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Allow me to quote myself. "Even if they drive one species to extinction, another one can take its place." I recognize that extinction is always a possibility. I wrote so the first time.

As for resistance mutations against pleconaril, the researchers at ViroPharma have already seen resistant coxsackievirus B3 variants (whatever those bugs are). They claim that, as you guessed they might be, they are less virulent. See J Infect Dis 1999 Jun;179(6):1538-41. You can look for PMID 10228078 at PubMed and read the abstract just as I did.

Allow me to quote myself. "Even if they drive one species to extinction, another one can take its place." I recognize that extinction is always a possibility. I wrote so the first time.

As for resistance mutations against pleconaril, the researchers at ViroPharma have already seen resistant coxsackievirus B3 variants (whatever those bugs are). They claim that, as you guessed they might be, they are less virulent. See J Infect Dis 1999 Jun;179(6):1538-41. You can look for PMID 10228078 at PubMed and read the abstract just as I did.

Everyone seems to be worried that using pleconaril will generate some kind of super-viruses that are impossible to kill, and I think this stems from confusion about a few things. The primary thing is that viruses are not bacteria. Bacteria are complex organisms that gain resistance through a variety of mechanisms. Overuse of antibiotics leading to resistant strains of bacteria is a very different issue. Viruses are much simpler than bacteria, and resistance often arises through mutant forms of viral proteins (they don't have large genomes to hold new genes that confer resistance). The reason why resistance mutations can be less of a problem with viruses is because these mutant proteins don't always function properly. Drugs like pleconaril are designed to target parts of the protein that, if mutated, would render it semi-functional, leading to a weakened virus. Attenuated virulence has been reported in some drug-resistant HIV strains, and (as I just checked in medline) in pleconaril-resistant viruses as well. I'm not saying drug resistance isn't ever a problem, just that it's likely that pleconaril will not become ineffective after two years on the market.

First, a caveat. I'm no biologist.

A more substantial and well argued discussion on one of these "bugs", Deinococcus radiodurans, appeared in the New York Times a couple of weeks ago (sorry, no reference). The article reported on the full genetic sequencing of this rather amazing creature. The researchers were trying to find out how this bacteria could repair its chromosomes after they were blasted into hundreds of pieces by over 1.5 million rads of radiation
(500 rads is lethal for humans). Though it wasn't mentioned in the Times article, I remember joking to my wife about space-bugs. It's a pretty obvious speculation, and I doubt if the researchers mentioned in Wired were the first to present this thought. It's pretty strange: here are bacteria that seem perfectly evolved for space travel! Why would this ability have evolved on earth, when no environment here comes close to requiring this amount of radiation resistance? The researchers in the Times (my feeling is that this is probably the majority view among researchers) suggest that the same qualities required to survive extreme radiation would be useful to survive extreme dessication which would be useful in an earthly environment. The surprising radiation resistance is just a unintended consequence.

For the curious, I found a graphical view of the sequence of Deinoccocus Radiodurans.

I couldn't agree more.

I work in a genetics research lab and have had the pleasure of doing a little bit of work for Francis Collins, the current head of the NHGRI and the Human Genome Project at the NIH.


I believe that the patenting of genes is extremely dangerous. However, we really don't need to wait for patent reform. All we need to do is support the HGP and make the info public before it can be patented.

I couldn't agree more.

I work in a genetics research lab and have had the pleasure of doing a little bit of work for Francis Collins, the current head of the NHGRI and the Human Genome Project at the NIH.


I believe that the patenting of genes is extremely dangerous. However, we really don't need to wait for patent reform. All we need to do is support the HGP and make the info public before it can be patented.

Ya know, some people wonder why a large body of us stick around and criticize Jonathan Katz rather than just go away. Here's why.

One, his Columbine columns were quite insightful and they raised the expectation that more insight would come from the individual who could write such material. Two, Katz is front page material here on /. and three, this stuff just gets more and more surreal with today's tirade against scientists and theologians as the source of evil in our society. Sound familiar anyone?

In reality, BioEthics is a well-established field. All of the questions raised murkily in this essay were long ago considered by theologians, bioethicians, and scientists. If Jonathan were to do a web search rather than go to Wired News or watch the BBC, he'd find the debate has been underway for decades.

And if he occasionally read a book (a non-volatile storage medium for you young'uns), then he'd even find out that some of those guys supposedly behind most of human suffering have been much too busy thinking about these very same subjects to subjugate humanity.

A lot of people here seem to be suggesting that this report would classify them as mentally ill becuase they like to be on their own, rather than socialize.

I don't think this report is talking about that. I'll post the bit that seems to be most appropriate. Make your own conclusions, but to me, this is very different from the computer geek type of person who is so forthright about their opinions on Slashdot. (From http://www.nih.gov/mhsgrpt/chap ter4/sec2.html#types)

Social Phobia
Social phobia, also known as social anxiety disorder, describes people with marked and persistent anxiety in social situations, including performances and public speaking (Ballenger et al., 1998). The critical element of the fearfulness is the possibility of embarrassment or ridicule. Like specific phobias, the fear is recognized by adults as excessive or unreasonable, but the dreaded social situation is avoided or is tolerated with great discomfort. Many people with social phobia are preoccupied with concerns that others will see their anxiety symptoms (i.e., trembling, sweating, or blushing); or notice their halting or rapid speech; or judge them to be weak, stupid, or "crazy." Fears of fainting, losing control of bowel or bladder function, or having one's mind going blank are also not uncommon. Social phobias generally are associated with significant anticipatory anxiety for days or weeks before the dreaded event, which in turn may further handicap performance and heighten embarrassment.

The 1-year prevalence of social phobia ranges from 2 to 7 percent (Table 4-1), although the lower figure probably better captures the number of people who experience significant impairment and distress. Social phobia is more common in women (Wells et al., 1994). Social phobia typically begins in childhood or adolescence and, for many, it is associated with the traits of shyness and social inhibition (Kagan et al., 1988). A public humiliation, severe embarrassment, or other stressful experience may provoke an intensification of difficulties (Barlow, 1988). Once the disorder is established, complete remissions are uncommon without treatment. More commonly, the severity of symptoms and impairments tends to fluctuate in relation to vocational demands and the stability of social relationships. Preliminary data suggest social phobia to be familial (Rush et al., 1998).

Uhm, there seems to be an error in that URL. If above link doesnt work, try http://www.nih.gov/mhsgrpt/toc.html
Ciao, Peter.

not to nitpick but I think the link is actually here

The full version of the report is available here.

Hee hee, I always knew you Yanks were crazy ;-)

It may be possible to engineer an organism with this 'core' set of genes, to see if it is correct, and to work iteratively to a confirmed 'core' set of genes. I wouldn't call this 'creating' life, it's really modifying an existing organism, similar to what is done regularly by molecular biologists, but with a new goal. It will help understanding of existing organisms, but isn't anywhere close to making a 'new' form of life.

Jim Lund

It may be possible to engineer an organism with this 'core' set of genes, to see if it is correct, and to work iteratively to a confirmed 'core' set of genes. I wouldn't call this 'creating' life, it's really modifying an existing organism, similar to what is done regularly by molecular biologists, but with a new goal. It will help understanding of existing organisms, but isn't anywhere close to making a 'new' form of life.

