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Vaccinated Against Vices?
Smoke Me A Kipper writes "The Independent is reporting that the latest UK government sponsored quango, charged with looking at the problems of drug abuse, is to recommend a national anti-addiction 'vaccination' scheme. Apparantly, trials are already in progress. No details as to whether it would be mandatory. Personally I find such an idea utterly shocking - what happens when you find yourself injured in later life and morphine based painkillers no longer work? I wouldn't be surprised to find existing phamaceutical companies excited by this, having to replace cheap drugs with something new, which they can patent and control."
While this would be a good thing to give to, say, former drug addicts and such, I don't see why children need to be involved. Besides, whose to say it won't have harmful side effects that aren't seen until later?
...will those who are 'vaccinated' become physically ill every time someone plays Beethoven's No. 9?
Ridiculous. Medicating for no serious reason *at all*? I can't wait to see people have allergic reactions (some no doubt will) and sue the government for forcing them to take this absurd vaccine.
Slightly offtopic, but how does everyone feel about all the pharmas. advertising their products? I understand they have to make money but if they weren't advertising they could lower the costs of their products and make the same amount of money.
I pay for my own insurance and it's tough. It's to the point where I wonder if I should be paying for it. It blows my mind that healthcare could cost more than my house. Soon it will cost more than my house and car combined.
Anyone see a light at the end of the tunnel that I'm missing?
Vaccination? Nah, I'll wait until they put the vaccine into a brown bottle and sell it at the store in cases of 24.
I'm not normally an irrational zealous dickhead, but I figure "When in Rome..."
does this mean I can finally get that beer I.V. I've always wanted. I mean drinking just takes too much time.
If people want to "vaccinate" themselves from drugs that they deem harmful, that's fine by me. However, even though I choose to abstain from drug use, I'd definitely not want to vaccinate myself. By vaccinating yourself, you're basically saything that your will is too weak to be able to avoid these 'vices'. And that might be fine for some people. As long as parents don't start vaccinating their children before they kids can think for themselves, and schools public schools don't require them alongside the other vaccines.
Free iPod!eBay o
The Europeans have a much more enlightned view of drugs. For example, in europe you can get a pain killer called "Diamorphine", in the us that same painkiller is illegal because it is chemically the same as heroin. Eurpoean diamorphine is manufactured under controlled conditions and is as safe as any other pain killer. American heroin is made in dirty warehouses and contains so many impurities that you are more likely to die from the introduction of arthropod parts into your blood stream than you are to die from overdosing on diamorphine.
I typically sing the tune priaising the greatness of my country, but when it comes to drug policy, my country has it ass backwards.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
Honestly, I don't understand how anyone could possibly think that addiction can be solved by destroying the recreational effects. Addiction is in your brain!
.. basically, it's gonna deaden the highs. You won't be able to get much more than a mild effect off of anything. I don't really see how this would stop you being physically addicted to something though.
$ strings FTP.EXE | grep Copyright
@(#) Copyright (c) 1983 The Regents of the University of California.
Anyone see a light at the end of the tunnel that I'm missing?
suicide
How about they just give all the children a shot of sugar water and then say that they are "vaccinated"? Then they'd never try drugs because there'd be no point (or so they'd think).
pi = 3.141592653589793helpimtrappedinauniversefactory7
Yeah, no shit! And higher doses of coke are supposed to be better for you, are they?
It used to be an insult to say "you've been hiding upder a rock". But now, I think it's a comment. Screw civilization, it's been bastardized by those seeking to control it at the expense of the masses.
;)
Yes siree bob...i'm finding me a BIG ROCK to hind under. But i'll still keep an eye out on the world for my own safety.
Life is not for the lazy.
The Two Commandments for the Molecular Age
Thou shalt not alter the consciousness of thy fellow men.
Thou shalt not prevent thy fellow man from altering his or her own consciousness.
