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So, wouldn't it also be reasonable to ban alcohol use, a product that is responsible for over 85% of all date rapes and is the 4th largest cause of death in the U.S?

Was this not mentioned because you are friends with Mia Vice Izafine and Bee Cuz Ilikait?

Let's bring some real data in on this

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

The short; the average age of someone quitting smoking for the 2011-2012 period (the most recent period in the study) was 39.5 years old. In other words, the parent you're replying to is correct, a 25 year old threshold does not make sense.

Nonsense. There is no need whatsoever for nuclear waste management to be expesnsive, especially on Mars; drop the waste down a sink-hole and forget about it. To be honest, we could do the same on earth, if common sense ever prevails.

Radioactive materials already exist in nature, it's not as if it's something purely artificial. Even on the surface of the earth, there are places that are naturally highly radioactive, for example Karanagappally in India, where people have been living for thousands of years. Studies have shown that the panic over the the effects of high background radiation is largely overblown. So we can drop the waste down a hole, and we really don't need to worry about some minute possibility that at some point thousands of years in the future, some of the material might somehow escape; it really wouldn't be the end of the world.

It's only nutcase panic-mongers that keep costs of nuclear waste management high. By preventing it from being disposed of in a sane way, they ensure that large amounts of waste are stockpiled in expensive facilities basically forever, and that's what costs the big bucks.

First study is bursting with methodology flaws. I doubt that it was even published.
Aaaaand I was right. It was heavily edited before publishing.
He dropped the prostitute scenario in the first experiment (the one actually showing more "empathy" for the placebo group).

In the video scenario... well...
Apparently it's not acetaminophen but watching David Lynch that's causing the effect.
Cause while the control group, which watches only cartoons, has minimal effects, well covered by error bars for both placebo and acetaminophen - those in David Lynch watching group want to punish people more for vandalism after a sports game.
BUT... those on acetaminophen in Lynch group have IDENTICAL results as those in the cartoon group - taking placebo.
Which, again, is barely different from those in cartoon group - taking acetaminophen.

In short... all he's "proven" is that watching David Lynch's Rabbits makes you want to punch people.

The other linked study has laughable effects and tiny groups - 30 and 32 participants in first experiment, 10 and 15 in the second.
That's not a study. That's pretend work.
Plus their methodology was also flawed, up and down the wazoo.

Giving people something which reduces pain and inflammation, thus reducing stress levels... that's NOT lower emotional pain. That's measuring lower irritation over time.

And even that is by an NEGLIGIBLE AMOUNT.
Differences between groups increasing from -0.14 to -0.38. On average. Over 21 days. FOR THE acetaminophen group.
Which also started off with a lower "hurt feelings" score than the placebo group.

WHILE the placebo group (though study also claims no change - in the slope) kept getting more "hurt feelings".
TOUGH there was no standardized stimuli to cause the daily "hurt feelings". For either group.
Both groups just "took acetaminophen or placebo in pill form each day for 3 weeks and reported their hurt feelings daily".
Still... placebo crowd kept getting more "hurt feelings".

And it's even worse when you look at actual numbers.
Cause acetaminophen group went from 2.35 average daily "hurt feelings" to about 2.17 - while placebo group, went from about 2.45something to about 2.55, average daily "hurt feelings".
Their reported slopes were 0.0035 and -0.0081 for placebo and acetaminophen groups, respectively.
For 30 people.
Over 21 days.
Reporting completely subjectively determined changes in their "hurt feelings" - in values measured in percentiles of percentiles.
On a scale that goes from at least 2 to at least 3 (as shown on the graph). We are not shown or told actual scale which participants used to measure their "hurt feelings".
There's no scale which starts at 2. Particularly not one which measures negative values as well.
Still... Everyone started around 2.5... and ended around 2.5.

That's a faulty study. Fraudulent even.

TLDR:

Tylenol has been indicated to reduce emotional pain as well as physical pain,

Nope.