Jim Lund

It may be possible to engineer an organism with this 'core' set of genes, to see if it is correct, and to work iteratively to a confirmed 'core' set of genes. I wouldn't call this 'creating' life, it's really modifying an existing organism, similar to what is done regularly by molecular biologists, but with a new goal. It will help understanding of existing organisms, but isn't anywhere close to making a 'new' form of life.

Jim Lund

He means multiple sclerosis; click here for the National Institute of Health's info page.

This article is meaningless, and this is why:

First of all, Katz fails to qualify WHY exactly he is afraid of genetic selection - does he fear that everyone will, amazingly, select for the same thing? I don't agree. First of all, even when the HG is decoded, people won't agree on what's the 'better' standard - everyone doesn't go out and say, "Hey, let me go marry a blonde, so I can have blonde babies, because blonde babies are better!" - so why would they when they can choose it genetically?

And if you're going to debate things like intelligence, it's unclear, even, how much they are genetically determined. Idiosyncracies of personality seem to have reasonably high heritability, but intelligence estimates vary drastically (read the Bell Curve by Herrnstein and Murray for pro-inherited intelligence, search PubMed for hundreds of journal rebuttals of their dubious conclusions). Science isn't even close to agreeing on the genetic nature of intelligence.

And, assuming in the future that they do find that intelligence is genetically determined, would Katz contend that genetic enhancement of intelligence is evil? That it's more 'human' and 'natural' to have stupider kids? I fail to see the meaning of such sentiments - they're simply vacuuous blubbering and fear of change.

Finally, any sort of eugenics is impossible. First, there's no one to enforce any standard - who will decide, with an open Human Genome, what's good and what's bad? Not the government, certainly. No matter what, people will always have the right to normal children, and so it's impossible for the government to try and restrict genomic choice. GATTACA, fine, maybe. Nice dream. Not going to happen. There's nothing inherently evil in the knowledge of the Human Genome - if the government was going to pursue eugenics in a socially dominating manner, it would have done it already. The Nazis tried, certainly. We can see how well they did.

I agree with those who say that the Human Genome is going to be mostly positive. Genetic profiling may happen, I agree. It's likely that even with legislation against it you'll see genetic discrimination - but against what characteristics? Has anyone ever agreed on what makes a better human being? Why do you assume that, once we know the DNA code for the genome, everyone suddenly will?

Sorry, i'm not buying it.

SA

For those of you who can't stand not having the source code for everything you use , you can download the results of the human genome sequencing project from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/seq/ .

(Before you all rush and slashdot the site, please ask yourself whether you really need to download over one gigabyte of what is, to the uninitiated's intents and purposes, a random string of A's, T's, C's and G's.)

now that they know how to do one of them, the rest should be relativlyeasy to map
In fact all chromosomes are now being sequenced. Check this page for details.

I doubt having finished one will make much difference. It's just an interesting milestone.

now that they know how to do one of them, the rest should be relativlyeasy to map
In fact all chromosomes are now being sequenced. Check this page for details.

I doubt having finished one will make much difference. It's just an interesting milestone.

I can tell you NHGRI is pretty well funded within NIH, right up there with the cancer institure and the infectious disease institute (which deals with things like AIDS and whatnot). They certainly have more translucent Macs than any other institute. :-]

And yes, they do use Linux there, although from what I gather, it's mostly being used by individuals experimenting with the system, and not for any actual rendering/mapping of gene data. Coincidentally, I took my first Linux support call a couple of weeks ago from somebody here who installed Caldera 2.2 and needed help setting up networking. Got him set up in only minutes, and soon he was enjoying NIH's 300kbps-and-up network connection. Makes watching MacWorld keynotes a lot more viable.

If you check the Netcraft records for NHLBI, NIDDK (National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases), and NHGRI, you'll see that NIH is far from your typical NT government shop. Plus, the NHGRI main website has lots of info on the project and why it's a Good Thing.

BTW, slightly off-topic: there are 12 people in my support group, and of those, I'm the only full-time Mac tech, while two others are mostly PC techs with some Mac skills. Oddly enough, the PC people are always busier than me despite having roughly the same number of machines to support.....

I worked for a bit as a CO-OP student in this area last summer, which is not to say I know anything about this, but.. :]

While distributed computing would probably benifti the HGP, there are a couple of points to take into consideration.

1) How secure is distributed computing? SETI and RC5 arent really all that concerned with the the integrity of the data they are getting back. They can just re-check a data block if it is a sure sign of ET or whatever. Here there will need to be a guarantee that data has not been tampered with.

2) It seemed to me that some of the tools used could do with some open source style improvement by the hacking(coding) community before throwing lots of computing power at them.

As for the patent stuff... bah!. Let the lawyers mess around with that, everyone else can concentrate on the advancement of the human race.. or something like that.

links:
Genome database
The Sanger Centre
The NCBI

True, but MSI does have ports of most of their programs for IBM RS/6000; some even have ports for DEC/Alpha stations.

About platforms and computational chemistry, look at the list of ports for CHARMM(Serial machines, Parallel machines); this list includes Beowulf clusters, CRAY and Intel supercomputers, and most UNIX workstations.


Granted, this is only one program (available with source), and much of the visualization programs are SGI-specific [Quanta is also available for RS/6000], porting these applications would not be impossible; The companies will have to wait for a large enough crowd guaranteed to use that port, otherwise it would not be economically feasible
[i.e. EVERYBODY OUT THERE START BUGGING MSI [or other vendor] ABOUT LINUX PORTS; hehe, even if you know nothing about chemistry, just call them up and bug them about a linux port, just try not to sound too stupid]

True, but MSI does have ports of most of their programs for IBM RS/6000; some even have ports for DEC/Alpha stations.

About platforms and computational chemistry, look at the list of ports for CHARMM(Serial machines, Parallel machines); this list includes Beowulf clusters, CRAY and Intel supercomputers, and most UNIX workstations.


Granted, this is only one program (available with source), and much of the visualization programs are SGI-specific [Quanta is also available for RS/6000], porting these applications would not be impossible; The companies will have to wait for a large enough crowd guaranteed to use that port, otherwise it would not be economically feasible
[i.e. EVERYBODY OUT THERE START BUGGING MSI [or other vendor] ABOUT LINUX PORTS; hehe, even if you know nothing about chemistry, just call them up and bug them about a linux port, just try not to sound too stupid]

For an average researcher, having a complete set of clusers usually is irrelevant. (Of course, it may not always be; once cluster information is available, people will probably figure out ways to use it well.) All they want to know is how similar their gene(s) of interest is/are to other known genes. And there are plenty of tools that do that already, most notably the set at NCBI. DoubleTwist offers little of use there.

The interesting concept is that of "agents" who go out and look for your data for you. Agents aren't new, but they have not been used much in biological research thus far. Most of the relevant data is at a very small number of sites, so setting up an agent might not be much easier than going around yourself, but if agents become prevalent it will allow biological information to sprawl all over the place to a much greater extent. I wonder if this is a good thing? It is nice to have all your data found for you automatically, but if that's the only way to find anything it may get burdensome.

One point of concern: some of these agents will poll existing sites daily for new sequences. What happens if a hundred thousand researchers all ask for daily polling on ten or twenty genes? Suddenly NCBI will be getting a million extra hits a day and will be slowed to a crawl. I would feel a lot more comfortable if DoubleTwist did the searches on its own machines and only downloaded the new data once a day--but from the description, it sounds as though they plan on searching the public databases repeatedly. (And since it costs them nothing, if 50 people all request information on the same gene, they may not have an incentive to avoid making 50 separate search requests.)