...it modulates ion channels which you would have to somehow remove...and then you would have serious issues. I haven't RTFA'd though to see exactly what they're proposing
Devon
Drug abuse is a sign of other social problems, it is a symptom of greater problems. Simply attacking the symptom wont help anything. Also this vaccine would take away any last shreds of personal responsibility in the matter, entrusting big brother to look after you and know which receptors in your brain shouldn't be binded to.
Seriously! They might be the only group to advocate giving this to everyone. Just wait for the anti-prostitute vaccine or genes and the anti-copyright theft gene. Speaking of copyright is the MPAA or RIAA backing this? The only halfway legit use though would seem to be someone who is a repeat drug offender. Still though seems like a giant infringement on civil liberty.
:(){
But from the perspective of a person that has been addicted to a particular substance, this could be a life saver.
Unless you have experienced a physical/mental addiction you can't comprehend the type of strain that the person and their families experience. To be able to have something that will reduce/stop the urge could save many people alot of stress and sadness, which usually comes with drug addiction.
I know from experience that virtually all addictions are psychological, not physical which can to be "vaccinated" against. Therefore the important question is, what part of the psyche/brain/whatever are these "vaccinations" destroying to prevent people from becoming addicted to drugs/smoking/alcohol/sex/chocolate/carbohydrates/ (insert your preference here)????
Instead of taking care of making heroin or morphine non-addictive, they should start with nicotine and alcohol, both of which are a lot cheaper than any other drugs and cause ravages in the population.
So while they think about far-fetched solutions to hard drug abuses, *I* have to keep struggling not to light a cigarette again, despite the tremendous cravings I have regularly, even afters years of quitting, so I don't have to go back see my lung specialist again.
But I guess fighting alcohol and tobacco abuse would remove an easy source of income for the government eh? Cheap lying bastards, I can't think a a worse bunch of hypocrits than those who profit from the sale of alcohol and tobacco and pretend to fight the addiction too...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
While I don't see the article addressing your point:
morphine based painkillers no longer work, there is a bit of a mention to this issue:
Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users...
My uneducated guess is that the effect of these drugs in the absence of pain is very different than when a person uses them while experiencing great pain. The "vaccine" likely would aim to blunt the euphoria while perserving the ability of morphine and other painkiller to do just that -- kill pain and return a patient to baseline.
the future is here, it is just not evenly distributed - w. gibson
What the fuck, vaccinating against drugs? What next, mandatory chemical castration? This is ridiculous. I'm already fed up enough with the endless war on drugs and now this. When will governments get it into their heads that prohibition doesn't stop anything. If you want to go do drugs fine. If you want to tell me not to do drugs, fine. Then to alter someone elses free will accordingly so? What if suddenly I told one of these anti-drug fanatics that something they enjoy doing is now illegal, no matter how "innocent" it seems. I don't think these people really care about the effects their actions have in the long run, as long as they have the delusion that they're in a safer place or what not.
You're all going to die, and so are your kids. Get over it.
If you don't want someone to copy something, don't give it to anyone.
In the UK, there have already been a number of serious measles epidemics (with attendant deaths) because parents are overplaying the risk of the MMR vaccine. Now, it seems to me that nicotine addiction, while serious, can be avoided in a manner that measles exposure cannot. Mass vaccinations against heroin have marginal utility for the vast majority of recipients, while exposing those same recipients to any number of side-effects.
if science were able to produce a 'happy pill' that had no side-effects, no addiction issues, or any other consequences, it would still be knifed in the bed and made illegal. otherwise the herd animal known by some as "the working man" might ease up on the back-breaking labor that the leisure class depends on to make their own lives a paradise on earth.
pr0n - keeping monitor glass spotless since 1981.
I am sure that you could convince yourself that it's the right thing to do, but overall, it just sounds like a bad idea.
I am sure that with certain types of logic, such as -- "take this vaccine or go to jail", it would all of a sudden become a very good idea. Then again, another line can also, in certain circumstances, seem to be a good idea.