You're not wrong. Sci-Hub is in violation of the law, no doubt about that. Morally though, I absolutely could not care less, and think that what is really wrong is hoarding knowledge in the form of the tax payer funded publications which Sci-Hub is now making accessible for all.

This is mostly true but there are details worth highlighting. Not all research is tax payer funded. Some of it is funded by private entitites like HHMI or the Wellcome Trust. Quite a few papers are available for free even some recent ones from top journals. Sometimes the funding body insists on this and pays extra to make sure it's the case. The Wellcome Trust do this. Finally, you can often download people's papers from the websites (illegal, probably) or just ask them for a copy. It's not convenient but it does work. Of course this plan doesn't help if the researcher has packed up or died.

Actually paracetamol (acetaminophen for Americans) is effective against migraines but only in about 10% of people. The rule I was always told was that then you feel a migraine coming on - aura start etc. - you take paracetamol but if a migraine has already started ibuprofen is better. This seems to work most of the time for me.

However, in both cases these are mild pain relievers and while they work for my migraines which are not particularly severe for more severe cases, like those my dad used to sometimes have, more powerful medications are required. In the UK you can also get paracetamol with added codeine tablets over the counter (in limited numbers and dosages since codeine is mildly addictive) and I find this often works particularly well taken at the start of a migraine.

Persistence in soils, waterways, and nontarget plants is variable but can be prolonged; for example, the half-lives of neonicotinoids in soils can exceed 1,000 days, so they can accumulate when used repeatedly. Similarly, they can persist in woody plants for periods exceeding 1 year. Breakdown results in toxic metabolites, though concentrations of these in the environment are rarely measured.

Source

but evidence that plastics do much any serious harm to life is nil.

My third result for "evidence that plastics do much any serious harm to life" [sic] is Plastics, the environment and human health: current consensus and future trends which might be of some interest to any persons who want to know if discarded plastics cause environmental harm.

So Obamacare is bad because we should just trust the free market, but if/when going off grid becomes a financially savvy thing to do, then we should no longer trust the free market and should be forced to buy energy from our designated provider?

Yeah, yeah, "but solar isn't free market because subsidies" -- well sorry, but everything is subsidized. Fossil fuels are subsidized. Bad health habits are (arguably) subsidized.

https://www.niddk.nih.gov/heal...

You're not doing any favours for the notion of probiotics having more scientific credibility than Revlon's latest innovation.

Linked in TFA, and then there's a trivial web search:

Probiotics are safe and appear to exert some beneficial effects in GI-related illnesses. The use of probiotics in non-GI illnesses is not sufficiently supported by current data.

Or a little more googling and you'll find plenty of peer-reviewed articles saying they have a small beneficial effect (*for certain diseases/ailments*), with some studies recommending caution for various groups.

No, they don't appear to be as medically useful as their "anti" counterparts, and they don't appear to cure cancer (though they can be good -- and bad! -- for cancer patients), but they are hardly in the same category as a beauty product.

And

Call us when you have gone through peer review by scientists who weren't hoping for a positive result before they even started.

Seriously? a) That's why we have a peer review process in the first place, and b) do you honestly think we don't care one way or the other which way a study turns out? Obviously, it's our job to report the facts, but do you really think a scientist starts an experiment without, at some level, hoping for a remarkable result? There's no problem with personal bias, so long as it's just that -- *personal*, not professional.

You're not doing any favours for the notion of probiotics having more scientific credibility than Revlon's latest innovation.

Linked in TFA, and then there's a trivial web search:

Probiotics are safe and appear to exert some beneficial effects in GI-related illnesses. The use of probiotics in non-GI illnesses is not sufficiently supported by current data.

Or a little more googling and you'll find plenty of peer-reviewed articles saying they have a small beneficial effect (*for certain diseases/ailments*), with some studies recommending caution for various groups.