I share the skepticism that anything *really* novel or useful will be greeted with a cheerful reminder that this is an "advanced" feature that requires payment. Further, I'd bet that Celera Genomics is paying close attention here...they are currently racing the NIH to sequence the human genome, and claim that their commercially-funded sequencing will be available for free. However, the advanced tools to search and understand the sequence will not. If Pangaea's attempt here goes badly, watch for Perkin-Elmer (the underwriters of Celera Genomics, who build DNA sequencers among other things) to make Celera back off on their openness statements and start getting really aggressive with patenting....

The idea of making a portal out of it is interesting but BLAST has been around for some time and lets you find information about other sequences. NCBI's ENTREZ gives you the opportunity to research information about proteins and other things. I admit those are a little difficult to use, but I doubt everyone would need to know what such and such sequence represents.

The web has become very important to anyone doing research in those areas and is the main source of information since it is far simpler and everyone can have access to the information.

I haven't seen the portal (login reasons) but I'd be curious to see how they would make it understandable to someone who doesn't have a lot of genetic background and such. All of this can be very cool and interesting but a gene sequence is about as dry as a looking at machine language and the information about the sequences isn't always easy to understand, especially since a lot of the sequencing now isn't puclished like it was before so all you have is the name of the gene. Even when it is published, there isn't a lot of efforts made to make it easier to understand (unless it's in a Nature or something like that where you want the journalists to tell about it).

Anyway, if they can make it more available and more interesting, all the better. Genetic is surely one of the areas where people could use a little more background (no changing one gene won't make you live 300 years, nor will it make you immune to cancer) and also one of the more interesting fields around now (ok I'm biased because that's what I'm studying in, but it's still true).

The idea of making a portal out of it is interesting but BLAST has been around for some time and lets you find information about other sequences. NCBI's ENTREZ gives you the opportunity to research information about proteins and other things. I admit those are a little difficult to use, but I doubt everyone would need to know what such and such sequence represents.

The web has become very important to anyone doing research in those areas and is the main source of information since it is far simpler and everyone can have access to the information.

I haven't seen the portal (login reasons) but I'd be curious to see how they would make it understandable to someone who doesn't have a lot of genetic background and such. All of this can be very cool and interesting but a gene sequence is about as dry as a looking at machine language and the information about the sequences isn't always easy to understand, especially since a lot of the sequencing now isn't puclished like it was before so all you have is the name of the gene. Even when it is published, there isn't a lot of efforts made to make it easier to understand (unless it's in a Nature or something like that where you want the journalists to tell about it).

Anyway, if they can make it more available and more interesting, all the better. Genetic is surely one of the areas where people could use a little more background (no changing one gene won't make you live 300 years, nor will it make you immune to cancer) and also one of the more interesting fields around now (ok I'm biased because that's what I'm studying in, but it's still true).

For everyone clamoring for more facts, the article hasn't been published yet. It should appear in the November issue of Bioelectromagnetics. It seems that you can get the full text for free at their website, but it's possible that I only had access because my university has a site license or something. There is, however, an older study by the same group that looks very similar: Abstract and full text.

For what it's worth, this test with the milk is a standard measure in learning and memory studies called the Morris Water Maze. I personally know lots of people who use this test on a daily basis. You put the mice or rats in a white chamber with opaque water (that's what the powdered milk is for). There are black symbols painted on the walls of the chamber. The platform is submerged in the opaque water, and the only way the animals should be able to find it is by remembering where it is in relation to the symbols painted on the walls. This is therefore a test for spatial learning and memory. Usually the animals undergo two sessions a day. You can measure spatial learning by noting the decreases in the animals' "search time." You can test for long-term memory by removing the platform several days later, and noting how long the animals spend in the spot where the platform used to be. There are lots of other variations on this theme.

It has been shown that things which disrupt human learning and memory also disrupt performance on this test. Results from these studies also correlate well with another learning and memory test called the Barnes Maze. It's been used so much by so many people, I seriously doubt there is some "milk effect" skewing the results.

Just my $.02,
-margaret

Then gene therapy techniques come into play. Retrovirii are cool little gene delivery devices (check out genetic geektalk here at the NCI Gene Therapy FAQ). Basically, choose a virii strain that normally attacks the cell of choice, insert your custom gene, and stuff it into your patient. Of course, there's potential problems with the idea (if the gene is malengineered, it could lead to a different cancer for example, or attack the wrong cells)... hence the reason why it's still in the experimental stages in a lot of cases.

--
rickf@transpect.SPAM-B-GONE.net (remove the SPAM-B-GONE bit)

Kismet said:

Shall we get the facts straight?

I don't mind a little debate from either side. (I'll note--just to state my opinion--that I definitely think marijuana should be legalised at the least for medicinal use.) I've some minor nit-picking and/or questioning of some points you've raised, though. Don't take it as a flame, but as honest questioning on some of the applications of statistics and/or studies you've quoted.

1) Although it is not proven that Marijuana causes cancer, it has been shown that it contains as much or more of same chemicals contained in cigarettes that have been shown to cause cancer.

Is this marijuana smoke, or is this the simple dried plant? (I ask for two main reasons; 1) Most figures of this type compared cigarette smoking vs. marijuana smoking, and 2) there are methods of ingesting marijuana that do not involve smoking the plant [i.e. "hash brownies"--brownies containing marijuana].)

I am also curious if this study took into account the fact that most cigarettes in the US are not only sprayed with known carcinogens for control of tobacco diseases such as blue mold, but are also "doctored" (including soaking in flavouring solutions and "doping" with nicotine) in the process of converting tobacco into cigarettes. (Yes, cigarette companies DO doping. Let's just say I have relatives who are former employees of a certain large cigarette manufacturer, and have some idea of how the average "non-specialty" cigarette is made.)

I also wonder if the study took into account the fact that MOST organic substances, when burned, produce cancer-causing substances. (For example, charred meat contains nitrosamines which are known to cause cancer. So do burning cigarettes, and so does burning plant material in general because you are burning protein matter.)

2) Marijuana users are far more prone to chest infections, such as pneumonia. Hey, what did Sagan die of? 2+2 = 5, right?

In Sagan's case, there is a rather major mitigating factor that indicates--at least to me--he well could have died of pneumonia whether or not he smoked pot. That mitigating factor is the fact he had myeloproliferative syndrome.

In case you're not aware, myeloproliferative syndrome is a precursor condition to leukemia and (occasionally) lymphoma at best. In fact, the leukemias are part of the spectrum of myeloproliferative disorders. A really good, if professionally oriented, summary including present treatment options is listed here at PDQ Cancerlink--which I'll note, as a personal aside, is a wonderful resource for anyone with cancer or who has a loved one with cancer (speaking as someone who recently had an uncle die from a rare cancer, adrenocortical carcinoma). The long and the short of it is, these disorders either ARE leukemias or have a bad tendency to convert to a form of acute myelogenous leukemia, and leukemias as a general rule tend to wreck one's immune system to begin with. Most treatments for leukemia (from chemotherapy to allotype-matched bone-marrow transplants--most folks with leukemia aren't able to do autograft BMT using their own bone marrow) tend to wreck your immune system in some form or another (folks receiving BMT basically get high-dose chemo and radiation to kill their bone marrow, then get a "rescue" from a tissue-matched donor; most regular chemo for leukemia will destroy at least a few non-leukemic white cells as well, and chemo regimens for adults tend to be heavier than for kids because adult leukemias tend to have a far worse prognosis than childhood leukemia).

