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Speaking of lobotomy, in the fifties there was a "lobotomy fever" in the USA, thousands of men, women and children had their frontal lobes severed in an outpatient operation. Until the fifties it was still normal to sterilize undesirables - again in the good old USA. And it really hasn't been that long since mainstream physicians prescribed Camels and mercury pills. Even today you're likely to have a dentist try to lodge mercury amalgam in your mouth if you go in for a filling. Some of them still think fluoride is good for you too. Mine gave out fluoride pills when I was a kid, we didn't know better back then but soon learned about dental fluorosis.

Given the spotty history of American medicine I guess you can expect a bit of reticence from people who have been bombed back into the stone age by American bombs and munitions - either in American hands or by American-sponsored terrorists. Maybe it's understandable they'd have a few reservations about being jabbed for a vanishing disease.

The reasonable question I would ask is "What is the complete impact of stricter gun laws on crime."

Glad to oblige! Here's a scientific study done by the Australian government to determine the result of the crackdown on firearms possession post-Port Arthur massacre. It's got numbers in it, and the statistical determination is all well laid out for you.

  http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704353/

Hey, I did a bit more research, and you are talking out of your ass.

Check this out: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2704353/

In 1996, Australia banned semi-automatic and pump-action long rifles and shotguns. In the 18 years before the ban, there were 13 mass killings. In the 10 years since, zero. The firearm homicide rate dropped, as did the non-firearm homicide rate. (Check out figure 1.) There's other fun finding also, but I'll leave them for you to find.

I don't know whether "suggesting" the (ab)use of illegal drugs is illegal in some country, so I just link to the US National Center for Biotechnology Information.

http://gcnaturalfamilyhealth.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/04/msg-rat.jpg http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/493287

That's an interesting story, but one not supported by facts.

Not intractable, just really fucking hard:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20460129
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21566186

Not intractable, just really fucking hard:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20460129
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21566186

Targeting a single DNA segment is unlikely to work in most cases if the cancer has reached stage IV. The problem is the mutation rate in most cancers especially if the oncogene wasn't specifically inherited is scary high ( http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19931353 ) .. cancers contain cells with not just SNP mutations but all kinds of copy variants .. frame shifts etc.. To get a high confidence of eradicating the tumor .. honestly after looking at the myriad of different mutations and amount of cell to cell variation in a tumor .. my calculation is (and I hope I am off by an order of magnitude) you would need to target about ~30 different areas with simultaneous combination therapy. And then ur going to need mad FDA rule changes to allow small scale rapid clinical trial on a primate to test for safety issues.

Speaking of human adventurousness: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/17345165

Your reference for potatoes shows a pretty high number for "dietary fiber"--resistant starch is effectively dietary fiber, but it's present between 4% and 23% in potatoes, and the 23% number is reachable by boiling and then freezing and then re-heating--and then vitamin C (in damn near everything), a little protein, and a small amount of iron and calcium.

And here I assumed Hostess cupcakes were made out of wheat... they're about on par, with more fat, less carbs, and half the calories, about equal nutritionally and less bad for you than a potato. The Dr. P. still has less sugar.

Can try This([24]), useful information summarized on Wikipedia, to cover increased uptake with glucose:

Studies show the greatest absorption rate occurs when glucose and fructose are administered in equal quantities.[24] When fructose is ingested as part of the disaccharide sucrose, absorption capacity is much higher because fructose exists in a 1:1 ratio with glucose. It appears that the GLUT5 transfer rate may be saturated at low levels, and absorption is increased through joint absorption with glucose.[25].

According to USDA, fruits and vegetables tend to contain as much or more fructose than glucose; thus an argument that humans are not supposed to consume fructose (or sucrose) is essentially an argument for a primarily carnivore diet. However, the GLUT5 transporter carries fructose primarily, and the GLUT2 carries both glucose and fructose, so it seems unlikely that human diet ever really excluded fructose much. Honestly humans will eat fruit and vegetables--it doesn't run away.