No, they don't appear to be as medically useful as their "anti" counterparts, and they don't appear to cure cancer (though they can be good -- and bad! -- for cancer patients), but they are hardly in the same category as a beauty product.

And

Call us when you have gone through peer review by scientists who weren't hoping for a positive result before they even started.

Seriously? a) That's why we have a peer review process in the first place, and b) do you honestly think we don't care one way or the other which way a study turns out? Obviously, it's our job to report the facts, but do you really think a scientist starts an experiment without, at some level, hoping for a remarkable result? There's no problem with personal bias, so long as it's just that -- *personal*, not professional.

You're not doing any favours for the notion of probiotics having more scientific credibility than Revlon's latest innovation.

Linked in TFA, and then there's a trivial web search:

Probiotics are safe and appear to exert some beneficial effects in GI-related illnesses. The use of probiotics in non-GI illnesses is not sufficiently supported by current data.

Or a little more googling and you'll find plenty of peer-reviewed articles saying they have a small beneficial effect (*for certain diseases/ailments*), with some studies recommending caution for various groups.

No, they don't appear to be as medically useful as their "anti" counterparts, and they don't appear to cure cancer (though they can be good -- and bad! -- for cancer patients), but they are hardly in the same category as a beauty product.

And

Call us when you have gone through peer review by scientists who weren't hoping for a positive result before they even started.

Seriously? a) That's why we have a peer review process in the first place, and b) do you honestly think we don't care one way or the other which way a study turns out? Obviously, it's our job to report the facts, but do you really think a scientist starts an experiment without, at some level, hoping for a remarkable result? There's no problem with personal bias, so long as it's just that -- *personal*, not professional.

You're not doing any favours for the notion of probiotics having more scientific credibility than Revlon's latest innovation.

Linked in TFA, and then there's a trivial web search:

Probiotics are safe and appear to exert some beneficial effects in GI-related illnesses. The use of probiotics in non-GI illnesses is not sufficiently supported by current data.

Or a little more googling and you'll find plenty of peer-reviewed articles saying they have a small beneficial effect (*for certain diseases/ailments*), with some studies recommending caution for various groups.

No, they don't appear to be as medically useful as their "anti" counterparts, and they don't appear to cure cancer (though they can be good -- and bad! -- for cancer patients), but they are hardly in the same category as a beauty product.

And

Call us when you have gone through peer review by scientists who weren't hoping for a positive result before they even started.

Seriously? a) That's why we have a peer review process in the first place, and b) do you honestly think we don't care one way or the other which way a study turns out? Obviously, it's our job to report the facts, but do you really think a scientist starts an experiment without, at some level, hoping for a remarkable result? There's no problem with personal bias, so long as it's just that -- *personal*, not professional.

Government agencies aren't known for controlling overhead costs.

Well, we could perhaps look at some studies, instead of relying on simplistic Republican slogans.
This study calculates the overhead due to billing and insurance-related costs to 375 billion dollars annually; if Medicare was universal, the savings would be enough to cover all the uninsured and improve coverage for the under-insured. The overhead cost of Medicare is estimated to 1.5% in the USA, 1.8% in Canada. By contrast, the overhead of private insurance companies is about 13% in the USA, 16% in Canada.

Even leaving this aside, there is a much more important issue here. The whole debate is about the wrong thing. The goal of a health care system is not to make money. It is to improve health. Lawmakers' focus should not be on finding ways to protect the income of insurance companies. They should try to find ways to improve the health of citizens. Whether insurance companies go bankrupt, need to change their business model or stop making ridiculous profits should be totally irrelevant. I believe lawmakers who instead perpetuate the current system are fundamentally betraying the reason they were put there in the first place.

I understand this is slashdot where mention of acupuncture is overrun by pseudo engineer doublespeak and hand waving about double blind tests but a good friends mother was, literally, almost killed by a series of chiropractors and then cured, slowly and not fully, by a series of acupuncturists. A chiropractor told her, once again literally "you have two or three years to live" and she couldn't walk without crying. She stumbled into an acupuncturists office and 45 minutes of weird needles later realized that, while the pain wasn't entirely gone, it was the first time in years the pain wasn't blinding. She wrote a few great magazine articles on it that predate the web.