In other words, pot is probably not what made his lungs susceptible to pneumonia. Odds are, it was probably the underlying condition plus whatever chemo they had him on--especially if he died from an "atypical pneumonia". (As a minor aside, folks have commented "Pot has fungus on it" and insinuated Sagan got pneumonia from that. Actually, fungal lung infections are pretty common in patients with myeloproliferative diseases including leukemia; aspergillosis and [at least here in the Ohio Valley] histoplasmosis are common, and patients often get antifungals because of it.)

3) The THC in marijuana has been shown to affect the immune system. Unlike alcohol, THC can stay in your body for weeks depending on how often you smoke.

One can't be entirely sure it's the THC and not some other factor (i.e. smoke, period, which has also been shown to affect the immune system). It would be nice in a way if a controlled study could be done with people taking dronabinol (the FDA-approved form of pure THC) to see if it's in fact the THC or some other factor. (If such a study HAS been done, in humans, using dronabinol, I'd much appreciate info please. :)

I'm not saying they didn't factor that in, just noting potential pitfalls. (One reason doctors can't decide if nicotine does affect the immune system is that no controlled studies have been done with straight nicotine [in part because nicotine IS toxic in large doses and is not normally prescribed except to wean folks off of tobacco products] and most studies have been done with smokers; they can't rule out it's something in the smoke that's doing it, though at least cigarette smoking affects one's immune system too.)

4) It is VERY evident that marijuana affects the neuralogical systems of the body. There are many well documented side effects of the drug. Doctors are still researching the effect of marijuana on the brain.

1) You should be probably careful to differenciate between marijuana and dronabinol, aka THC. I note this because separate studies ARE going into not only THC but some related compounds in marijuana. (THC isn't the only active compound!)

I should also note that not all the research is being done on account of the "bad effects" of marijuana (that is, it gets one high and possibly makes one lazy if smoked heavily for long periods--and the second is up for debate; more on this later). There are known, medically beneficial "side effects" of both THC and other compounds in marijuana; these include influence on the vomiting center of the brain (this makes dronabinol, aka THC, useful as an antivomiting drug in emetogenic chemo like cisplatin; in fact, it's one of the two indications it's officially approved for); as an appetite stimulant and also somehow helping patients keep on more weight than they normally would (this is useful in "wasting syndromes" such as AIDS Wasting Syndrome; this is the second approved use for dronabinol, and in fact is so far the only drug known to be effective); as a possible anticonvulsant; as a possible antidepressant (THC and other compounds in marijuana affect the brain in a similar way to "serotonin-receptor" antidepressants such as Zoloft, only it encourages the brain to secrete more serotonin); and as a possible antiglaucoma agent.

Also, a lot of drug research into how THC affects the brain is involved in making "cannabinoid derivatives" that can be used medicinally yet don't get one stoned (which is good for drug manufacturers, because they no longer have to deal with the red tape involved in Schedule II drug creation--more on this in a bit, with some stuff that might enlighten you).

5) Studies among teenagers have shown that those who smoke marijuana are up to 104 times more likely to try and become addicted to other, more dangerous drugs, than those who have not tried.

This is the famous "gateway drug" argument, and I should note that even among abuse specialists it is VERY controversial at best. I'll list but a few reasons why you should take the info with a grain of salt (or preferably an entire container of Morton's Kosher):

1. Most kids that are brought in for substance abuse problems have a prior history of psychological problems to begin with--many of which include family problems. (Many of the "family problems", mind, include: abusive parents, history of antisocial behaviour to begin with, history of problem with legal drugs, depression or bipolar syndrome ("manic-depression"), a history of suicide attempts, etc.) There is no good way to determine whether the kids would have gotten into "hard drugs" if marijuana hadn't existed, and there is some evidence to suggest they might well have gone into hard drugs to begin with.

2. As you are well aware, marijuana is illegal in the United States. By definition, you are going to catch more kids who go on to hard drugs, who also have used "soft drugs", who have gotten themselves involved with the psychiatric care system (and often they are referred there from schools and law enforcement) than kids who use marijuana, do NOT go on to hard drugs, are discreet about use, and do not get involved in the criminal law system. Also, marijuana use tends to label kids (in the eyes of the criminal and the psychiatric systems of the US) as "bad kids" to begin with; I would not be surprised if this is not a self-fufilling prophecy in the case of some kids.

3. There is a large, non-negligible group of people who use marijuana, have never been involved in psychiatric treatment or legal proceedings involving marijuana use (including those under 18) who will flat out lie on surveys regarding use; kids who are feeling rebellious to begin with (who are also considerably more likely to both use hard drugs and be caught smoking pot) will probably not or will not be given the chance to. (More on this in the next segment.)

4. There is a considerably large and growing body of evidence to suggest that risk-taking behaviours in general--including the use of hard drugs and the flagrant use of marijuana--are at the least determined very early in life, if not outright genetically based. (There's evidence now to suggest people who will indulge in risk-taking behaviours can be found as early as elementary school age--four or five.) Some of this is controversial, and environment is certainly involved, but the propensity to indulge in risky behaviour is probably independent of whether one smokes marijuana. (In other words, it may well be the propensity to do risky things that leads someone both to use marijuana heavily AND to use hard drugs.)

5. Any study on hard drug use and soft drug use is going to have to deal with some fairly heavy corrections for skew. Specifically, you have to correct for poverty (people in poverty are considerably more likely to use both hard and soft drugs--often as either a way to escape, or as one of the few options for making decent money), culture (in some cultures "hard" drugs are not as frowned upon), age, area of the country (in some parts of the US marijuana is dead common; in other areas alcohol or ectasy might be a "first drug"), whether or not the people involved have a bent for antisocial/rebellious behaviour to begin with, whether they have conditions that make them more likely to take risks or not evaluate consequences, etc.

6. In case you're not aware of it, the *exact same arguments* used to classify marijuana as a "gateway drug" can be used to classify both alcohol AND tobacco as gateway drugs. (Alcohol and tobacco are both illegal for those under 18 or 21; in some areas alcohol is every bit as illegal as marijuana is and has to be bought from bootleggers; similar rates of people who drink alcohol or smoke early and go to hard drugs have been noted.) In fact, some schools and psychiatrists that believe in the "gateway drug" canard have actually STATED that alcohol and tobacco are gateway drugs! For that matter, the same argument can and *has* been used for black males (by racists), to attempt to criminalise heavy metal and rap music (claiming that kids who listen to heavy metal and/or rap are more likely to use drugs--forgetting to count in the "rebellion factor" being the biggie, rather than the music), claiming in the 50s that rock music in general caused drug use, claiming jazz caused drug use, etc. One should be *extremely* careful about whom one gets one's data from in these cases--the PMRC used the "metal and rap as gateway drug" argument to push "Tipper stickers" on albums and tries to use it to criminalise album sales to people under 18.

In other words, there isn't any good evidence for even the existence of a "gateway drug effect". There IS evidence that kids who IN GENERAL are prone to antisocial or rebellious behaviour are more prone to both hard and soft drug use. (And yes, I can speak from experience--I've seen kids in the psychiatric care system, and the kids in there for hard drug use tend to have had problems even before they started pot or any hard drugs.)

6) Less than 1 in 4 high school students have ever used, or ever will use marijuana. I doubt that number is higher with responsible, job holding adults.