One should try to not use drugs on one's own first. If it really doesn't work, and you are certain that death is imminent, of course it's a good idea. In other words - "take this vaccine or you will very likely die or spend the rest of your life a hopeless drug addict" is very good logic. If it works, that's wonderful. But if it only removes the effect (i.e. the "relief"), then an existing addict might spend the rest of their life never being able to fulfill the craving? That might cause people to commit suicide or something - if that's what it does.
I just don't see how anyone can predict with complete certainty that a particular child is going to have a drug problem.
These types of things should only be given to people who have serious drug problems as a last resort. If the vaccine needs to be given prior to an individual having developed a drug problem, then there are going to be ethical, legal, moral, and "class" issues about it.
what year is it? 2004 or 1984? Trying to control us like this will never work!
I totally agree. Never would our ______ President control us this way. Neither would ______, it would be totally _____. Not to mention ______. I'm ____ __ ______ glad I live in this time of _________ __ freedom and democracy.
I highly recommend everyone read 1984. It was all about British people who were fighting this kind of oppressive government.
Why read the book when you already live in it?
Seriously, have you been following the recent development concerning personal liberty, privacy, and civil right issues recently? have you checked how impartial the press is lately?
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
What's next, vaccinating against rebellious independant thoughts? No, I don't like this. Not one bit..
..don't panic
--
Power to the Peaceful
I think everybody here has heard of 1984, but maybe the AC is 16 or 17 and just got done reading it for school, or maybe he thinks that a lot of the people reading Slashdot are young and haven't read it or thought to read it. In any case, cut him some slack -- if only out of generosity.
On a related note, I think the book to read is A Clockwork Orange, which is also a very good movie by the way.
I won't say anything more than it applies here, for fearing of seeming patronizing!
quiquid id est, timeo puellas et oscula dantes.
All the civil liberties issues aside, this would devestate the illegal drug supply industry and the drug enforcement industry. Both of these are extremely powerful groups, with total annual revenues of over a trillion dollars, and both with the authority to operate outside of the laws that regulate all the rest of us, and both with the authority to use violence to achieve their goals. Both owe their existence to drug laws, addiction, and artificial scarcity. If you take away any one of those components, the system collapses entirely. Do you think the DEA or the DoJ would be behind something which would put them out of business? No, they are deeply invested in the status quo. Legalization of drugs would have the same effect. People probably wouldn't use any more of them, and the harm they cause would drop enormously (no more having to rob people to feed a $200/day habit), but it would put both the suppliers and enforcers out of business.
It's a large serynge full of air. One shot is enough to rid the street of that filthy human muck.
After a nation wide program to get rid of addiction, Doctors now find that people are addicted to the anti-addiction vaccine.
In America we are imprisoned by our fear of them.
Hi - a good friend of mine has just finished her doctoral thesis in neuroscience, specializing in addiction in particular. It is interesting that you can vaccinate against against a given drug, but the author of this thread is right - it is pretty appalling, because although you can block the receptors for a given neurotransmitter, that receptor is used by your body for 'normal' highs and lows. I think this is perhaps a good idea for people with heroin addictions already, but as a preventative measure it could have a very debilatating effect on people's lifestyle. As an interesting aside, my neuroscientist doctor friend was able to find correlations between all kinds of addiction (not just physical, but addictions such as gambling and such too). Apparently certain people have a significantly stronger propensity for addiction than others. It may then be no surprise that addictions have a tendancy to run in families. This kind of research is more useful, IMHO, as you can identify people who are likely to end up with an addition before it happens, and provide counseling to make them understand the risks ahead of time. Drug addictions may be physical, but they always have a social element too - it's best to treat the cause rather than the symptom, or the problems come out in other ways anyway.
It's the usual quick-fix mentality. Instead of asking what problems cause people to turn to drugs (mental disease, poverty, social problems, etc.), a syringe is supposed to fix it. It's the same quick fix mentality that dominates so much of politics, and it's not going to work.
Instead of some people sedating their problems and imposing health care costs on everybody else, which is bad enough, you are going to have the same people doing something else self-destructive and probably even more destructive to others.