Yeah insert your idiotic rant now and add as much racism as floats your boat. Results matter. For certain people acupuncture works. And if it's "just a placebo" but we're talking about pain relief what, exactly, is the difference. Maybe it was the mumbo jumbo not the weird herbs and nitric oxide effect. But the pain was gone.

I've got many more success stories regarding acupuncture and horror shows from chiropractic (mal)practice. That one is the happiest.

I don't know about the diets they extol, or any other homeopathic remedies they might have,

It's in the summary, so you should. And it is clearly bullshit on the order of anti-vax conspiracy theories or "foodbabe" bullshit. Because why stick to one type of bullshit if you're already a professional bullshitter?

Just ask anyone who could barely walk into the Chiropractor's office, and walk out pain-free with a smile....I know people who've been really happy after their "adjustments."

Good, but that's anecdotal like you can easily find for qigong or crystals. Actual evidence suggests very slight help for a small number of problems. If the people who were barely walking in had chronic lower back pain and were happy and pain free afterward, it was in their head, and they'd be better off doing core exercises probably.

You are delusional. A few years ago, I have hired a PhD in PA for under $50k, plus a cut of the eventual pie.

Outside of the Cuckistan/Pelosiland, a PhD level biotech worker makes around 60k. Here have a look what a fresh PhD graduate makes at the NIH.

That's bullshit. The anti-vax crap is on both sides of the political spectrum. The current President (a far right-winger) has spouted anti-vax BS, and there's been a bunch of it among religious groups who've then had outbreaks.

https://www.omicsonline.org/op...

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

http://scienceblogs.com/insole...

https://www.forbes.com/sites/e...

But it's not just religious idiots who've latched onto the anti-vax hysteria, it's also some elements on the left, namely the loony ones who are also into various other "alternative medicine" hokum.

Remember, the "left" isn't a coherent, homogeneous group of people by any stretch, in fact it's a coalition of basically everyone who isn't right-wing. The right-wingers are generally conservative, which means they like the status quo, "traditional values", etc., so anyone who departs from this mindset is automatically left-wing, even though that can mean completely different philosophies ranging from simple "progressivism" (basically what Nordic countries have--democratic republics with a bunch of welfare state services and heavier regulation) all the way to actual communism. So the "left" includes irreligious people who want science and evidence-based thinking to determine public policy, and also fruity people who believe in garbage like "metaphysics" and the "ascended masters".

Nicotine has a unique place in the harmfulness of cigarettes, which no amount of reformulation can erase. Nicotine is a cancer promoter. Inhaling a cancer promoter into your lungs on a regular basis is never going to be even a "health neutral" activity.

You could of course hire some public scientists, but it's very hard to say who is doing anything productive.

No, not even remotely true. I'm working much harder and under much higher scrutiny as a publicly funded researcher than I ever did in industry (where I spent ten years of my life).

This is especially true in medicin. Most new drugs are from publicly funded research in the US. While private industry spend a lot of money it's later in the game, commercialising public results.

The public can afford to take cheap (relatively speaking) risks that nothing will result. Corporations won't. They'll play it safe. (Just witness Hollywood...)

>This is a waste of money that could go toward studying how to cure cancer

As a bioinformatician, I strongly disagree. Most of my work is dealing with sparse graphs (called networks). Strangely most of my work is based on the same mathematical and computer science principles than intelligence services.

The study referenced may not be generally applicable -- it may only be relevant to Young Turks (and I am neither).

I told my doctor that my blood pressure was higher when I lean forward than if I am reclined back.

He didn't believe me until he took the measurements in his office.

Turns out body position makes a statistical difference in your blood pressure readings:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

I took both of my BP meters in to the doctor's office and compared their readings with the doctor's readings. That way I know how much deviation to expect when taking measurements.