To quote Mark Twain, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. :) Polls on such things as illegal drug use are going to be BLATANTLY skewed for several reasons. Some of these reasons are directly attributable to the "War on (some) Drugs" in the US. I'll explain below:

1) Most people on a survey are never going to admit they use marijuana even if they DO use it on a regular basis. This is because they fear their bosses may find out, or law enforcement may find out. Drug use in practically all businesses is a mandatory firing offense, due to federal guidelines.

2) Kids sure as heck aren't going to admit it, because many kids know that there are essentially no such things as confidentiality or privacy for those under 18. (In many cases, if the survey is at a school or through a community service, the people doing the survey MUST IDENTIFY THE PARENTS BY LAW if a kid admits to them that they are using drugs.) Even if confidentiality was assured, many kids are going to assume it isn't and won't admit it.

3) Most people, period, aren't going to admit to strangers that they use marijuana unless the person's already indicated they're friendly about it. (This is the same reason that a lot of people won't state they're gay in public, or won't state they're into BDSM, or are smokers, in public; it's still seen as somewhat socially unacceptable.)

Most surveys of kids have either been by the government anti-drug task force or have been by antidrug groups like D.A.R.E. I strongly suspect that if NORML (a group promoting marijuana legalisation) were somehow by some miracle actually allowed to do a survey of drug use in schools they'd get quite a different answer from the government surveys. (NORML does have survey results from adults that indicate the number of folks who occasionally smoke marijuana is far higher than usually counted.)

The simple fact is--precisely BECAUSE of the "War on (some) Drugs" and federal and state laws relating to drug use (which basically state that you end up out of a job and ineligible for welfare or public support, even unemployment, if you admit you use drugs recreationally)--your average Joe is about as unwilling to admit he uses marijuana as, say, your average person in the 50's was willing to admit he was a Communist or sympathised with someone being charged in the House Un-American Activities Committee. Or about as unlikely as your average white person in early 60's Alabama stating he supported civil rights for blacks in public where the governor and state government were stating "Segregation Forever" and black people were actually being lynched and their homes burned. (And yes, thanks to civil forfeiture laws and thanks to federal laws requiring kids who admit to taking drugs to be referred to law enforcement, the penalties ARE approximately as severe.) Nobody in their right MIND is going to say they smoke marijuana in the present climate of "hang 'em all" in the US (which, incidentially, has also led to the US being second behind Russia in terms of persons incarcerated in terms of population, thanks to mandatory sentencing guidelines; has led to the US having the largest-growing prison population of any country; has led to upwards of one fourth of black males in the US being legally unable to vote (due to laws which disenfranchise felons, and most drug penalties outside of simple posession of small amounts of marijuana are felonies); have led to nearly a THIRD of black males who have been imprisoned or will be imprisoned in their lifetime; has led to the US being criticised by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for human rights abuses in overcrowded prisons; and has probably lead to the social problems in America due to folks being unemployable because they have been imprisoned or have admitted drug use).

I suspect, to be honest, the main reason it's steady at one-fourth is this is probably close to a mix of the numbers of students who aren't working, who have rebel-streaks to begin with (see previous statements on risk-taking), have a history with law and/or the psychiatric system and are never allowed to deny it in the first place, and kids who have tried to apply at jobs and been busted when the place did mandatory drug testing. (The "workplace" in many cases has been extended to sports, or in some places to ALL extracurricular activities; some classes require extracurricular activities in some districts, and at least one group of students is suing their districts with help from the ACLU over student urine-tests.)

7) Marijuana is addictive. While not everyone who uses becomes an addict, there are many who seek it out compulsively. In 1995 165,000 people entered drug treatment programs to seek help for marijuana abuse.

Again, I'd take care with statistics and also with definition of addiction.

First off, the very definition of a PHYSICALLY addicting substance is that if you take it for a certain amount of time and at a certain amount your body's metabolism will become dependant on it to function. This is how heroin and cocaine and nicotine and alcohol become addictive; pretty much they mimic a neurotransmitter, and the body produces lower levels of it. (This is also why you get the "shakes" when coming off of heroin or other downers.)

Scientists have found no evidence that either THC or marijuana is physically addictive.

There is some concern marijuana is PSYCHOLOGICALLY addictive. However, the evidence for this is both controversial and complicated; one major factor that has come up is that persons who suffer from psychological addictions may well be addiction-prone to begin with. (This relates both to the evidence "risk-taking personalities" may be formed at childhood or even be partly genetically based, and at the problems in psychological studies trying to determine whether marijuana really *does* turn people into apathetic slugs. There's some evidence that a lot of those folks were apathetic slugs to begin with, or had "addictive personalities"--in other words, if it wasn't pot, it would be something else like sex [so maybe THAT was what was up with Clinton's willy :)] or extreme sports or being a workaholic.)

A lot of the argument on whether marijuana is addictive actually may rest on how valid one takes the entire concept of psychological dependency; some psychiatrists honestly think the entire idea is hogwash and boils down to problems with impulse control, rather than true dependency. Time will tell on this.

8) Frequent heavy users of marijuana develop a tolerance to the drug. They require an increasingly higher dosage to get the high they seek.

I've never seen any mention of physical addiction or withdrawal syndrome in what I've read--not with THC, not with marijuana. I'd be very interested to know where you got this info.

As a minor aside...technically, caffeine is physically addictive. Users have to get more over time to get the affects, there is a mild withdrawal syndrome ("no coffee headaches") and heavy caffeine users tend to seek out high-caffeine drinks like espresso and Jolt and Ballz :) The caffeine effect/toxicity level safety margin tends to stay large, though (most people are NOT going to hit toxic levels of caffeine unless they quintuple-brew a pot of espresso using caffeinated water). Caffeine use does have some potential side effects, both short and long-term (bad for high-blood-pressure people, can possibly cause probs with calcium absorption and slightly increase risk of osteoporosis, maybe if you drink gallons of espresso increased risk of stroke over lifetime, possibly effects with fertility--enough evidence doctors encourage infertile couples not to drink coffee if they're heavy drinkers). Caffeinated drinks, by and large, aren't going to hurt most people if done to excess--I expect most Americans are closet caffeine junkies :)--and the effects of caffeine addiction are mild, as are withdrawals. Since caffeine IS addictive, do we now ban coffee and soft-drinks which are decaffeinated? Do we ban chocolate (it contains a non-negligible bit of caffeine, and also theobromine which is addictive)? Are we gonna have the DEA bust people for having supplies of Jolt? :) Because this is roughly what you're talking here, if there's any physical addiction involved in marijuana; nothing as nearly as bad as heroin or amphetamine withdrawals, which you typically have to hospitalise people for to make sure they come out ok.

Kismet said:

Shall we get the facts straight?

I don't mind a little debate from either side. (I'll note--just to state my opinion--that I definitely think marijuana should be legalised at the least for medicinal use.) I've some minor nit-picking and/or questioning of some points you've raised, though. Don't take it as a flame, but as honest questioning on some of the applications of statistics and/or studies you've quoted.

1) Although it is not proven that Marijuana causes cancer, it has been shown that it contains as much or more of same chemicals contained in cigarettes that have been shown to cause cancer.

Is this marijuana smoke, or is this the simple dried plant? (I ask for two main reasons; 1) Most figures of this type compared cigarette smoking vs. marijuana smoking, and 2) there are methods of ingesting marijuana that do not involve smoking the plant [i.e. "hash brownies"--brownies containing marijuana].)