And for that quick fix, you risk several deaths a year from medical mistakes (wrong injection, infection, etc.) during vaccination, as well as unknown long-term consequences and the possibility that important future drugs won't work.
I can't help but think we'll have a "next stage" in the world of drugs where the pharmaceutical companies sell drugs that technically get you high, but in ways that the man finds worthwhile. Imagine "Glaxo Endeavor" -- the morale of cocaine, the energy of meth, but the calm of atavan, and none of the side effects of the others.
I sometimes think that the anti-depressants are partway there, especially the way their advertised. I'm just surprised that the pharmaceutical companies aren't farther along in making "socially good" drugs, as well as manufacturing the societal approval for taking them.
Although maybe we'll never get there -- law enforcement benefits from it being illegal (both in above-board budgets and in inherent corruption), the "moral authorities" gain a power base by promoting their puritan ideals, and the dealers and manufacturers just look at illegality as another business factor to manage.
Worse case scenario, the immune system eaither mis-learns or mutates its defences, and starts attacking the bodys own chemicals. The body produces small ammounts of morphine to regulate pain. Heroin addicts take so much that the body attems to regulate by producing less morphine. When a heroin adic goes through withdrawl, his body essentiall has no natural morhine in it, hence constant pain. If the immune system was trained to destroy morphine, then the recipient could be in a perminent withdrawl. Nicotine mimics a natural nuro-transmitter in the brain. I would hate to see what would happen if a autoimmune reaction against that nuro-transmitter happened.
Complex systems react unpredicably when disrupted. We don't know enough abou the human body to interfear with it in this way.
Then, once were done with all that, we can all sit around and think...pure...thoughts...
Sounds like fun, doesn't it? ;-)
Its time to go out and buy a gun.
This is rather remarkable in that there is no discussion of the risks of such a treatment. Drugs generally work by either mimicking neurotransmitters themselves, mimicking their precursors, or by mimicking other chemicals that cause a release of neurotransmitters. This is true of both recreational drugs and prescription drugs like Prozac or Zoloft.
Cocaine, for instance, is known to work by effecting a massive release of dopamine into the brain, which is then reuptaken quickly, providing the high. Alcohol similarly effects a release of GABA (among other neurotransmitters), while GHB is actually a precursor to GABA itself and is converted thus in the brain.
It would seem to me that messing with the pathways through which any given drug actually works, unless it is almost impossibly specific, would mess with the normal operation of the brain. What's to say that a "vaccine" designed to prevent cocaine's method of activity won't prevent or at least diminish all such activity in the brain? Parkinson's Disease is caused at least partially by screwy dopamine levels in the brain. Who knows if injecting people with a virus that prevents rushes of dopamine won't affect the normal rushes of dopamine that occur during life, like after a particularly good orgasm or a 10K-run?
It just sounds like fucking with neurotransmitters, especially on a genetic level, is a recipe for disaster.
Actually, there were only two protagonists in 1984 that were actually "fighting" Big Brother, and the only way they were "fighting" was by not behaving like their fellow automaton-citizens behind closed doors. Big Brother's scheme included not just an interminable war against "EastAsia", but also "Ingsoc", a program that was supposed to promote general welfare and eglitarianism (the goals of any social democracy) but in reality created miserable lower classes and an all-powerful elite.
All this would do is make some drugs ineffective - which means the addiction market - and it is a market - will merely switch to other drugs.
Eventually one would be found that could not be inoculated against without major biochem advances, and that drug would become the new primary method of addiction.
More likely, this whole thing is sponsored by the "legal" drug purveyors - the booze makers.
Anybody see booze mentioned in that article?
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
Does this remind anyone else of A Clockwork Orange, particularly the "Ludivico Technique"?
what happens when you find yourself injured in later life and morphine based painkillers no longer work?
So you're assuming that because it blocks the euphoric effects that it will also block the painkilling effect? This is not necessarily the case.