McNuggets don't have MSG in them.

Anyway, the idea that MSG sensitivity exists has been thoroughly disproved by double blind tests. Proteins are all broken down to component amino acids starting in the mouth, and glutamates are a very common amino acid essential to life.

Excitotoxic shock doesn't come from what you eat, but the body processes that involve amino acids. You don't understand what Excitotoxins are. Without glutamates we will die, and MSG is a simple salt of an amino acid, that dissolves in water.

It is true that glutamates can make some foods taste good, generally speaking it's very helpful for soups with little or no meat (meat is naturally high in glutamates already).

All in all, what you’ve just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul.

NIH (and pretty much everywhere else I've seen) defines moderate drinking as "up to 1 drink per day for women and up to 2 drinks per day for men." https://www.niaaa.nih.gov/alco...

The government already did this.

Are they suggesting that Harvard students should be housed in California prisons?

That wouldn't be a bad idea. A 1978 documentary, Scared Straight!, had a group of juvenile delinquents meet harden convicts who scared the crap out of them to convince that a life of crime doesn't pay.

Unfortunately "Scared Straight!" is a textbook case of an idea that sounds good in theory and makes good TV but when you do do proper controlled trials you discover that it is worse than useless: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

No. Smallpox, flu, chicken pox... all the viruses we vaccinate against don't kill genetically "weaker" people, they kill off the elderly, infants, and a few immunocompromised individuals, and make anyone else mildly to seriously sick.

We also vaccinate against influenza, and some forms of that disproportionately kill certain groups of people based on how their immune system responds; people whose immune systems exhibit a sufficiently severe cytokine storm die, whereas people with a less aggressive immune system don't, and genetic factors are believed to play a significant role in that difference. And those deaths are among people of roughly breeding age, which means that virus will have a very real effect on the genetic makeup of the population in future generations, which means they will be less susceptible to similar viruses in the future.

But again as I said, it would be incorrect to assume that such a susceptibility qualifies as "weaker", because those precise immune mechanisms that cause death in that case are also likely responsible for conferring extra protection against any number of other illnesses. Part of what makes a species robust is its genetic diversity.

Unfortunately, we can't absolutely rule out the possibility that some random genetic fluke could become disproportionately common in the gene pool because we protected those people against hard-to-spread viruses that killed a few people at a time, nor the possibility that some future virus could take advantage of that to wipe out an unusually large percentage of the population. It is unlikely, but not impossible.

Here is a list
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/heal...

Never happened.

Hard as it is to prove a negative, it is easy to show a positive. Because the distribution smallpox blankets as a means of infection? Actually happened.

Even your own source mentioned it.

Not sure why you limited yourself to the US Army. I could say the Swiss Army never committed a massacre in Nanking, but what would that prove?

Also, would have been pretty amazing if the US Army had come to comprehend and weaponize germ theory decades before it was developed and accepted.

Why? It is known that the practice of biological warfare predates the discovery of the Americas. In fact, the British Army expressly discussed it. So you're saying the US Army would be amazing because they knew what their predecessors knew?

Am I amazing because I could read a book too? Or because my grandmother could teach me how to suck eggs?

Now certainly you wouldn't say their knowledge was complete, but you don't need to understand the mechanisms of salicylic acid in order to drink willowbark tea.

Birth control pills are often taken not because a woman wants to prevent an unplanned pregnancy but because such hormones help deal with acne.

Estrogens also result in increased strength and muscle mass, same fashion testosterone does. But unlike testosterone, it doesn't give rise to unstable emotions, it actually reduces them. And also unlike testosterone, it increases lifespan by 3 years over women who aren't on HRT for menopause. Studies done on male volunteers with just a single 4mg estrogen patch showed a calming influence without any increase in emotional instability.

