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I used to believe stuff like that about vitamin D and minimal sun exposure of hands in the winter, which I was taught in grade school. It turns out to be wrong. You may want to do some more research on this topic before making such confident (and incorrect) pronouncements on this topic in the future. See for example: http://gizmodo.com/5823058/tanning-can-cause-cancer-but-not-tanning-could-cause-a-lot-worse

Or from:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2839537
"Sunlight has long been recognized as a major provider of vitamin D for humans; radiation in the UVB (290-315 nm) portion of the solar spectrum photolyzes 7-dehydrocholesterol in the skin to previtamin D3, which, in turn, is converted by a thermal process to vitamin D3. Latitude and season affect both the quantity and quality of solar radiation reaching the earth's surface, especially in the UVB region of the spectrum, but little is known about how these influence the ability of sunlight to synthesize vitamin D3 in skin. A model has been developed to evaluate the effect of seasonal and latitudinal changes on the potential of sunlight to initiate cutaneous production of vitamin D3. Human skin or [3 alpha-3H]7-dehydrocholesterol exposed to sunlight on cloudless days in Boston (42.2 degrees N) from November through February produced no previtamin D3. In Edmonton (52 degrees N) this ineffective winter period extended from October through March. Further south (34 degrees N and 18 degrees N), sunlight effectively photoconverted 7-dehydrocholesterol to previtamin D3 in the middle of winter. These results quantify the dramatic influence of changes in solar UVB radiation on cutaneous vitamin D3 synthesis and indicate the latitudinal increase in the length of the "vitamin D winter" during which dietary supplementation of the vitamin may be advisable."

A fair-skinned person in a skimpy bathing suit under noon-day near-equatorial summer sun can produce on the order of 20,000 IU vitamin D (which self-limits in the skin when from UV) in about twenty minutes. A dark-skinned person will take a couple of hours to reach that level under those conditions. As the above paper suggests, in winter father from the equator, your skin will produce essentially no vitamin D. Reference:
http://www.vitamindcouncil.org/about-us/our-staff0/john-j-cannell-md/

Given the above, the US RDA of about 600 IU D3 per day for an adult of any size is just bad medicine, as is setting a tolerable upper limit of 4000 IU D3 daily (when that "limit" is closer to what the avergae adult needs). That is why you won't get enough vitamin D from food, because the RDA is about 10X too low for most people. A better recommendation:
http://www.grassrootshealth.net/recommendation

With our increasing indoors lifestyle, people became more and more vitamin D deficient -- even living in sunny places like Arizona or Texas. That was made worse by the fear mongering by the dermatology profession (with dermatologists as whole causing on the order of 10X the cancer they prevented plus a host of other health issues like autism with their well-meant but terrible advice).

Studies have shown a link between nutrition and depression. See, as one example:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2738337/
"Few people are aware of the connection between nutrition and depression while they easily understand the connection between nutritional deficiencies and physical illness. Depression is more typically thought of as strictly biochemical-based or emotionally-rooted. On the contrary, nutrition can play a key role in the onset as well as severity and duration of depression. Many of the easily noticeable food patterns that p

What steps has MIT taken to assure that publically funded research is published to the taxpaying public?

All NIH funded research is freely accessible to the public no more than 12 months after private publication. NSF requires something similar-but-different: that the raw data be made available for no more than incremental cost. The same publishers who run the biological journals run the non-bio journals, so similar arrangements could be made, but NSF has not forced it. Of course, the NIH budget is something like 5x the NSF budget (which is, in turn, about 3x DARPA), so the NIH policy means that the great majority of government-funded research must be made available to the public, for free.

Why yes, yes it does.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9539254

So,out of curiosity - do you ask the same question whenever somebody says, "My doctor recommended this treatment for me, and it worked very well," or were you just going for "+5, Smug and Willfully Ignorant"?

No 3 and 3b are not accurate.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16001857

I wish this 'Scientist don't test GMO' nonsense would stop. Seriously, you look like an idiot.

Do you know what isn't tested? non GMO food; even though there is bacteria in the soil which does gene swapping between animals and plants. OMG it all going to END!!!

Did you actually read the link you posted? It clearly indicates that testing was done by Slovenia. I'm not necessarily saying that it IS the end of the world; but I am saying the government organizations in my country that are charged with ensuring food safety have not done any tests - so we don't really know if it's safe or not. At best it is suspicious that Monsanto has not been forthcoming and pushed the government to perform such testing and publish the results. If they had nothing to hide, it would go a long way to free them of their terrible reputation.

In countries where testing has been done, there have been negative results; such as the one leading to the article we are commenting on. Imagine that.

No 3 and 3b are not accurate.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/16001857

I wish this 'Scientist don't test GMO' nonsense would stop. Seriously, you look like an idiot.

Do you know what isn't tested? non GMO food; even though there is bacteria in the soil which does gene swapping between animals and plants. OMG it all going to END!!!

Thanks for pointing that out, I did know about that study, but didn't see that much relevance.

You keep mentioning generational effects of nutrition, so I thought a study about the generational effects of nutrition was rather relevant.

