colorado.

As proud Republicans and even prouder parents of two young children, we’re seen as unconventional legalization supporters by many. If we can open minds, we relish the role. But as the Washington Post’s Kathleen Parker recently noted, we’re actually far from alone in our views among free thinkers within our party.

Republicans committed to our party’s founding ideals of individual rights and responsibility should join us. During a FOX News interview yesterday profiling our efforts, we reiterated this commitment. We will not stand by complacently as our federal government wastes our tax dollars to continue a prohibition that costs billions each year and results in 850,000 Americans each year being forced into to our criminal justice system for marijuana-related offenses. In these tough economic times, we owe our children better than to accept the status quo.

Colorado stands at center stage in the national debate over marijuana. In the face of such controversy, we ask those on all sides of the debate to commit to just one thing: let’s stick to the facts. With emotions running high and our federal debt running even higher, now is the time to leave no stone unturned in the effort to restore our nation to a place of solid fiscal and philosophical foundations. Our children’s future depends on it. By Jessica Peck Corry and Robert J. Corry, Jr. Source.