Fructose metabolism is affected by insulin, but fructose consumption doesn't cause an insulin reaction. Glucose consumption does. Consuming fructose with glucose changes (improves) the metabolism. This is sensible, evolutionarily, because fructose is supposed to be present with glucose; apples have twice as much (67% fructose to 33% glucose), but most everything else is 1:1 or 1:3 or 0.9:1 or so. Not so much an advantage that should have developed, but rather just not a detriment and so the discovery that fructose is easier to absorb and process in the presence of glucose isn't inherently offensive to the senses, since it just wouldn't present a problem usually unless 80% of your diet is apples.

In any case, 85% fructose HFCS isn't natural or easy on the system. 55% is less offensive. A 50-50 mix is better. Agave nectar is psychotic. Sucrose is odd because it's actually absorbed directly into the blood stream and goes to the pancreas (unless inverted by acid and heat), whereas starch is broken down by enzymes in saliva and stomach.

By the by, glucose is poisonous. You don't want to dump that much straight sugar into your blood stream; fructose going to the liver is probably a good buffer technique. That is, however, conjecture more intended to stimulate thought.

You missed the intermediary stages: Fructose consumption as a risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

Good resource.

Even if true, your advice was patently dangerous: "Those toxic chemicals will go away if you bike to work every day."

Don't eat like crap and expect a daily bike ride to take care of all associated problems. Exercise, skip all the added sugar, and eat wholesome food. That's the best bet if you are concerned about living long and healthy.

The impact of a moderate but reasonable amount of physical activity is bigger than the impact of cutting 40 ounces per day of Dr. Pepper out of your diet. The impact of high-intensity exercise--jogging, bicycling, whatnot--for half an hour a day will completely eliminate the impacts of 40 ounces per day of Dr. Pepper. Food in general contains generally recognized as safe levels of anything it does contain, including preservatives that by nature are toxic to cellular activity--those toxins are diluted when consumed, after all.

If you cut all that crap out, great, you'll be healthier; you'll still be a sickly little lump of shit, falling apart before you're even 50, with just about no physical activity. If you keep all that crap but stay reasonably active, you'll be a LOT healthier--these are people who one day get sick, become bedridden, then die a couple weeks later. So many people these days become sick over decades, culminating in a couple years or more where they're barely functional because their bodies are falling apart--people who eat healthy, who consume real fruit and whole wheat and avoid all that added sugar and evil carbonated water. The only way to eliminate that is physical activity; the impact is large.

People focus too much on diet. Diet is lazy, it's people thinking if they don't do something--don't eat certain foods, eat other foods instead--that it'll cure their ails. That's work insomuch as quitting smoking is work--an addiction to sugary, greasy foods, but not much else to talk about. People think a gastric bypass makes them healthy; it just makes them thinner.

This is coming from someone who took up bicycling to work because it took 45 minutes and a car commute took 42 minutes. An hour and a half a day, quite a lot. My food intake increased. In the morning I started eating bacon, eggs, baked beans, mushrooms (shiitake and portabello), baked beans, toast, biscuits, bludwurst, a half a tomato, all fried in a mix of butter and lard. I ate donuts when I felt like it too. Came home and ate a whole cornish hen stuffed with an entire box of stovetop stuffing...well, no, that took me 2 days to eat, so I ate half of that. Oh, with some spinach sauteed in butter (surprisingly good, and I hate vegetables--green ones, at least; there's so much else out there... red japanese sweet potatoes for example).

I lost about 10 pounds, started building muscle and losing consolidated fat. My fat stores migrated into the muscle cells themselves for quicker access. I stopped losing so much body temperature in the cold (I'd wear 2 coats and read a core temperature below 94F in the winter, which is below hypothermic). Even with an increased intake of loads of crap, I became a lot healthier. It was easier to wake up in the morning, easier to sleep, easier to stay awake--I felt like I had energy all the time. More focus, easier to think, better reflexes, everything. The machine was actually working.