But it does provide more logic for their diet being part of the reason their average life expectancy is not even more abysmally short.

I cannot find any evidence whatsoever that the Inuit have a healthier-than-average life. I can find a bunch of people selling diet products making such claims, but nothing in any journals. I did find a study pointing out how unhealthy they are.

But that extra 10 years you get may just suck in comparison to dieing when your body started to fail you rather then extending it with science (TM).

Yes, it's hard for me to believe that the bed-ridden Walmart whales will have a decent set of "golden years".

There is actually some evidence that what your grandfather ate affects your longevity. For some reason, people who had a starving parent (and grandparent) seem to live longer. It's weird and not fully understood, and it only works when the ancestor was starving just prior to puberty.

So hey, you aren't completely out in left field :)

what happens when pacifism meets aggressive violent people?

We're not talking about the broader scale of one nation attacking another nation here. We're talking about neighborhoods. At the neighborhood level, safe communities very rarely meet aggressive, violent people. Therefore, people living in safe communities rarely feel the need to own firearms for personal protection.

If I were buying a house, I would see high gun ownership in a neighborhood as a very bad sign, because it means that a large percentage of the people live in constant fear for their lives. It is an indicator of insufficient police protection, gang activity, drug activity, or other serious problems. It is not the only indicator (bars on windows are another good one), but it is a good indicator.

But even if that correlation did not exist, a high number of gun owners would still be a red flag. There's a reason we create police forces and military forces. They represent an elite group of people with the proper training and psychological stability to use firearms for the public good. They are actively monitored for psychological problems, they are trained to distinguish friend from foe, and they are trained to store their service weapons properly.

By contrast, out of those registered gun owners, assuming they represent a random sampling of the population, 26.2% will "suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder in any given year." (Source: NIH) Most of them lack any formal training. And their weapons are probably stored in their bedside tables, fully loaded, just waiting to be stolen and used by someone who didn't pass a background check.

So yeah, there's a very real public interest to having that information. That said, I don't agree with the GP that it should be used when deciding who to buy from or other such nonsense. The individual data points are uninteresting (except when you meet someone, conclude that he or she is nuts, and then find out that he or she owns a firearm). It is mostly in aggregate that the information is relevant.

AIUI, carpal tunnel problems can be caused by anything that reduces the space available in the carpal tunnel, including anything that causes any swelling there, or anything that takes up space there. So that includes diabetes, tumours, pregnancy and obesity. Here's a link: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001469/ (and notice that it says that there is no good evidence that repetitive motion causes it). 'Should I use a PowerBall to try avoid/cure RSI' and 'would a PowerBall worsen/improve carpal tunnel syndrome' aren't strongly related questions (because they're different things), so personally in making that decision I'd ignore all the responses about carpal tunnel syndrome.

So are you diagnosing him as having major depression yourself or was he previously diagnosed with the condition? If he were I haven't yet read about it. If he hasn't been do you at least have a masters degree in psychology or a medical degree? Without that surely you don't expect anyone here to take your diagnosis seriously. Major depression often means you can't even get out of bed. That doesn't sound like it was the case here.

He's not. Stillborn does not have a precise meaning.

Mind explaining how "teen pregnancy" has fuck-all to do with health? Keep in mind that 18 and 19 are still part of your teenage years.

I'll field this one. "Infants of adolescent mothers are more likely than infants of older mothers to use a variety of health care services that suggest poorer health. A considerable proportion of this greater use seems to be attributable to specific characteristics of mothers, such as socioeconomic characteristics, rather than to an inability that is common among adolescents to promote infant health or to use health care appropriately."

Emphasis mine.

I really think you could have guessed this if you'd thought about it for just a few seconds.

I agree, the rules for storage is where the US should introduce new legislation ASAP. Make it mandatory to keep your guns locked away, unloaded, and set up a program where for one year the government covers half the cost for anyone buying a gun locker (reasonably priced and conforming to some specification). I'd bet that the total benefit of such a program to society would be larger than the costs in a year or two.

To provide some statistics: this paper found that in the 12 US states with laws regarding safe storage of guns at that time, there were 23% fewer unintentional shooting deaths among children under 15, and this finding was statistically significant.

Was it really the flu they caught, or just a common cold? Most people have no idea of the difference.

People die from the flu. If you have the flu you can get sick, really sick. It is not just the sniffles. You don't necessarily get the flu shot to protect yourself. You get it to protect the weakest around us, the already ill, the old, or the very young. For those getting the flu can be a death sentence. http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/Pages/communityImmunity.aspx

Yes the current vaccines are bit hit or miss, usually a hit though. But on the other hand it is no conspiracy. There are many teams working right now on a universal lifetime influenza vaccination, but it is a damn difficult problem. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Influenza_vaccine#Prospects_for_universal_flu_vaccines

It's less, but not by much.

11.3% for high school rugby

15.3% for high school football

Professional injuries don't bother me nearly as much as the amount of injuries that occur in high school and even earlier. I don't see how you could reasonable argue that either concussion rate is acceptable at all, and the uncertainties in these studies actually overlap.