The "well-documented effect on all manner of behaviours" is bullshit if you're implying a negative effect. It's down to women having to put up with bullshit like having to do an unequal share of work around the house despite supposedly being "equal partners" (20 hours for women each week, vs 8 hours for men) and putting up with job and pay discrimination.

Yes, there is a difference between the sexes - women do a better job. If you want to live longer, get a woman for a doctor. Women doctors are statistically better listeners. Being a better listener means getting more information before making a judgement call. Male doctors also tend to take complaints of pain from women and children less seriously than from men. And let's not forget the "man cold." Suck it up the same as women do, buttercup.

Notice what *all three* have in common- selfishness.

Which is also the real reason behind water fluoridation. Cut back on that surplus population so you can grab more stuff.

And yes, it did (been studied over and over and over and over):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8169995
https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/health-topics/health-effects-water-fluoridation
http://fluoridealert.org/studies/fertility01/
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/15287399409531866

And that's just the top 4 in a google search....

First off, if you dont know what you are talking about, how can you come to the conclusion that I am lying? Or are you just mad I don't agree with your belief? Second, I wasnt talking about CO2, so your whole post is just a long rant with no point. You can deny my opinion and science all you like, but high and low resolution problems in various proxy datasets is well known. That you do not know about them, does not make then non existant. You can see a study here that tries to improve temperature resolution by using multiple proxies from the same area. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

The rate of temperature change is according to climate scientists the fastest we ever had on the planet.

I'm sure you can find scientists (persons) saying that, but it's not what the science (as created by following the scientific method) is saying. Or rather, barring so-called catastrophes (meteor impacts, maybe basalt flooding etc) it's simply unknowable. We do not have proxies of enough resolution to know. However, even if we use the best we have, we find sudden temperature changes to be common.

"Climate shifts up to half as large as the entire difference between ice age and modern conditions occurred over hemispheric or broader regions in mere years to decades."

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

My point was not about "nitpicking" about insects. I simply pointed out that your original statement cannot be true. The warming we've seen since the coldest part of the whole Holocene (i.e, since about a few hundred years back) is not exceptional for the Holocene (see previous post for scientific reference) and thus cannot be responsible for a demise of insects.

I've heard this argument, but it is difficult to back with actual statistics. Here's an article from 2008 that looks comparatively clean:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

It suggests that smoking pot regularly and heavily is associated with around a 5% increased incidence in lung cancer, but N in the study is pretty small for me to be happy with this number.

I don't remember the article that I'm "reciting" from, it was one of the popular science type magazines (probably from around the same timeframe as that article, and maybe partially based upon it). The article was actually talking about the relative safety of marijuana, but stated the smoke was "x time worse" (x being something around the 10 mark). I think it mentioned something about lack of filters, etc.

It might have been poorly researched, I don't remember the details.

From your article 5% increase in risk would indicate a "per-puff" more dangerous smoking product than tobacco when you consider people probably average less than 1 a day. I can't imagine many people use more than 5 a week.

That said, pot smokers are probably more likely to be tobacco smokers than non pot-smokers, so that 5% could be correlation not causation.

I've heard this argument, but it is difficult to back with actual statistics. Here's an article from 2008 that looks comparatively clean:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

It suggests that smoking pot regularly and heavily is associated with around a 5% increased incidence in lung cancer, but N in the study is pretty small for me to be happy with this number. Its an epidemiological study and hence has the usual problems with confounding -- lots of people smoke pot AND tobacco, use pot AND drink alcohol -- plus the usual difficulties of relying on self-reporting of use. In a sense the article is surprising -- in spite of nominally being more toxic, the bump in risk appears smaller than it is for tobacco, something I've read about in other research articles as well. Tobacco appears to be uniquely bad for you, worse than "just smoke" including pot smoke. It could be that pot has some anti-inflammatory activity (reported here and there as part of its possible "medical benefits") that partially offsets the smoke-related damage, since cancer, like most cardiovascular disease, appears to be associated with inflammatory response.