This is, surprisingly, normal. Sedentary lifestyle is a bane. Nasty toxic food isn't good for you, but living on the couch is just a slow death and no magic diet is going to make you healthy that way. It's like eating whole wheat: you're not eliminating the bad stuff so much as you're taking in less bad.

The byproducts of Fructose metabolism are, unsurprisingly, carbon dioxide and water.

You missed the intermediary stages: Fructose consumption as a risk factor for non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

there's always a small amount that is easily tolerated and is removed eventually, and speeding up that process simply means you can handle that much more.

Even if true, your advice was patently dangerous: "Those toxic chemicals will go away if you bike to work every day."

Don't eat like crap and expect a daily bike ride to take care of all associated problems. Exercise, skip all the added sugar, and eat wholesome food. That's the best bet if you are concerned about living long and healthy.

Rugby tackling is much more head friendly. The ball carrier drops the ball almost immediately upon being touched by the defender.

Only if he wants to lose possesion and give it to the other team (which he does not). The aim is actually hold on to the ball when you are tackled then give it to one of your team mates behind you so they can try and score. Ideally you storm though tackle and keep running if you can by not going to ground.

By the way though, many rugby players do wear head protection that consists of a bit of padding designed to limit head trauma. Also, this study seems to indicate that a good concussion is just as common in a game of rugby: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC155428/

If we want information on such minor questions as "how often repeated?", "Just how hard?", "Are the effects merely additive, or does one hit make the next more dangerous?", "Are hits with no clinicially observable effects safe or do they add up?".

It has never been news that hits hard enough to produce immediate, observable, effects are a bad plan. That hits with no effect, or from which you appear to recover, are a very serious risk for degeneration in the mid to long term? That isn't immediately obvious.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2754260/

They started with tackling lab rats. Repeated insults to the brain were helped with mild hypothermia. Clinical trials followed.

I don't think it's enough to cause problems, but you do get mercury from your fillings.

You're correct that methyl mercury (from fish) and elemental mercury (from amalgam) differ a lot in their toxicity to the body.

See these references:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9391753

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

Yes.

Google is your friend:

http://www.nlm.nih.gov/medlineplus/ency/article/002395.htm

http://www.bbc.co.uk/health/physical_health/conditions/motherbabyinfections2.shtml

--PM

But I am kind of confused here. So if I don't get my kid vaccinated, and you do. What risk is there to your kids? Just saying...

According to this study, http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/15353533, only approximately 99.4% of those vaccinated against smallpox actually have the vaccine "take". That means if my child is vaccinated, yours isn't and mine gets an unlucky d1000 roll, he could catch smallpox from your child WHEN your child gets smallpox.

They remove anything that can identify you before they share it. The aggregate is what everyone wants to see. That is how they would get around anything short of being expressly forbidden to do anything at all with the data.

Wrong. NIH has posted a guide to all the privacy protection exemptions written into HIPAA for researchers, doctors and databanks http://privacyruleandresearch.nih.gov/research_repositories.asp

Who would have thought that "tissue banks" do NOT have to comply with HIPAA?

I remember when several bread makers quit using preservatives over some FUD or other. It benefited the entire bread supply chain since the bread would spoil faster. I think most have started using them again.

I'd like to know if that destroys C. botulinum spores. (botulism)
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001624/

I'm starting to grow and can food again due to cost. If that could help reduce or maintain food costs it would be welcome.

My friend, ham is not only a disease, but two diseases—a serious neurological condition caused by a tropical virus, and this other thing that Google tells me is 100% real. It is perhaps notable that neither can currently be cured.

No, you are confusing it with the Caduceus (which is itself confused with the Rod of Asclepius). The double-helix is stacked/offset, not intertwined.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caduceus
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_of_Asclepius
http://ghr.nlm.nih.gov/handbook/illustrations/dnastructure.jpg

Actually, "wheat allergy" is very real. It's called celiac disease and it's an auto-immune disorder. It's related to the gluten proteins found in common grains such as wheat. I have it and I can tell you that it's a very painful and unpleasant experience after I have been "glutened." http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001280/

(Not that it's important to the discussion, but humans are less efficient at converting starch to usable energy than herbivores; and we cannot use cellulose at all)

Well, you brought it up not me. I'm just wondering what leads you to believe this. In humans, starch is converted to glucose by amylase and then used in aerobic respiration. What would be more efficient than that?