I'm not sure exactly what the people in this thread are thinking of when they say "mental illness" but about 1 in 4 American adults suffer from a diagnosable mental disorder. Those people are significantly more likely than average to be victims of violence. Very few of them are dangerous. And there's no good reason to believe that mass killings are only committed by mentally ill people.

That's the kind of story I'd like to see a link to, but let's assume it's true.

If your grandmother has a gun in her house, she's more likely to use it to kill herself, or another innocent party, as she is to use it to defend herself.

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/01/02/opinion/at-the-er-bearing-witness-to-gun-violence.html
At the E.R., Bearing Witness to Gun Violence
By DAVID H. NEWMAN
Published: January 1, 2013
I do not know exactly what measures should be taken to reduce gun violence like this. But I know that most homicides and suicides in America are carried out with guns. Research suggests that homes with a gun are two to three times more likely to experience a firearm death than homes without guns, and that members of the household are 18 times more likely to be the victim than intruders.
Emergency rooms are themselves volatile environments, not immune to violence. Over the last decade, a quarter of gun crimes in American E.R.’s were committed with guns wrested from armed guards.

http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/content/160/10/929.long
Guns in the Home and Risk of a Violent Death in the Home: Findings from a National Study
Linda L. Dahlberg, Robin M. Ikeda and Marcie-jo Kresnow
Those persons with guns in the home were at greater risk than those without guns in the home of dying from a homicide in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 1.9, 95% confidence interval: 1.1, 3.4).
The risk of dying from a suicide in the home was greater for males in homes with guns than for males without guns in the home (adjusted odds ratio = 10.4, 95% confidence interval: 5.8, 18.9). regardless of storage practice, type of gun, or number of firearms in the home, having a gun in the home was associated with an increased risk of firearm homicide and firearm suicide in the home.

http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199310073291506
Gun Ownership as a Risk Factor for Homicide in the Home
Arthur L. Kellermann, Frederick P. Rivara, Norman B. Rushforth, Joyce G. Banton, Donald T. Reay, Jerry T. Francisco, Ana B. Locci, Janice Prodzinski, Bela B. Hackman, and Grant Somes
N Engl J Med 1993; 329:1084-1091
October 7, 1993
DOI: 10.1056/NEJM199310073291506
Rather than confer protection, guns kept in the home are associated with an increase in the risk of homicide by a family member or intimate acquaintance.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/3713749
N Engl J Med. 1986 Jun 12;314(24):1557-60.
Protection or peril? An analysis of firearm-related deaths in the home.
Kellermann AL, Reay DT.
Only 2 of these 398 deaths (0.5 percent) involved an intruder shot during attempted entry. Seven persons (1.8 percent) were killed in self-defense. For every case of self-protection homicide involving a firearm kept in the home, there were 1.3 accidental deaths, 4.6 criminal homicides, and 37 suicides involving firearms. Hand-guns were used in 70.5 percent of these deaths.

http://www.annemergmed.com/article/S0196-0644(12)01408-4/abstract
Annals of Emergency Medicine
Volume 60, Issue 6 , Pages 790-798.e1, December 2012
Hospital-Based Shootings in the United States: 2000 to 2011
Gabor D. Kelen, Christina L. Catlett, Joshua G. Kubit, Yu-Hsiang Hsieh
In 23% of shootings within the ED, the weapon was a security officer's gun taken by the perpetrator.

There's a whole lot of mentally ill people in the US.

There are hundreds of millions of guns in the US.

Yet:
1) These mass murders are pretty rare.
2) The bulk of the weapons used in these crimes are handguns (not "assault weapons").
3) The bulk of the weapons used in these mass murders are acquired legally.

Discuss.

Also, compare and contrast - Switzerland's ~50 guns per 100 households, and the US' ~88 guns per 100 household ownership rates, which are much, much higher than most of the rest of Europe's averages, with the great disparity in gun violence rates in the two countries. Perhaps the difference is due to some practical regulations and policies that we could enact here, as well?

You know, rather than shouting about "ban all teh guns all teh timez," why not have a constructive conversation about how to:
1) Sensibly regulate gun ownership;
2) Deliver mental health care to the people who need it;
3) Address the root issue of poverty inherent to many of the gun crimes in the US which contribute heavily to the shockingly high firearm murder rates here?

"What do the facts support ?" is a good question in my opinion; trouble is, we can only depend on studies, and then another question arises : "which study can be trusted ?"
A 2010 Cochrane study warned a bit on the usually highlighted studies found in the press, those being funded by pharmaceutical groups :
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20614424

(Of course, we live in a perfect world and lobbying to have a product sold would be... bad - just imagine if banks or entertainment industries did the same, what an awful world it would be !)

Excerpt of the abstract in the link above :
----
AUTHORS' CONCLUSIONS:

Influenza vaccines have a modest effect in reducing influenza symptoms and working days lost. There is no evidence that they affect complications, such as pneumonia, or transmission.
WARNING: This review includes 15 out of 36 trials funded by industry (four had no funding declaration). An earlier systematic review of 274 influenza vaccine studies published up to 2007 found industry funded studies were published in more prestigious journals and cited more than other studies independently from methodological quality and size. Studies funded from public sources were significantly less likely to report conclusions favorable to the vaccines. The review showed that reliable evidence on influenza vaccines is thin but there is evidence of widespread manipulation of conclusions and spurious notoriety of the studies. The content and conclusions of this review should be interpreted in light of this finding.