I am also curious if this study took into account the fact that most cigarettes in the US are not only sprayed with known carcinogens for control of tobacco diseases such as blue mold, but are also "doctored" (including soaking in flavouring solutions and "doping" with nicotine) in the process of converting tobacco into cigarettes. (Yes, cigarette companies DO doping. Let's just say I have relatives who are former employees of a certain large cigarette manufacturer, and have some idea of how the average "non-specialty" cigarette is made.)

I also wonder if the study took into account the fact that MOST organic substances, when burned, produce cancer-causing substances. (For example, charred meat contains nitrosamines which are known to cause cancer. So do burning cigarettes, and so does burning plant material in general because you are burning protein matter.)

2) Marijuana users are far more prone to chest infections, such as pneumonia. Hey, what did Sagan die of? 2+2 = 5, right?

In Sagan's case, there is a rather major mitigating factor that indicates--at least to me--he well could have died of pneumonia whether or not he smoked pot. That mitigating factor is the fact he had myeloproliferative syndrome.

In case you're not aware, myeloproliferative syndrome is a precursor condition to leukemia and (occasionally) lymphoma at best. In fact, the leukemias are part of the spectrum of myeloproliferative disorders. A really good, if professionally oriented, summary including present treatment options is listed here at PDQ Cancerlink--which I'll note, as a personal aside, is a wonderful resource for anyone with cancer or who has a loved one with cancer (speaking as someone who recently had an uncle die from a rare cancer, adrenocortical carcinoma). The long and the short of it is, these disorders either ARE leukemias or have a bad tendency to convert to a form of acute myelogenous leukemia, and leukemias as a general rule tend to wreck one's immune system to begin with. Most treatments for leukemia (from chemotherapy to allotype-matched bone-marrow transplants--most folks with leukemia aren't able to do autograft BMT using their own bone marrow) tend to wreck your immune system in some form or another (folks receiving BMT basically get high-dose chemo and radiation to kill their bone marrow, then get a "rescue" from a tissue-matched donor; most regular chemo for leukemia will destroy at least a few non-leukemic white cells as well, and chemo regimens for adults tend to be heavier than for kids because adult leukemias tend to have a far worse prognosis than childhood leukemia).

In other words, pot is probably not what made his lungs susceptible to pneumonia. Odds are, it was probably the underlying condition plus whatever chemo they had him on--especially if he died from an "atypical pneumonia". (As a minor aside, folks have commented "Pot has fungus on it" and insinuated Sagan got pneumonia from that. Actually, fungal lung infections are pretty common in patients with myeloproliferative diseases including leukemia; aspergillosis and [at least here in the Ohio Valley] histoplasmosis are common, and patients often get antifungals because of it.)

3) The THC in marijuana has been shown to affect the immune system. Unlike alcohol, THC can stay in your body for weeks depending on how often you smoke.

One can't be entirely sure it's the THC and not some other factor (i.e. smoke, period, which has also been shown to affect the immune system). It would be nice in a way if a controlled study could be done with people taking dronabinol (the FDA-approved form of pure THC) to see if it's in fact the THC or some other factor. (If such a study HAS been done, in humans, using dronabinol, I'd much appreciate info please. :)

I'm not saying they didn't factor that in, just noting potential pitfalls. (One reason doctors can't decide if nicotine does affect the immune system is that no controlled studies have been done with straight nicotine [in part because nicotine IS toxic in large doses and is not normally prescribed except to wean folks off of tobacco products] and most studies have been done with smokers; they can't rule out it's something in the smoke that's doing it, though at least cigarette smoking affects one's immune system too.)

4) It is VERY evident that marijuana affects the neuralogical systems of the body. There are many well documented side effects of the drug. Doctors are still researching the effect of marijuana on the brain.

1) You should be probably careful to differenciate between marijuana and dronabinol, aka THC. I note this because separate studies ARE going into not only THC but some related compounds in marijuana. (THC isn't the only active compound!)

I should also note that not all the research is being done on account of the "bad effects" of marijuana (that is, it gets one high and possibly makes one lazy if smoked heavily for long periods--and the second is up for debate; more on this later). There are known, medically beneficial "side effects" of both THC and other compounds in marijuana; these include influence on the vomiting center of the brain (this makes dronabinol, aka THC, useful as an antivomiting drug in emetogenic chemo like cisplatin; in fact, it's one of the two indications it's officially approved for); as an appetite stimulant and also somehow helping patients keep on more weight than they normally would (this is useful in "wasting syndromes" such as AIDS Wasting Syndrome; this is the second approved use for dronabinol, and in fact is so far the only drug known to be effective); as a possible anticonvulsant; as a possible antidepressant (THC and other compounds in marijuana affect the brain in a similar way to "serotonin-receptor" antidepressants such as Zoloft, only it encourages the brain to secrete more serotonin); and as a possible antiglaucoma agent.

Also, a lot of drug research into how THC affects the brain is involved in making "cannabinoid derivatives" that can be used medicinally yet don't get one stoned (which is good for drug manufacturers, because they no longer have to deal with the red tape involved in Schedule II drug creation--more on this in a bit, with some stuff that might enlighten you).

5) Studies among teenagers have shown that those who smoke marijuana are up to 104 times more likely to try and become addicted to other, more dangerous drugs, than those who have not tried.

This is the famous "gateway drug" argument, and I should note that even among abuse specialists it is VERY controversial at best. I'll list but a few reasons why you should take the info with a grain of salt (or preferably an entire container of Morton's Kosher):

1. Most kids that are brought in for substance abuse problems have a prior history of psychological problems to begin with--many of which include family problems. (Many of the "family problems", mind, include: abusive parents, history of antisocial behaviour to begin with, history of problem with legal drugs, depression or bipolar syndrome ("manic-depression"), a history of suicide attempts, etc.) There is no good way to determine whether the kids would have gotten into "hard drugs" if marijuana hadn't existed, and there is some evidence to suggest they might well have gone into hard drugs to begin with.

2. As you are well aware, marijuana is illegal in the United States. By definition, you are going to catch more kids who go on to hard drugs, who also have used "soft drugs", who have gotten themselves involved with the psychiatric care system (and often they are referred there from schools and law enforcement) than kids who use marijuana, do NOT go on to hard drugs, are discreet about use, and do not get involved in the criminal law system. Also, marijuana use tends to label kids (in the eyes of the criminal and the psychiatric systems of the US) as "bad kids" to begin with; I would not be surprised if this is not a self-fufilling prophecy in the case of some kids.

3. There is a large, non-negligible group of people who use marijuana, have never been involved in psychiatric treatment or legal proceedings involving marijuana use (including those under 18) who will flat out lie on surveys regarding use; kids who are feeling rebellious to begin with (who are also considerably more likely to both use hard drugs and be caught smoking pot) will probably not or will not be given the chance to. (More on this in the next segment.)

4. There is a considerably large and growing body of evidence to suggest that risk-taking behaviours in general--including the use of hard drugs and the flagrant use of marijuana--are at the least determined very early in life, if not outright genetically based. (There's evidence now to suggest people who will indulge in risk-taking behaviours can be found as early as elementary school age--four or five.) Some of this is controversial, and environment is certainly involved, but the propensity to indulge in risky behaviour is probably independent of whether one smokes marijuana. (In other words, it may well be the propensity to do risky things that leads someone both to use marijuana heavily AND to use hard drugs.)