And humans actually can digest cellulose and even lignin directly to some extent http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/8719737 But the usual means is to use a symbiote like a rabbit or cow.

The focus would be way off though (always at close to infinity, no matter how close the surrounding really is). I can't even guess at what that does to your brain when you're using it for more than a few minutes.

The Google glasses don't have this issue, but they do have the problem that you have to switch focus to look at the overlay, which is probably pretty uncomfortable as well.

Finally, a case where technology will favor the middle-aged over the young. Our eyes have already lost most of their ability to adjust focus, so we should no longer suffer ill effects from vergence-accommodation conflict.

True, but corn is pretty much "the" go-to crop these days, as corn is in everything.

Other studies have also been conducted:

Soybeans don't get much of a boost.

Other studies talk about "crop yields" in the abstracts but I didn't bother to go into the full text to see which crops, as the problem generally seems to be with C4 based photosynthesis, which is used by most (all?) grains, already being saturated by standard atmospheric CO2 levels.

Now, we could wind up with different arable lands farther north, with longer growing seasons, but the hope of greater yields simply because "plants like CO2" does not jive with experimental results. If more extreme weather develops (more CO2 forcing more warming, forcing more water vapor into the air, storm systems fueled by warm wet air occurring more vigorously and more frequently) then the result could be topsoil erosion, reducing nutrient and water retention in farm lands, reducing crop yields. How these two effects balance out remains to be seen, but more crops simply because more CO2 definitely doesn't work.

We don't know the exact results of global warming, and I sure don't know the best course of action to deal with it, but we always have to make sure we're basing decisions on observable and measurable facts.

Gotcha, I think we can clear this up.

You are confusing two very different things:

a) Plants eat up all the excess CO2 we put in the environment. I'm not claiming this.

Agreed, otherwise we wouldn't be talking about global warming from CO2 emissions, we'd be trying to figure out how to stop all those mutant plants from overrunning our coal plants.

b) Plantes given lots of CO2 will grow faster and thus farming will be more productive. I am claiming this.

In the case of a farm: water is plentiful, plants aren't competing and the soil is fertilized so I don't see how the greenhouse variables don't apply.

It's a good hypothesis, but it is not born out by studies.

The abstract:

While increasing temperatures and altered soil moisture arising from climate change in the next 50 years are projected to decrease yield of food crops, elevated CO2 concentration ([CO2]) is predicted to enhance yield and offset these detrimental factors. However, C4 photosynthesis is usually saturated at current [CO2] and theoretically should not be stimulated under elevated [CO2]. Nevertheless, some controlled environment studies have reported direct stimulation of C4 photosynthesis and productivity, as well as physiological acclimation, under elevated [CO2]. To test if these effects occur in the open air and within the Corn Belt, maize (Zea mays) was grown in ambient [CO2] (376 mol mol1) and elevated [CO2] (550 mol mol1) using Free-Air Concentration Enrichment technology. The 2004 season had ideal growing conditions in which the crop did not experience water stress. In the absence of water stress, growth at elevated [CO2] did not stimulate photosynthesis, biomass, or yield. Nor was there any CO2 effect on the activity of key photosynthetic enzymes, or metabolic markers of carbon and nitrogen status. Stomatal conductance was lower (34%) and soil moisture was higher (up to 31%), consistent with reduced crop water use. The results provide unique field evidence that photosynthesis and production of maize may be unaffected by rising [CO2] in the absence of drought. This suggests that rising [CO2] may not provide the full dividend to North American maize production anticipated in projections of future global food supply.

So, good idea, and other smart people had the same idea, but it's a no go when actually tested. Increased atmospheric CO2 does not increase crop yields.

The question if water keeps some memory is something different. As everyone who works in that area knows: yes it does.