People say that you get the "flu" from the flu vaccine because "flu" has become such a generic term for being ill. People say they have the "stomach flu" when they have norovirus or food poisoning of some kind. They say they have a "touch of the flu" when they have a cold. They don't realize that influenza is a specific illness that has a very specific set of symptoms. This is a pet peeve of mine.

Actually you cannot get the flu from many of the modern vaccines, because you do not receive the actual dead/weakened viruses at all. Look up e.g. subunit vaccines http://www.niaid.nih.gov/topics/Flu/Research/vaccineResearch/pages/technologies.aspx

The only thing that I can find that is close to the parents description is this:
http://nihrecord.od.nih.gov/newsletters/2005/03_01_2005/story03.htm

That's what parent is talking about. I have worked in his lab, hadn't heard about stolen credit, however. When that article was written we were still just trying to partially characterize ant/agonist activity for a slew of different peptides. It's not so easy to just make a drug from these molecules, which are hugely massive compared to the drugs you or I take in general.

The only thing that I can find that is close to the parents description is this:
http://nihrecord.od.nih.gov/newsletters/2005/03_01_2005/story03.htm

Not having read TFA, I hope that the summery given is a simplified version of what he meant.

The world is too complex and interdependent for something to be all good (with no drawbacks), or all good (with no benefits), and he seems to be insinuating that GMO foods have no drawbacks, which is just as wrong as saying the have no benefits.

But, other than that, I basically agree with his assessment that we NEED (or will need) it.

The world population is growing too fast for our current food production methods to keep pace with demand forever, and unless we are willing to sit passively by during mass starvation on scales never before seen, wars breaking out over farmland, crops, seeds and food animals, and extinction as local peoples turn to endangered species for food, we will REQUIRE GMO foodstuffs that can mature faster, grow larger, and sustain themselves on less, and/or in different environments.

Otherwise we will outstrip our planet's ability to support us.

We've already stripped the oceans of their most bountiful harvests, and are eating and passing off fish we once called "Junk Fish", as the high-demand fish become scarcer and scarcer.

But we must keep in mind and learn from our experiences with adding new substances and quantities to diets, such as plastics imitating estrogen, and causing population crashes and mutations in animals like frogs, and crocodiles. Also brain diseases like BSD / Scrapie / CJD / Kuru.

BSE (Mad Cow), first appears in 1984 and makes clear that there are dangers to radically changing the long-term diets of animals and humans by introducing substances and quantities of substances that have never before been seen in their diets. In this case, the introduction of massive amounts of proteins from meat (and brains) to replace vegetable sourced proteins in low quality animal feed, deniers point out that cattle have likely eaten meat proteins (via bugs) from time immemorial, though never in the quantities found in modern feed.

Mad Cow (and it's human variant vCJD [not CJD]) came from the well known, and well contained, disease called "Scrapie" (because it caused, among other things, the infected to rub up against things and scrape off their fur) in sheep and goats. The source of the disease was not known, but what WAS known was that it was common in some places, had been known of for at least 250 years, and that the meat AND brains of the Scrapie infected were human edible with no ill effects.

Scrapie remained a rare, species specific, disease that had no effect on predators UNTIL the introduction of industrial farming methods, specifically the use of low quality feed (farming byproducts, rather than valuable crops) that needed it's protean content supplemented by slaughterhouse waste. This introduced the Scrapie Prion into cattle feed, and eventually produced "Mad Cow Disease". But something changed in the transfer of disease from one species to another. It changed from a single species, predator resistant disease, to a food transmissible disease to which predators were not immune. (FSE, the feline version was first discovered in the 1970's, when domestic cats developed it after eating BSE infected cat-food. FSE is also found in captive big cats, thought to have been feed BSE infected meat. As far as we know FSE is unknown in the wild.)

My own theory is that all natural predators have a natural immunity / resistance to "Spongiform Diseases", the prion's of which are found almost exclusively in nerve tissue. This means that catching i

Not having read TFA, I hope that the summery given is a simplified version of what he meant.

The world is too complex and interdependent for something to be all good (with no drawbacks), or all good (with no benefits), and he seems to be insinuating that GMO foods have no drawbacks, which is just as wrong as saying the have no benefits.

But, other than that, I basically agree with his assessment that we NEED (or will need) it.

The world population is growing too fast for our current food production methods to keep pace with demand forever, and unless we are willing to sit passively by during mass starvation on scales never before seen, wars breaking out over farmland, crops, seeds and food animals, and extinction as local peoples turn to endangered species for food, we will REQUIRE GMO foodstuffs that can mature faster, grow larger, and sustain themselves on less, and/or in different environments.

Otherwise we will outstrip our planet's ability to support us.

We've already stripped the oceans of their most bountiful harvests, and are eating and passing off fish we once called "Junk Fish", as the high-demand fish become scarcer and scarcer.