Documentation? Seriously, just spouting bullshit doesn't prove anything at all. And bullshit articles with completely fake graphs culled from the internet are no better. If you want facts, you can try reading actual medical journal articles:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

From the abstract: The LD50 for dogs is 3 grams of PURE THC per kilogram of body weight. I have a body mass a bit over 100 kg, so the likely LD50 for me would be roughly 300 grams. The most potent varieties of pot on the market are around 1/4 THC (reportedly, I still have a bit of a hard time believing that on a pure sanity check basis, but hey, let's go with it). That means I'd have to ingest 4x300 grams or 1.2 kilograms of not just any pot, but the very "best" (most unbelievably potent) pot on the planet in order to get a dose with a 50% chance of killing me. A person with a body mass of 50 kg would still need well over a pound of the very best pot, and would need to smoke it all (or eat it all) so quickly that the body couldn't metabolize it away before it depressed his/her CNS to a lethal degree.

If one directly eats concentrated THC or a product like "butter" that is half THC or better, one "could" ingest a lethal dose, but all in all, THC is slightly safer than caffeine. People die every year from caffeine overdoses, caused not by drinking coffee or tea but by taking large number of caffeine pills, which concentrates it to a far higher level than one can ever manage drinking a naturally caffeinated beverage.

So please -- no, there are not "many" fatalities related to marijuana use. There are pretty much zero fatalities from THC poisoning from marijuana use per se. I suppose there could be a fatality or three from people who chug a pint of melted concentrated marijuana butter, but that isn't marijuana "use", that is specifically ingesting THC as a drug in mind-numbingly stupid quantities, as stupid as downing a bottle of No-Doz to stay awake to study for a test the next day. If you want to argue that there are highway deaths or accidental deaths attributable to marijuana use, that isn't what this study is looking at and has nothing to do with LD50, but again it is difficult to get meaningful statistics (with controls for confounding factors) to support this with actual numbers. For example, in Washington state, which recently legalized pot, there has been a corresponding increase in the percentage of people involved in fatal accidents that have measurable THC in their systems. Specifically, authorities in Washington recorded 436 fatal crashes in 2013, and determined that drivers involved in 40 crashes tested positive for THC, the active chemical in marijuana, according to the study. In 2014 they found that of 462 fatal crashes, 85 drivers tested positive for THC.

BUT, correlation is not causality -- it is reasonable to assume that legal weed is smoked by more people than smoked illegal weed, more frequently, so that the number of people with detectable THC in their systems has increased (THC is detectable weeks after ingestion). The main question is, has the number of traffic fatalities itself increased since legalization, and the delta indicated in this study isn't even a statistically significant change. These numbers completely ignore confounding factors -- such as what percentage of the THC users had blood alcohol levels in excess of the legal limits, what the population of the state has done in the meantime, how the number of registered drivers has changed, changes in the available roadway, and "normal statistical variation" in the number of traffic fatalities. The number itself is nearly meaningless.

With that said, I don't doubt that there are some surplus deaths due to accidents caused by people being too high to drive and driving anyway, or using power tools while high, etc. But even there, pot is almost certainly far safer than alcohol and a long list of prescription or over the counter drugs.

Tobacco is probably really safe by this metric.

Probably, although ER visitors are twice as likely to be smokers as the general population. Correlation v causation, sure, but it's still interesting.

The paper is probably false, with a P value < .05. Sad but true.

You'd need the same number of doctors and nurses in the long run

Yep, and some number of human drivers will also be needed. Heck, we still employ some horse-baggy drivers too. But we'd need drastically fewer doctors — trauma patients represent less than 5% of US care-seekers today, for example — than we have now, which is why my analogy is valid while your responses — meaningless.

For anything more important than a twinkie you need an organized response, i.e. the government.