The proposed mechanism of "water memory" is that the hydrogen bonds between molecules impose some sort of small scale order reflecting the "shape" of the remedies molecules. Please explain how something that has only been exhibited to last for fractions of a nanosecond persists for the minutes or hours or days or weeks between creation of the homeopathic remedy and its administration. You can't claim "yes it does" if you can't demonstrate that it exists on time scales required for it to be the mechanism by which your medication works.

This is certainly not what homeopathy is about.

No, this is exactly what homeopathy is about. Homeopathy =/= "herbal medicine." The principles of homeopathy fly in the face of established physical and medical sciences, and require us to actively suspend the things we know about medicine in order to believe that they work. Medicines do not get more potent by being diluted to the point where there is no "remedy" left in the solution - this is a CENTRAL, fundamental, principle of homeopathy. Water does not retain some "memory" of molecules it has been in contact with in any time frame which would make it possible for "water memory" to be the functional mechanism. And repeated studies have shown homeopathic remedies to have no better results and efficacy than the placebo effect - there is no science which supports homeopathy.

but solid, and another big deal is not even diluted at all and on top of that, a hugh deal of homeopathic "remedies" are also sold with different name as modern herbal remedies.

I'm curious why you keep trying to define homeopathic remedies as "not diluted solutions," when *everything* written by Hahnemann and other proponents of homeopathy say that the diluted solutions we've been discussing are the gold standard of homeopathic remedies. The move of homeopaths to embrace "herbal medicine" is a move by homeopaths to co-opt another alternative medicine to bolster their own lack of credibility.

Homeopathy deserves no credence as a science, because it has no basis in science, and has no support in science. It is not an observable or measurable phenomenon, and any 'successes' attributed to it are the operation of the well documented placebo effect. Herbal medicine is a different matter, and is NOT homeopathy as set out by Hahnemann - undiluted herbal extracts are herbal remedies. They are no more homeopathic than an aspirin.

Free Air CO2 Enrichment (FACE) studies show no significant boost to crop development. And greenhouse studies show only a 4% increase to C4 plants, not 25%. Do you have a citation for this 25% number?

The controlled greenhouse studies do not model what happens in the atmosphere because, as I said, CO2 is not the limiting factor in the wild, but it may be in the greenhouse when you're looking at a potted plant that's not competing with other plants for the nutrients in its soil and it's getting regular water and sun that the experimenters provide for them. I can give you a ton of water, and you need that water to live, but if I don't also give you food, having excess water doesn't do you much good, does it?

Now, I do not want CO2 emissions to increase the global mean temperature, changing the climate. I hope the results won't be that bad (who needs Florida anyway? I live in Florida and believe me, we won't be missing much). And I wish it were true that plants nom nom nomed up all that tasty CO2 in the open atmosphere, as I rather like cars, a lot. But that's the thing about science: it doesn't matter what you hope or wish or how you think the world should work. It just matters what is.

And the plants don't eat CO2 in the same way they do in a greenhouse (see previous links), and they haven't been eating it (notice atmospheric CO2 levels continuing to rise despite there being lots of plants around). So, "plants will eat the CO2" as a solution to CO2 emissions is a non-starter, as they don't and haven't been.

That's a finding based on the genetic diversity of mitochondrial DNA, which is not a methodology you'd use to determine the present population of the planet.

More here. Scroll to "An Evolutionary Scenario for Ancient Expansion of Modern Humans" for the nontechnical gloss.

The US starts the clock one a breath is made by the child. Other European countries use weight, length, and some other factors to determine when life starts. With the US saving so many premature and all of them counting when they die from being so premature it lowers the US numbers.

[ citation needed ]

What we actualy see is::

The 10 countries with the highest rates of preterm birth per 100 live births:

        Malawi: 18.1 per 100
        Comoros: 16.7
        Congo: 16.7
        Zimbabwe: 16.6
        Equatorial Guinea: 16.5
        Mozambique: 16.4
        Gabon: 16.3
        Pakistan: 15.8
        Indonesia: 15.5
        Mauritania: 15.4

I.E. high preterm birth rates are a good sign of being a 3rd world country.