But we must keep in mind and learn from our experiences with adding new substances and quantities to diets, such as plastics imitating estrogen, and causing population crashes and mutations in animals like frogs, and crocodiles. Also brain diseases like BSD / Scrapie / CJD / Kuru.

BSE (Mad Cow), first appears in 1984 and makes clear that there are dangers to radically changing the long-term diets of animals and humans by introducing substances and quantities of substances that have never before been seen in their diets. In this case, the introduction of massive amounts of proteins from meat (and brains) to replace vegetable sourced proteins in low quality animal feed, deniers point out that cattle have likely eaten meat proteins (via bugs) from time immemorial, though never in the quantities found in modern feed.

Mad Cow (and it's human variant vCJD [not CJD]) came from the well known, and well contained, disease called "Scrapie" (because it caused, among other things, the infected to rub up against things and scrape off their fur) in sheep and goats. The source of the disease was not known, but what WAS known was that it was common in some places, had been known of for at least 250 years, and that the meat AND brains of the Scrapie infected were human edible with no ill effects.

Scrapie remained a rare, species specific, disease that had no effect on predators UNTIL the introduction of industrial farming methods, specifically the use of low quality feed (farming byproducts, rather than valuable crops) that needed it's protean content supplemented by slaughterhouse waste. This introduced the Scrapie Prion into cattle feed, and eventually produced "Mad Cow Disease". But something changed in the transfer of disease from one species to another. It changed from a single species, predator resistant disease, to a food transmissible disease to which predators were not immune. (FSE, the feline version was first discovered in the 1970's, when domestic cats developed it after eating BSE infected cat-food. FSE is also found in captive big cats, thought to have been feed BSE infected meat. As far as we know FSE is unknown in the wild.)

My own theory is that all natural predators have a natural immunity / resistance to "Spongiform Diseases", the prion's of which are found almost exclusively in nerve tissue. This means that catching i

I believe Folding@Home is a seperate standalone project, so it's all or nothing. In addition, there are a LOT of protein folding projects. I'd really like to see them work together - or explain why they are different.

Not only are there a lot of projects like this, most of them - whatever their intrinsic scientific merit - have very little direct application to fighting disease. Sure, the people directing the projects like to claim that they're medically relevant, but this is largely because the NIH is the major source of funding. It's also really difficult to explain the motivations for such projects to a general audience without resorting to gross oversimplifications. (This isn't a criticism of protein folding specifically, it's all biomedical basic research that has these problems.) My guess is that it will take decades for most of the insights gleaned from these studies to filter down to a clinical setting.

The project that is arguably more relevant to disease is Rosetta@Home, but that's because of the protein design aspect, not the structure prediction. (In fact, Rosetta doesn't even do "protein folding" in the sense that Folding@Home does - it is a predictive tool, not a simulation engine like Folding@Home.)

Someone please mod this up, as a researcher in the same field as F@H I can attest this is all quite correct.

First, I should preface this by saying I've interacted with several of the F@H folks professionally and they do excellent work. And that the NIH is under no pretenses when it funds this work that cures will magically pop out tomorrow - they think of it as a seed investment for a decade or two in the future. In terms of tax dollars spent, it's a good investment considering many biomedical labs spend more just keeping their mice alive every year than all the F@H lab's salaries combined (especially since the computing time is donated by volunteers).

That said, I've always been disappointed that they do not use their unique standing with the public enthusiast computing community to educate and provide the context of what is it they are actually doing and how it is unique among the literally hundreds of other similar protein folding research groups out there. I don't think it's hypocritical to claim basic research can have real world impact on real-world problems, but providing the proper context for an individual researcher's findings is sadly often at odds with their PR goals (in this case, convincing people to donate cycles to F@H and not to other similar projects). But so goes all of biomedical research, as the poster shrewdly notes, despite this being taxpayer funded research performed largely at non-profit, educational institutions.

FYI, federal grants are public record and you can search them to see brief descriptions of current funded research to get at least an idea of how much larger the field is than any one research group. Try one of the links below with the search term "protein folding" if you want a sense of how big this field truly is (and note that it does actually include projects run by actual doctors seeing actual patients). Considering the overall research budget is comprised of less than 2 cents from every tax dollar collected, it's not a bad ROI (obviously I'm biased as a federally funded researcher myself).

http://projectreporter.nih.gov/reporter.cfm
http://www.nsf.gov/funding/

[citation needed]

[1] [2] [3] [4] [4]

Cathelicin-AM is an antimicrobial peptide not an antibody.

I just skimmed the paper (abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22101189), but it seems that the group was the first to find out that pandas produce this type of antimicrobial peptide (they are produced by other mammals and it seems that the sequence is similar to that of dogs). The peptide seems to be effective against multiple types of bacteria (Gram positive and Gram negative) and a couple strains of fungi. The researchers only tested the peptide in vitro, so it probably isn't known if purified peptide will be effective in vivo (they reported that it showed little lysis of human red blood cells though).