You don't need just any government, you need a non-representative/authoritarian government (or maybe simply an oligarchy).
A "democratic" government would still not spend the money it takes to develop new antibiotics, because the "people" will find better things to spend spare dimes on. Everyone seems to wonder why non-democratic governments continue to exist, but when resources are scarce and/or unpopular things must be done for survival, governments naturally turn authoritarian (e.g., see Venezuela for a current example).

Let's just hope that our current market based system can figure out how to fund this development because when society collapsed because of lack of antibiotics, the resulting government that rises from the ashes probably won't be anything that anyone will be proud of (likely a military dictatorship operating under emergency powers). Let us hope it will all work out better than the military sponsored anthrax vaccine program...

> Gender is what is in your head, not your genetics, join the 21st century sometime.

If that were the case, gay-reversal therapy would work, as would raising people with gender dysphoria as their biological gender. Join reality: it doesn't work well to ignore biology. It's just that the biology is more subtle than such nonsensical claims acknowledge.

What's "in your head" is often reflected in direct neural structure, and profoundly influenced by neo-natal hormones, which do strongly affect neurology and physiology. There are quite a few good papers about it, including https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p...

how can the study find that post reassignment that trans persons were better off psychologically than the general population? but then it still be true that they commit suicide at a greater rate?
So they are more sane than the average person, but they still commit suicide all the time?

Also, their are studies on both sides. This one showed that they got worse physiological and morbidity results post reassignment, https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/p....

The goal of the project is to be able to restore fertility and endocrine health to young cancer patients

A woman in her 20s gets ovarian cancer and is unable to reproduce ever again, that's bad enough, but there's also the added awfulness of menopause. Osteoporosis, heart disease, a bunch of other shit that cancer survivors really shouldn't have to deal with.

Fourth, tissue engineering like this is really in it's infancy. Successfully duplicating an organ should be exciting to you even if you don't happen to have that organ and you aren't convinced the organ's function is really so important. You like your testicles functional? How about having a non-diabetic pancreas? Odds aren't bad you'll have problems with some organ some day and could benefit from a new one. Lessons learned here won't be strictly confined to ovaries, it makes it more likely an organ you'll want to replace will be possible. Plus, what the fuck? Slashdot is news for nerds who are supposed to like technology. Just because it's wet, squishy, and feminine, we've decided we don't like THIS technology?

Fifth, how much time and money were "wasted" on this? From NIH reporter, it looks like $300,000 was spent specifically on this project. About a third of a single tomahawk missile, like the 60 we used to do fuck all in Syria in a vain attempt to boost Trump's ratings. Or less than three times as much as has been raised to make onesies for fully grown manchildren.

In conclusion, leave questions about science and priorities to the adults.

I don't agree that you need a belt either.

It is not only not needed, it is counterproductive. There is overwhelming evidence that corporal punishment tends to produce kids that have worse behavior, poor impulse control, are more likely to resort to violience, and more likely to end up in prison.

Disclaimer: I have whacked my son a few times, but I am not proud of it. My daughter, never, not once.

That's captured by the unemployment statistics, believe it or not. And those numbers are dropping, which is good.

Cite reference.

People drop out because they retire. A lot of people, especially now with baby boomers retiring. Thus the raw number "how many people are dropping out" is not a useful statisti

You're right, probably not very useful either, unless you can isolate the number that are dropping out because they are frustrated, which brings us to the welfare numbers... This NIH sponsored study clearly shows them going up

A common example is how every other piece of data we have suggests that all racial and economic groups use illegal drugs at similar levels...

[citation needed]

Here's one though: "Little consensus exists regarding the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and substance use."

If you've earned your parents trust enough that they don't feel they have to

This "earning" dignity and don't make me "have" to do this to you is so close to the language of abuse, I'm becoming less surprised teenage suicide is epidemic in America. How many of your children need to off themselves before you will stop blaming the victims for "selfishly" making you feel bad by ending their own lives, and fucking look in the mirror?

It is a country of immature narcissists posing as adults. You seem to have no ability to reflect. You're still hunting witches and inventing ways to burn them.