5. Any study on hard drug use and soft drug use is going to have to deal with some fairly heavy corrections for skew. Specifically, you have to correct for poverty (people in poverty are considerably more likely to use both hard and soft drugs--often as either a way to escape, or as one of the few options for making decent money), culture (in some cultures "hard" drugs are not as frowned upon), age, area of the country (in some parts of the US marijuana is dead common; in other areas alcohol or ectasy might be a "first drug"), whether or not the people involved have a bent for antisocial/rebellious behaviour to begin with, whether they have conditions that make them more likely to take risks or not evaluate consequences, etc.

6. In case you're not aware of it, the *exact same arguments* used to classify marijuana as a "gateway drug" can be used to classify both alcohol AND tobacco as gateway drugs. (Alcohol and tobacco are both illegal for those under 18 or 21; in some areas alcohol is every bit as illegal as marijuana is and has to be bought from bootleggers; similar rates of people who drink alcohol or smoke early and go to hard drugs have been noted.) In fact, some schools and psychiatrists that believe in the "gateway drug" canard have actually STATED that alcohol and tobacco are gateway drugs! For that matter, the same argument can and *has* been used for black males (by racists), to attempt to criminalise heavy metal and rap music (claiming that kids who listen to heavy metal and/or rap are more likely to use drugs--forgetting to count in the "rebellion factor" being the biggie, rather than the music), claiming in the 50s that rock music in general caused drug use, claiming jazz caused drug use, etc. One should be *extremely* careful about whom one gets one's data from in these cases--the PMRC used the "metal and rap as gateway drug" argument to push "Tipper stickers" on albums and tries to use it to criminalise album sales to people under 18.

In other words, there isn't any good evidence for even the existence of a "gateway drug effect". There IS evidence that kids who IN GENERAL are prone to antisocial or rebellious behaviour are more prone to both hard and soft drug use. (And yes, I can speak from experience--I've seen kids in the psychiatric care system, and the kids in there for hard drug use tend to have had problems even before they started pot or any hard drugs.)

6) Less than 1 in 4 high school students have ever used, or ever will use marijuana. I doubt that number is higher with responsible, job holding adults.

To quote Mark Twain, there are lies, damned lies, and statistics. :) Polls on such things as illegal drug use are going to be BLATANTLY skewed for several reasons. Some of these reasons are directly attributable to the "War on (some) Drugs" in the US. I'll explain below:

1) Most people on a survey are never going to admit they use marijuana even if they DO use it on a regular basis. This is because they fear their bosses may find out, or law enforcement may find out. Drug use in practically all businesses is a mandatory firing offense, due to federal guidelines.

2) Kids sure as heck aren't going to admit it, because many kids know that there are essentially no such things as confidentiality or privacy for those under 18. (In many cases, if the survey is at a school or through a community service, the people doing the survey MUST IDENTIFY THE PARENTS BY LAW if a kid admits to them that they are using drugs.) Even if confidentiality was assured, many kids are going to assume it isn't and won't admit it.

3) Most people, period, aren't going to admit to strangers that they use marijuana unless the person's already indicated they're friendly about it. (This is the same reason that a lot of people won't state they're gay in public, or won't state they're into BDSM, or are smokers, in public; it's still seen as somewhat socially unacceptable.)

Most surveys of kids have either been by the government anti-drug task force or have been by antidrug groups like D.A.R.E. I strongly suspect that if NORML (a group promoting marijuana legalisation) were somehow by some miracle actually allowed to do a survey of drug use in schools they'd get quite a different answer from the government surveys. (NORML does have survey results from adults that indicate the number of folks who occasionally smoke marijuana is far higher than usually counted.)

The simple fact is--precisely BECAUSE of the "War on (some) Drugs" and federal and state laws relating to drug use (which basically state that you end up out of a job and ineligible for welfare or public support, even unemployment, if you admit you use drugs recreationally)--your average Joe is about as unwilling to admit he uses marijuana as, say, your average person in the 50's was willing to admit he was a Communist or sympathised with someone being charged in the House Un-American Activities Committee. Or about as unlikely as your average white person in early 60's Alabama stating he supported civil rights for blacks in public where the governor and state government were stating "Segregation Forever" and black people were actually being lynched and their homes burned. (And yes, thanks to civil forfeiture laws and thanks to federal laws requiring kids who admit to taking drugs to be referred to law enforcement, the penalties ARE approximately as severe.) Nobody in their right MIND is going to say they smoke marijuana in the present climate of "hang 'em all" in the US (which, incidentially, has also led to the US being second behind Russia in terms of persons incarcerated in terms of population, thanks to mandatory sentencing guidelines; has led to the US having the largest-growing prison population of any country; has led to upwards of one fourth of black males in the US being legally unable to vote (due to laws which disenfranchise felons, and most drug penalties outside of simple posession of small amounts of marijuana are felonies); have led to nearly a THIRD of black males who have been imprisoned or will be imprisoned in their lifetime; has led to the US being criticised by Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch for human rights abuses in overcrowded prisons; and has probably lead to the social problems in America due to folks being unemployable because they have been imprisoned or have admitted drug use).

I suspect, to be honest, the main reason it's steady at one-fourth is this is probably close to a mix of the numbers of students who aren't working, who have rebel-streaks to begin with (see previous statements on risk-taking), have a history with law and/or the psychiatric system and are never allowed to deny it in the first place, and kids who have tried to apply at jobs and been busted when the place did mandatory drug testing. (The "workplace" in many cases has been extended to sports, or in some places to ALL extracurricular activities; some classes require extracurricular activities in some districts, and at least one group of students is suing their districts with help from the ACLU over student urine-tests.)

7) Marijuana is addictive. While not everyone who uses becomes an addict, there are many who seek it out compulsively. In 1995 165,000 people entered drug treatment programs to seek help for marijuana abuse.

Again, I'd take care with statistics and also with definition of addiction.

First off, the very definition of a PHYSICALLY addicting substance is that if you take it for a certain amount of time and at a certain amount your body's metabolism will become dependant on it to function. This is how heroin and cocaine and nicotine and alcohol become addictive; pretty much they mimic a neurotransmitter, and the body produces lower levels of it. (This is also why you get the "shakes" when coming off of heroin or other downers.)

Scientists have found no evidence that either THC or marijuana is physically addictive.

There is some concern marijuana is PSYCHOLOGICALLY addictive. However, the evidence for this is both controversial and complicated; one major factor that has come up is that persons who suffer from psychological addictions may well be addiction-prone to begin with. (This relates both to the evidence "risk-taking personalities" may be formed at childhood or even be partly genetically based, and at the problems in psychological studies trying to determine whether marijuana really *does* turn people into apathetic slugs. There's some evidence that a lot of those folks were apathetic slugs to begin with, or had "addictive personalities"--in other words, if it wasn't pot, it would be something else like sex [so maybe THAT was what was up with Clinton's willy :)] or extreme sports or being a workaholic.)

A lot of the argument on whether marijuana is addictive actually may rest on how valid one takes the entire concept of psychological dependency; some psychiatrists honestly think the entire idea is hogwash and boils down to problems with impulse control, rather than true dependency. Time will tell on this.

8) Frequent heavy users of marijuana develop a tolerance to the drug. They require an increasingly higher dosage to get the high they seek.

I've never seen any mention of physical addiction or withdrawal syndrome in what I've read--not with THC, not with marijuana. I'd be very interested to know where you got this info.