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs363/en/index.html

Also death counting is different, US counts all people who die on its soil for other countries they don't count non-citizens.

[ citation needed ]

Look at charts to see life expectancy from ages 5,25,50,75 and that listing changes.

Got a link?

This looks interesting:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK62587/

Looking at e50 for example the US is behind AUS, CAN, DNK, ESP , FRA.

The CIA seem less bothered about the comparison problem than you:

This entry contains the average number of years to be lived by a group of people born in the same year, if mortality at each age remains constant in the future. The entry includes total population as well as the male and female components. Life expectancy at birth is also a measure of overall quality of life in a country and summarizes the mortality at all ages. It can also be thought of as indicating the potential return on investment in human capital and is necessary for the calculation of various actuarial measures.

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/rankorder/2102rank.html

What about those with Aspergers? One of the original diagnostic criteria for Aspergers is a lack of empathy. Same goes for Autism too. Shall we ban these people from management?

A man who is rapidly becoming one of my best friends has recently been diagnosed with Asperger. What he is lacks is an ability to read people's emotions (although you'd hardly notice, he learned to compensate for that surprisingly well), what he has in abundance is an ability to feel for other people. And he is perfectly honest and trustworthy. A psychopath would be the opposite: perfectly capable of reading emotions but not feeling them himself, making it easy to exploit others. That is why they are charming manipulators.

I don't think my friend would be a good manager though, but that has to do with him being overwhelmed by situations far too easily.

The difference between a sociopath and a normal person is that a normal person possesses empathy, and empathy means that they will at least make a small effort to weigh personal benefit against benefit to their fellowman.

What about those with Aspergers? One of the original diagnostic criteria for Aspergers is a lack of empathy. Same goes for Autism too. Shall we ban these people from management?

Or perhaps we should just accept that individual choices can allow people to overcome any lack of anything? Empathy or not, everyone has a chance to be a good human being. We're getting dangerously close to labelling people here not based on actions or life choices but simply a pre-determined judgement that can be made at a young age.

Of course, because there isn't a medical study to show it... oh wait, I just linked to one!

The results of this meta-analysis suggest that marijuana use by drivers is associated with a significantly increased risk of being involved in motor vehicle crashes.

Bear in mind also that the normal risk of fatal crashes is low, so doubling it is doubling a number very near zero as it is.

Contrast that with alcohol (quote from a 1991 NIH article):

"Based on driver fatalities in single-vehicle crashes, it was estimated that each 0.02 percentage increase in the BAC of a driver with non-zero BAC nearly doubles the risk of being in a fatal crash."

That is probably not quite a beer's worth of alcohol for most body weights. So to put it another way, somebody who smokes pot while driving -- not "before", but during (a thing that in my youth I did with remarkable frequency) -- is roughly as impaired as if they had had just consumed a single beer. At those levels one does have to wonder about the error bars in the study -- statistically resolving one near-zero from another near-zero is actually remarkably difficult and requires ever so many samples and a totally unbiased sampling scheme with a complete lack of confounding variables -- so your assertion that the actual risk might even go down in those that aren't smoking pot and drinking a beer (where the latter is also difficult to detect and also doubles your risk all by itself) is not without possible merit.

Again from the article here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1875701:

"At BACs in the 0.05-0.09 percent range, the likelihood of a crash was at least nine times greater than at zero BAC for all age groups. Younger drivers with BACs in the 0.05-0.09 range had higher relative risks than older drivers, and females had higher relative risks than males. At very high BACs (at or above 0.15 percent), the risk of crashing was 300 to 600 times the risk at zero or near-zero BACs."