TL/DR: Don't pressure your doctor into giving you panda blood when you get sick.

doesn't matter if it works perfectly in vivo, it's not good for humans - anaphylactic shock. so basically this peptide is good for pandas and nobody else.
though the peptide could give good leads for organic chemists to design small molecule drugs which then go through clinicals, etc. etc. etc.
interesting story, but likely not very useful other than for an excuse to post a story about pandas.

The summary and medicaldaily article are fairly horrid, so here is the abstract of the research article. The full article is also available for those who have access.

Misstatements of the posted summary/article,
1) Discovery is of a new antibiotic (an antimicrobial peptide), not antibody.
2) Statement in the article: "They cause much less drug resistance of microbes than conventional antibiotics.", referring to antimicrobial peptides is a ridiculous statement not substantiated by anything.
3) The "kinetics" of the antimicrobial activity, as published, is not particularly useful for determining efficacy in the clinic. Since the drug they compared against, clindamycin, is completely different in every way from their peptide, it doesn't really say anything at all. They probably screened a number of antibiotics for this "test" and cherry-picked this result to highlight their find.
4) Use of the term "conventional antibiotic" is misleading. This is a new member of a class of antibiotics (antimicrobial peptides) that are relative newcomers to the field, but is otherwise just another antibiotic. It is not a new mechanism of action, biosynthetic origin, class of molecule, or anything like that. In other words, it is about as conventional as they come, but perhaps useful because we do and will continue to need new antibiotics.

For anybody who is interested, here is an open access article on the subject of newly discovered mammalian antimicrobial peptides as potential new antibiotics.

Most of all, though - this isn't especially new or restricted to Pandas. Peptide cathelicidins are apparently found in every species they've been looked for, including at least some plants. See http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/mesh/68054804/ for a summary search on this.

It remains to be seen if this is a particularly potent member of the general class or just another more or less interesting data point.

Cathelicin-AM is an antimicrobial peptide not an antibody.

I just skimmed the paper (abstract: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22101189), but it seems that the group was the first to find out that pandas produce this type of antimicrobial peptide (they are produced by other mammals and it seems that the sequence is similar to that of dogs). The peptide seems to be effective against multiple types of bacteria (Gram positive and Gram negative) and a couple strains of fungi. The researchers only tested the peptide in vitro, so it probably isn't known if purified peptide will be effective in vivo (they reported that it showed little lysis of human red blood cells though).

TL/DR: Don't pressure your doctor into giving you panda blood when you get sick.

Oops, I think I quoted the wrong study, should have been this one.

METHODS: Ninty-five patients were investigated on erectile function by questionnaire before and after circumcision, respectively.

RESULTS: Eighteen patients suffered from mild erectile dysfunction before circumcision, and 28 suffered from mild or moderate erectile dysfunction after circumcision (P = 0.001). Adult circumcision appeared to have resulted in weakened erectile confidence in 33 cases (P = 0.04), difficult insertion in 41 cases (P = 0.03), prolonged intercourse in 31 cases (P = 0.04) and improved satisfaction in 34 cases (P = 0.04).

CONCLUSIONS: Adult circumcision has certain effect on erectile function, to which more importance should be attached.

The NIH says you're wrong: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=fluorescent%20light

Care to provide any proof?

You are vastly underestimating the prevalence of marijuana use. Check this survey out. 36 percent of high school seniors report having smoked marijuana in the past year, 23 percent in the past month, and 6.5 percent are daily users. These *are* the kids that are taking AP Calc and gunning for the Ivy League.

You are correct that disadvantaged or troubled kids are statistically more likely to be using drugs, but everything you say after "socieconomic red flag" in your original post is so wildy off base it almost seems like you're trolling. Very successful people are regular marijuana users, most of those people started in their teens, and they are not in any way statistical outliers. The idea that a teenager smoking marijuana implies that they had poor parents or are on the verge of failing out of school is absurd.

Bogjobber, you're misrepresenting what I said. I never said that "a teenager smoking marijuana implies X, Y, and Z". I agree that such a statement would be absurd. What I said was much more limited and cautious: "Teenagers who use drugs/alcohol *regularly* at an *early age* are statistically more likely to be disadvantaged or troubled to begin with, and more likely to have brushes with the mental health system". Do you really take issue with that statement?

A study in 2005 confirmed the previously discovered link between increased rates of psychosis-related mental disorders and cannabis use in the general population, but went on to show through statistical analysis of data from The Netherlands that this link was greatly increased by a genetic pre-disposition to suffering from those same mental disorders, and that the actual increase in mental disorders that could be attributed to cannabis use was much lower than previously feared, 1.5-2.5% overall IIRC*.

Link to study: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC539839/

It was briefly talked about in the UK on Radio 4 (gotta love the BBC) but it was greatly under-reported compared to the previous news there was a link between psychosis and cannabis use. There was also some criticism of the study from both sides of the argument - in my experience that's pretty cast-iron proof that it was a truely neutral study, a pretty rare and precious thing given how devisive this issue is.