As a minor aside...technically, caffeine is physically addictive. Users have to get more over time to get the affects, there is a mild withdrawal syndrome ("no coffee headaches") and heavy caffeine users tend to seek out high-caffeine drinks like espresso and Jolt and Ballz :) The caffeine effect/toxicity level safety margin tends to stay large, though (most people are NOT going to hit toxic levels of caffeine unless they quintuple-brew a pot of espresso using caffeinated water). Caffeine use does have some potential side effects, both short and long-term (bad for high-blood-pressure people, can possibly cause probs with calcium absorption and slightly increase risk of osteoporosis, maybe if you drink gallons of espresso increased risk of stroke over lifetime, possibly effects with fertility--enough evidence doctors encourage infertile couples not to drink coffee if they're heavy drinkers). Caffeinated drinks, by and large, aren't going to hurt most people if done to excess--I expect most Americans are closet caffeine junkies :)--and the effects of caffeine addiction are mild, as are withdrawals. Since caffeine IS addictive, do we now ban coffee and soft-drinks which are decaffeinated? Do we ban chocolate (it contains a non-negligible bit of caffeine, and also theobromine which is addictive)? Are we gonna have the DEA bust people for having supplies of Jolt? :) Because this is roughly what you're talking here, if there's any physical addiction involved in marijuana; nothing as nearly as bad as heroin or amphetamine withdrawals, which you typically have to hospitalise people for to make sure they come out ok.

Yes, while I admit I'm not an expert on this field - I am probably more into this thing than most people reading ./ - I'm currently doing my MS in Cell Biology.

Anyway, this is not the first time that scientist have done this sort of thing - check out these papers:
1992 - japanese encephalitis virus production from DNA alone
1994 - Rabies

1996 - Sendai virus
1 997 - human parainfluenza virus type 3

As you can see this thing has been done numerous times :) - Although this is the first time with influenza virus A.

As for potential cancer fighting - I'll have to say that influenza virus A is hardly going to be useful as it can *ONLY* infect cells in the respiratory tract - ofcourse that's fine for lung cancer but for other cancer it might not work that well ;-)

PuG - The crazy danish scientist :P

Yes, while I admit I'm not an expert on this field - I am probably more into this thing than most people reading ./ - I'm currently doing my MS in Cell Biology.

Anyway, this is not the first time that scientist have done this sort of thing - check out these papers:
1992 - japanese encephalitis virus production from DNA alone
1994 - Rabies

1996 - Sendai virus
1 997 - human parainfluenza virus type 3

As you can see this thing has been done numerous times :) - Although this is the first time with influenza virus A.

As for potential cancer fighting - I'll have to say that influenza virus A is hardly going to be useful as it can *ONLY* infect cells in the respiratory tract - ofcourse that's fine for lung cancer but for other cancer it might not work that well ;-)

PuG - The crazy danish scientist :P

Yes, while I admit I'm not an expert on this field - I am probably more into this thing than most people reading ./ - I'm currently doing my MS in Cell Biology.

Anyway, this is not the first time that scientist have done this sort of thing - check out these papers:
1992 - japanese encephalitis virus production from DNA alone
1994 - Rabies

1996 - Sendai virus
1 997 - human parainfluenza virus type 3

As you can see this thing has been done numerous times :) - Although this is the first time with influenza virus A.

As for potential cancer fighting - I'll have to say that influenza virus A is hardly going to be useful as it can *ONLY* infect cells in the respiratory tract - ofcourse that's fine for lung cancer but for other cancer it might not work that well ;-)

PuG - The crazy danish scientist :P

Yes, while I admit I'm not an expert on this field - I am probably more into this thing than most people reading ./ - I'm currently doing my MS in Cell Biology.

Anyway, this is not the first time that scientist have done this sort of thing - check out these papers:
1992 - japanese encephalitis virus production from DNA alone
1994 - Rabies

1996 - Sendai virus
1 997 - human parainfluenza virus type 3

As you can see this thing has been done numerous times :) - Although this is the first time with influenza virus A.

As for potential cancer fighting - I'll have to say that influenza virus A is hardly going to be useful as it can *ONLY* infect cells in the respiratory tract - ofcourse that's fine for lung cancer but for other cancer it might not work that well ;-)

PuG - The crazy danish scientist :P

Yes, while I admit I'm not an expert on this field - I am probably more into this thing than most people reading ./ - I'm currently doing my MS in Cell Biology.

Anyway, this is not the first time that scientist have done this sort of thing - check out these papers:
1992 - japanese encephalitis virus production from DNA alone
1994 - Rabies

1996 - Sendai virus
1 997 - human parainfluenza virus type 3

As you can see this thing has been done numerous times :) - Although this is the first time with influenza virus A.

As for potential cancer fighting - I'll have to say that influenza virus A is hardly going to be useful as it can *ONLY* infect cells in the respiratory tract - ofcourse that's fine for lung cancer but for other cancer it might not work that well ;-)

PuG - The crazy danish scientist :P

speaking as a biocomputing geek, the NCBI website is a great starting point...

• National Center for Biotechnology Information, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• Genome Resources Guide, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/guide/
• Human Genome Sequencing Progress
• Links to all the Genome sequencing centers
• The Sanger Center (UK), http://www.sanger.ac.uk/HGP/
• The Whitehead Institute (MIT), http://www.genome.wi.mit.edu/

speaking as a biocomputing geek, the NCBI website is a great starting point...

• National Center for Biotechnology Information, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• Genome Resources Guide, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/guide/
• Human Genome Sequencing Progress
• Links to all the Genome sequencing centers
• The Sanger Center (UK), http://www.sanger.ac.uk/HGP/
• The Whitehead Institute (MIT), http://www.genome.wi.mit.edu/

speaking as a biocomputing geek, the NCBI website is a great starting point...

• National Center for Biotechnology Information, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• Genome Resources Guide, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/guide/
• Human Genome Sequencing Progress
• Links to all the Genome sequencing centers
• The Sanger Center (UK), http://www.sanger.ac.uk/HGP/
• The Whitehead Institute (MIT), http://www.genome.wi.mit.edu/

speaking as a biocomputing geek, the NCBI website is a great starting point...

• National Center for Biotechnology Information, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov
• Genome Resources Guide, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/genome/guide/
• Human Genome Sequencing Progress
• Links to all the Genome sequencing centers
• The Sanger Center (UK), http://www.sanger.ac.uk/HGP/
• The Whitehead Institute (MIT), http://www.genome.wi.mit.edu/

I think we've conflated three distinct issues, and that we'd benefit from separating them:

1. The process by which information is generated and its quality is assessed - peer review, free-for-all, etc.
2. The mechanism and medium by which information is distributed - paper, www, etc.
3. The economic model by which information is distributed - for free, by subscription, per-use, etc.

Quality control becomes a problem with all (free-for-all, *, *) systems. (I disagree with (#41) that "it's about time to shake up the peer review system." Peer review is a great way to assure quality, addressing the questions raised eloquently in (#35, 54, etc.). "Non-elites" may clamor for "democratic" publishing, but Usenet illustrates its impact on quality.)

Similarly, publisher resistance may become a problem with all (*, *, free) systems. Archiving is a concern with (*, www, *). And so on.

By treating each of these three issues separately we can draw useful distinctions, e.g., there are at least two, very different Old Guards:

1. for-profit publishers (e.g. Reed Elsevier) who want to preserve (peer-reviewed, paper, subscription) because it's profitable
2. non-profit publishers (e.g. AAAS) who can accept (peer-reviewed, *, *) because they are driven by the professional demands of their members.