Note that at BAC's that are still in the legal range in most states, single car fatalities are nearly an order of magnitude greater than the single "doubling" of risk for immediate use of marijuana. That strongly suggests that the best thing to do about "impairment" from marijuana is -- ignore it, or as suggested above, use a field sobriety test, not a blood or saliva test. It is more or less irrelevant to driving skill. I would say (again, based on extensive experience) that this is not entirely true -- one can eat or smoke enough, potent enough, marijuana that driving is ill-advised, but in those cases field sobriety tests would be nearly impossible to pass as well. But it is actually somewhat difficult to get that stoned, and most pot smokers that I knew didn't want to drive when they were -- too scary.

But the simplest proofs are this. Whether or not it is legal, smoking pot and driving has been nearly universal forever among those that smoke pot. Most states are utterly unable to test for it, yet estimates of prevalence of usage (almost certainly low) suggest that anywhere up to 1/3 or 1/2 of people in certain age ranges at least occasionally smoke. Yet there is no positive association with this same group being a high risk on the road, outside of its tendency to drink. Alcohol is indeed a dangerous substance when it comes to driving, for obvious reasons, even for relatively small amounts. Pot is not, not until consumption is at extreme levels.

The last thing that confounds this is age. The distribution of fatal and non-fatal accidents with age is quite scary. A stoned 40 year old -- I mean a seriously wasted 40 year old stoner -- with a risk of accident 3 times his age-linked norm -- is a safer driver than a stone cold sober 19 year old. "Silverbacks" -- drivers on the high side of 75, where one's eyesight, hearing, and brain are all breaking down -- are safer still. Why? Because they drive (sober or not) carefully, and in particular far more conservatively than younger risk taking overconfident drivers. I'm living through my own sons' driving experience -- one at age 17 has his first car, now multiply scarred from driving it a whole month. One now 22, who at 18 took his eyes off of the road

In case you never heard of Bulimia - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmedhealth/PMH0001381/ - it's a (mental) illness that causes the sufferers to go through episodes of binge eating and then purging.

The "Glass" may help on dieting but that might harm people with bulimic problem.

What if it's a false positive?

Also, for those who think this is extremely unlikely and automatically believe DNA evidence is some sort of slam-dunk:

Teenager wrongly accused of rape (and imprisoned) because of DNA contamination (fortunately, it was picked up in this case)

DNA evidence contamination leads to review of 7,000 cases The police in Victoria are reviewing 7,000 cases involving DNA evidence after they had to withdraw murder charges in a high profile cold case. Police now say they deeply regret having charged a man with the murders of Margaret Tapp and her daughter Seana, at their home in 1984. They charged Russell Gesah two weeks ago, but since then problems have emerged with the DNA evidence.

DNA rape sample procedures 'not adequate' Adam Scott, from Devon, was held for a couple of months after being accused of raping a woman in Manchester. The charges were dropped when it emerged a DNA sample had been contaminated at LGC Forensics.

Police Fear 'Serial Killer' Was Just DNA Contamination A notorious German serial killer known as "the Phantom of Heilbronn" might not exist. Police believe DNA evidence which pointed to a 15-year trail of crimes across Germany was a case of contaminated cotton swabs.

Aerosolized Vaccine as an Unexpected Source of False-Positive Bordetella pertussis PCR Results etc.

Sorry, loose wording on my part. Even some primates leave fruit to ferment in order to get drunk later.

According to PubMed FAS does lead to stunted growth, but in particular ways that would be apparent in recovered skeletons.

One more thought ... on a purely statistical basis, the solution to the decline of measured IQ is to measure everyone's IQ and the erase the bottom quartile or thereabouts, being careful not to measure IQ again, lest you discover how quickly the distribution regresses to the norm, discounting test score inflation, which would run rampant. Sardines at $300/lb? Extract of rhino horn is a wank irrelevancy when the guillotine has your name on it.

Greek theories on eugenics

With the recent developments in the Human Genome Mapping Project and the new technologies that are developing from it there is a renewal of concern about eugenic applications. Francis Galton (b1822, d1911), who developed the subject of eugenics, suggested that the ancient Greeks had contributed very little to social theories of eugenics. In fact the Greeks had a profound interest in methods of supplying their city states with the finest possible progeny.

I guess it's true. Every good idea, the Greeks had first.