(*There was an article comparing the 2005 study with the previous study that came up with the cannabis-psychosis link on the BBC website, it went into quite a lot of depth on the numbers and used the conclusions from the 2005 study to analyse the UK's mental illness numbers to debunk the idea that there was about to be a big jump in the psychosis numbers because of very strong "super-skunk" strains hitting the streets. Instead it showed that the rise in figures had already happened and that rates had flattened off a year previously, the same as The Netherlands. Unfortunately, I can't find that ****ing page now!)

You are vastly underestimating the prevalence of marijuana use. Check this survey out. 36 percent of high school seniors report having smoked marijuana in the past year, 23 percent in the past month, and 6.5 percent are daily users. These *are* the kids that are taking AP Calc and gunning for the Ivy League.

You are correct that disadvantaged or troubled kids are statistically more likely to be using drugs, but everything you say after "socieconomic red flag" in your original post is so wildy off base it almost seems like you're trolling. Very successful people are regular marijuana users, most of those people started in their teens, and they are not in any way statistical outliers. The idea that a teenager smoking marijuana implies that they had poor parents or are on the verge of failing out of school is absurd.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1253627/

I cite the NIH who says that in the case of Cannabis you are mistaken. It causes neurogenesis. You literally are less intelligent for not having used it.

How the random anecdotal evidence of a poster gets modded up I have no idea.

http://norml.org/component/zoo/category/cannabis-and-the-brain-a-user-s-guide

Perhaps he is referring to the fact that smoking cannabis and then stopping causes neurogenesis and thus an literal increase in mental capacity?

Ah but wait. That is NORML the hippy pot smoker site (nevermind the couple dozen independent sources cited correctly) so maybe we should see what the NIH says about it http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1253627/. Yup, turns out the moron burnout you knew growing up was a moron to begin with and avoiding reality by staying baked out of his mind because Cannabis actually increases brainpower rather than decreasing it.

I'll just leave this here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schizophrenia_and_smoking

I'll just leave this here:

Variants in the 15q25 gene cluster are associated with risk for schizophrenia and bipolar disorder.

Variants in the 15q25 gene cluster are associated with risk for schizophrenia/bipolar illness, negative symptoms of schizophrenia, and influence CHRNA5 expression in the brain and peripheral blood mononuclear cells. These results are consistent with the notion that there are genetic mechanisms common to schizophrenia, ND [Nicotine Dependence], and bipolar disorder.

There have been other studies of cannabis and psychoses prior to this study too.

Epigenetic Mediation of Environmental Influences in Major Psychotic Disorders (From the Netherlands and UK)

Over recent years, evidence from epidemiological studies and meta-analyses has established cannabis as a clear risk factor for later psychotic symptoms or psychotic disorder. Interestingly, the age (or developmental stage) at which individuals start using cannabis influences this association. Further evidence suggests that cannabis use is also associated with a decreased age of onset of psychotic disorder and that gene-environment interactions are likely implicated in the association between cannabis and psychosis. For example, a longitudinal study by Caspi et al showed that cannabis use increased the risk for developing psychotic symptoms and schizophreniform disorder only in carriers with the valine158 allele in the gene encoding COMT. The primary psychoactive component of cannabis is 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which is thought to exert its psychological effects via the disruption of normal cannabis-1 receptor–mediated signaling in the brain. Administration of THC or cannabis elicits long-term molecular and cellular changes in the brains of mice and humans. In animals, cannabis had prolonged impact on electrophysiological and biochemical measures of neuronal signaling in brain structures such as the nucleus accumbens and hippocampus, with differential effects depending upon duration of exposure and timing during development. The underlying mechanisms mediating these prolonged effects have, however, remained elusive. It is tempting to suggest a role for epigenetic factors herein, especially given the recent observation that THC induces expression of histone deacetylase 3.

"The connection has been known"
Citation needed, becasue I have read some of the best studies and there is no obvious connection.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2910149/

"it is reason it is forbidden in the first place"
no. It was forbidden becasue lies were spread about it and ignorant parents became scared and politicians just outlawed it instead of getting actual data and presenting it to the public.
It was outlaws do to perception of an issue.

"main reason doctors still recommend not to legalize it completely"
Repeat after me:
Doctors aren't scientists
Doctors aren't scientists
Doctors aren't scientists

The only reoccurring issue in studies is poor schooling facilities. .. and while reoccurring, better studies should be done.
My vested interest is in good data.

"is probably not the best thing for a developing brain"
speculation.
" It's also a socioeconomic red flag "
nope. But please, constinue with your wild ass statemnets based from 1950.

" these kids came from the wrong side of the tracks"
define wrong side of the tracks.

" they've had crappy and neglectful parenting"
Based on.. what? Oh right, the do pot therefore they were neglected and drop outs.

WTF?seriously, did you just crawl out of a rock from 1950? You sound like an episode of Batman.
"You can't blame them Robin, there parents are divorced, so there is no hope for them."

The other thing they have in common is that they are from a place were it's more socially acceptable to smoke pot.

Have you been reading the lies being spread from CALM?

Studies in the use of Marijuana have a tendency to support whatever the researcher was looking for. See Selection Bias.

Here is one of the best reviews of the literature to day:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2910149/

"So it's not especially surprising or interesting "
yes, it's not surprising your wrong assumption meet your conclusion.