"An unarmed man can only flee from evil, and evil is not overcome by fleeing from it." Col. Jeff Cooper
if it feels good, it must be bad. And we ( as in the government, religion, society ) have the right to tell you what to do, even in the privacy of your own home or head.
I understand the issue of addiction, and the problems that addiction poses to society. This is one way of addressing it, but it is a morally dubious one. It removes the essentials of choice, which is a prime factor in what makes us human. It is also the cornerstone of a lot of religious tenets, which will lead once again to the unwashed christian masses sponsoring something that goes directly against their religious beliefs ( like christians who support the death penalty, where's the "thou shalt not kill" commandment again? ). So, rather than addressing the problem of addiction with personal help ( which is a morally unquestionable stance - you want help, we'll give it to you ), and treating the attendant problems ( crime - legalize drugs, diseases - re-instate needle exchange programs and allow sex ed to be taught in schools ) in a humane and efficient manner, we will embark down the slippery slope that "vaccines" for this stuff offer.
How long after a vaccine for drugs if implemented, will we have a vaccine for violence? And how long after that will we all be mindless zombies, in a perfect semblance of "health", all marching to the beat of our corporate/religious masters? That is a state worse than 1984. 1984 was about manipulation and control. We're already there to a degree ( watched the news lately? In multiple countries? They are fucking lying to us, so blatantly in many cases that it will blow your top to actually dig into the facts ), but at least when you're being manipulated, you can be awakened. What happens when you're vaccinated or genetically altered to the point where you can't get high, can't feel love, anger, pain, joy, any of the things that make us human? Can't choose between right or wrong? I would rather die myself.
And before anyone gets on my case about not understanding the problem, understand that I do. I've been strung out. Badly. I spent the better part of a decade putting cocaine, speed, and heroin in my arms, nose, and lungs. But I also understand that a lot of drugs have their uses. Acid won't ruin your life ( unless you're stupid enough to take way too much, but tylenol will do that as well ). Everyone should have one good trip in their life. It's fun and teaches you a lot about yourself. Cocaine has a lot of useful medicinal properties, but as a recreational drug it's useless and far too destructive. Alcohol is one most addictive and destructive drugs around, yet it's legal almost everywhere in the world. Etc. - they're just chemicals people.
What's scary is how we react to the issues that come up because of these chemicals. If it weren't drugs, it would be something else that exposes the weaknesses in our moral logic. And it is ultimately an issue of morality. Not the morality that all these soapbox baptist neocon preachers go on about, but actual human morality that rises out of ability to reason. What the Western world was based on.
PC moderators can suck my White pierced, tattooed dick. If you think pride == hate, s/dick/Aryan meat mallet/g.
There is a good article about it here. Here are a few choice quotes.
"And, sure enough, in the late 30s and early 40s, in five really flamboyant murder trials, the defendant's sole defense was that he -- or, in the most famous of them, she -- was not guilty by reason of insanity for having used marijuana prior to the commission of the crime."
"Doctor, when you used the drug, what happened?" "After two puffs on a marijuana cigarette, I was turned into a bat."
"You know what the women testified? In Newark they testified, and I quote, "After two puffs on a marijuana cigarette my incisor teeth grew six inches long and dripped with blood."
2004, and the madness still hasn't ended. Now we might even start vaccinating people so that they don't try out these demonic drugs. Jeez, someone get me off this damn planet.
Heroin is very much chemically addictive.. where did you hear that it wasn't?
Physically, heroin addiction IS morphine addiction. Heroin is turned into morphine in the brain. As far as your neuroreceptors are concerned, it IS morphine.
Heroin is just a more effective way to get the morphine to the brain.
As with most drugs of abuse, the psychological addiction is the one that really gets you... but don't kid yourself. Heroin is VERY physically addictive.. just like morphine.
shouldn't we be more concerned with vaccinating the world against Don Johnson?