Why stop at race?

If we're giving points for overcoming hardship, give more to poor kids, divorced kids, kids with alcoholic parents, kids where more than one parent likes disco, dubstep or rap/rock, maybe even do it by zipcode for kids who are exposed to more crime or more familial strife.

We already know that kids who are exposed to abuse have lower IQs (whether that's cause or correlation, or reverse cause, I don't know).

How about we give them some points?

I don't have any memory problems from long-term consistent weed usage. In fact, I just solved some recent memory problems by figuring out how to not entangle myself with constant threads of distraction in my head. My memorization/relearning capabilities have jumped a plateau higher and it certainly is not from "clearing my head." You can't make an explicit list of effects from weed because there are quite literally dozens to hundreds of active terpene, terpenoid and cannabinoid compounds that contribute to its effects. Additionally, there is the matter of the entourage effect: there is synergy within the body between psychoactive drugs such as the many found in weed.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21749363

There are *lots* of HIV vaccines in development, many reaching phase I and others going further. There's even one recent phase III showing some evidence of a preventative effect.

For a review check: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22710904

I suppose it is that. That is just the envelope protein delivered by another virus (Vesicular Stomatitis Virus). http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19264597 These mutate like crazy, so expressing a single one is not going to help much ever to generate a therapeutically active immune response. Having tons of antibody that don't work against the developing HIV mutant is of no use.

The big issues is: How do you prevent somebody from being pressured into taking their own life? It's a big issue for the disabled and infirm. Ben Mattlin, who's been fighting spinal muscular atrophy all his life, writes

I’ve lived so close to death for so long that I know how thin and porous the border between coercion and free choice is, how easy it is for someone to inadvertently influence you to feel devalued and hopeless — to pressure you ever so slightly but decidedly into being “reasonable,” to unburdening others, to “letting go.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/01/opinion/suicide-by-choice-not-so-fast.html

I happen to disagree, mainly because I want the option of a clean exit when my my time comes. But it's a reasonable concern.

Or this wonderful tidbit from just 2 summers ago: "Almost half of Belgium's euthanasia nurses admit to killing without consent": http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285423/Half-Belgiums-euthanasia-nurses-admit-killing-consent.html

Smoke and mirrors: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3364762/

Pereira’s conclusions are not supported by the evidence he provided. His paper should not be given any credence in the public policy debate about the legal status of assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada and around the world.

Strike that. The Daily Mail article was referring to a different study that was referenced in the Pereira paper.

Or this wonderful tidbit from just 2 summers ago: "Almost half of Belgium's euthanasia nurses admit to killing without consent": http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1285423/Half-Belgiums-euthanasia-nurses-admit-killing-consent.html

Smoke and mirrors: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3364762/

Pereira’s conclusions are not supported by the evidence he provided. His paper should not be given any credence in the public policy debate about the legal status of assisted suicide and euthanasia in Canada and around the world.

What I'd really like to see is some good scientific research put in to this sort of thing, stripping away the associated mysticism and getting right to the core of it. Based on the rather limited article, it appears this might not be too difficult as he may already be keeping the mysticism to a minimum.

That's probably what these neuroscientists were likely doing. There has been a bunch of psychology research into the benefits of mindfulness meditation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mindfulness_(psychology)
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/01/110121144007.htm
http://nccam.nih.gov/research/results/spotlight/012311.htm

Or, maybe they're happier?

I suspect that we'll just have to kill a lot of fuzzy little animals in order to find out if those binding sites are specific to pathogens or whether they show up elsewhere...

Incidentally, if you want a category of vaccines that seems like it is just begging for dramatic trouble, how about Immunocontraceptives? Already used with success in a variety of nuisance mammals; but uneconomic for use in smaller, more numerous, or harder-to-catch pests(because it has to be injected to work). So, logically enough, work is ongoing to produce virally delivered vaccines that will spread themselves through the target population!

You mean that whole debacle caused by a faked research paper? Doesn't sound like some BigPharma conspiracy to me.