I've heard of US prohibition. My understanding of it is a little different to yours, though.

If you really think you can prevent the flow of firearms to people who really really want them, you're seriously delusional.

No law is 100% successful, but that doesn't make the law a failure or mean that it shouldn't still be a law. Or are you so delusional as to think that because rape still happens it should be repealed?

Of course you can't search everyone all the time so see if they're carrying a gun, I never said you could so you can stop with the straw man. Every other country in the world seems to have no problem enforcing gun laws, I'm not sure why it's such a big problem for the US.

    Amikacin. Ask for it by name. :)

Antimicrob Agents Chemother. 1982 December; 22(6): 985-989

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC185706/

and ... more information here.

I'm not sure what more I can provide.

If you'd prefer, you can do what most people do, and check Wikipedia. It's even referenced in there, with more citations.

Paedophiles like looking at pictures of children and even babies being raped - but don't tell me, it "doesn't mean they'd like to make it real"... LOL. Idiot.

Your laughable comparison to watching a film is beyond contempt, is that your best argument? Nobody watches a James Bond film because they want to BE James Bond, it's just interesting and enjoyable to watch it.

You just contradicted yourself.

Anyway, the evidence is that porn doesn't lead to non-consensual sex:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/2032762
http://reason.com/archives/2007/11/05/is-pornography-a-catalyst-of-s

Sorry, but the person you replied to doesn't seem to be an idiot. Just more informed, less reactionary, more considered.

Actually, natural plants often have higher levels of toxins than cultivated ones but you can easily select for nasty genes with genetic engineering. Nature's chemicals and synthetic chemicals: Comparative toxicology*

Two examples from the paper:

A new potato cultivar had to be withdrawn from the market because of its acute toxicity to humans-a consequence of higher levels of two natural toxins, solanine and chaconine.

Also cassava root, a major food crop in Africa and South America, is quite resistant to pests and disease; however,it contains cyanide at such high levels that only a laborious process of washing, grinding, fermenting, and heating can make it edible.

If mentioning fibromyalgia is a good indicator that you're reading trash, I guess all of these publications should be thrown out, too.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed?term=fibromyalgia

The human body contains trillions of microorganisms — outnumbering human cells by 10 to 1. Because of their small size, however, microorganisms make up only about 1 to 3 percent of the body's mass (in a 200-pound adult, that’s 2 to 6 pounds of bacteria), but play a vital role in human health.

The NIH is just starting to go there. It may well flip our understanding of how a number of disease processes unfold.

Researchers found, for example, that nearly everyone routinely carries pathogens, microorganisms known to cause illnesses. In healthy individuals, however, pathogens cause no disease; they simply coexist with their host and the rest of the human microbiome, the collection of all microorganisms living in the human body. Researchers must now figure out why some pathogens turn deadly and under what conditions, likely revising current concepts of how microorganisms cause disease.

Clearly the microbiota are biologically active - they produce, metabolize and secrete chemicals that interact with the human body. Not surprising that understanding that may help us understand the function and non function of ourselves.

In a sense, this isn't news. We've always known than humans are full of shit.

Is NIH standing for "Not Invented Here?"

Your right on all your points, I was mislead by another article to believe that for CDI it was a specificaly endorsed treatment.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3365524/ (states that its not the norm, but is effective)

Here is a study saying its a very effective treatment and people in the medical field are looking into it.

http://www.gastrojournal.org/article/S0016-5085(11)01634-9/abstract

I am not a doctor, or medical professional. I cant source the original article that lead me to believe it was the norm, but appearently its not. Thanks for the informative response.

The human body contains trillions of microorganisms — outnumbering human cells by 10 to 1. Because of their small size, however, microorganisms make up only about 1 to 3 percent of the body's mass (in a 200-pound adult, that’s 2 to 6 pounds of bacteria), but play a vital role in human health.

The NIH is just starting to go there. It may well flip our understanding of how a number of disease processes unfold.

Researchers found, for example, that nearly everyone routinely carries pathogens, microorganisms known to cause illnesses. In healthy individuals, however, pathogens cause no disease; they simply coexist with their host and the rest of the human microbiome, the collection of all microorganisms living in the human body. Researchers must now figure out why some pathogens turn deadly and under what conditions, likely revising current concepts of how microorganisms cause disease.

Clearly the microbiota are biologically active - they produce, metabolize and secrete chemicals that interact with the human body. Not surprising that understanding that may help us understand the function and non function of ourselves.

In a sense, this isn't news. We've always known than humans are full of shit.

The human body contains trillions of microorganisms — outnumbering human cells by 10 to 1. Because of their small size, however, microorganisms make up only about 1 to 3 percent of the body's mass (in a 200-pound adult, that’s 2 to 6 pounds of bacteria), but play a vital role in human health.

http://www.nih.gov/news/health/jun2012/nhgri-13.htm

We are quite litterly crawling with bacteria and other shit. Their very critical to our health.

Now what is scary is we have GMO companies that want to produce cows that produce milk with GMO bacteria for us to be their perfect little labratories...