The More Laws, the less Justice --Marcus Tullius Cicero
Are derivatives to morphine all based off of Heroin, cocaine, or nicotine? Would the 'vaccine' even affect morphine? Would preventing the euphoria caused by heroin, cocaine, or nicotine even affect the medicinal properties provided by these same compounds?
It sounds like the submitter extrapolated far beyond the scope of the article and the conclusion is shaky at best. Questioning what happens if the 'vaccine' interferes with the medicinal properties of morphine is a good idea. From what I've seen though, we're far from questioning when the 'vaccine' interferes with the medicinal properties of morphine.
So the next thing would be for dope dealers to make even more syntetic drugs people can get high of. Then a new vaccine would be created and so on and so on ...
Just fight fire with fire
Gluttony and lust cause all the trouble with socialization. What we really need are vaccines against hunger and sexual desire. That will take care of all of our problems.
Drug manufacturers biggest expense is the fixed upfront costs of R&D and the government trial and approval process. Actual volume production of the drug is USUALLY not terribly expensive. The point is to defray the R&D costs. If advertising increases consumption enough, it more than pays for itself. Plus the average production cost of making the pills tends to go down as the total volume increases. So it's in the drug companies best interest to drive as many sales as they can, so long as they can sell the pills for more than the cost of producing them.
----- Question authority, but not ours. Hate the man, but we're not him.
Call me too far left if you want, but protection from euphoria? That's a worrying precedent. Maybe I'm being too Timothy Leary here, but if people want to try something on their own bodies, they should be allowed to - drugs or no drugs, why should the goverment or a corporate entity have the power to give us 'protection from euphoria';
From dictionary.com Drugs or no drugs, is this something we want to be protected from? It's my body, I should be allowed to put whatever I want into it, but next time I want to be 'protected from a feeling of great happiness or well-being' acheived in a non-government-licenced way, I'll call them up.
Meanwhile, I'll go back to watching the world slowly march towards 1984.
Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
Clinical trials showed that addiction-free patients stopped watching TV, shopping, eating fast food, driving, watching sports, and posting to Slashdot. Patients use of marijuana, MDMA, LSD and denim was unaffected.
--
make install -not war
It sucks. about 2/3 of the money they spend is on advertising. Then they lie and say drugs cost a lot because the money is going towards new research (sure, 1/3 of it is).
Well, crack cocaine produces a more extreme high than the powdered form. Wouldn't you agree that crack cocaine is more debilitating?
an increase in demand isn't going to cause the price of cocaine to go down. the physical effects are likely to be the same, assuming that this vaccine works by priming the immune system to attack the drugs. I think this could work.
However, I wouldn't be surprised if some folks experienced a serious anaphilactic reaction. Maybe they're accounting for this somehow...
I watched Equilibrium again this weekend. How long until governments want us all like little sheep, not feeling emotions, tracking our every movement, communication, meeting, just going to work, and enjoying the state proscribed and approved entertainment?
Download, I, er mean rent this film and watch it.
Get your own free personal location tracker
this should only be used for those in rehab.
There is no replacement for proper education!
They won't vaccinate me until they pry my beer from my cold, passed-out hands.
Oh, Wait...
I think I need a new sig here.
Today, after millions of people had received their anti-addiction vaccines, which were recently required by law, have died of severe allergic reaction. Thirty percent of victims were children under the age of ten years, and another ten percent were senior citizens over the age of sixty-five years.
So far, over 500 families have filed civil suits against the goverment, asking for a combined seven billion pounds in losses and emotional distress. Fifteen cases are already proceeding to go to court.
Ah, you found me!
Two comments:
1. For 30+ years we have been wrestling with the consequences of simple Cigarettes! We have corporations hiding health info, playing with nicotine amounts, and a ton of cancer patients and billion dollar lawsuits. All for a drug which by all accounts is potentially deadly after long-term use but is comparatively benign. Unlike, say alcohol, coke, or heroin, it does not cause intoxication and cigarette addiction is very unlikely to cause you to lose your job and family.
Now considering everything you know about the tobacco companies and all that has come out in the past 30+ years, you really want a "more enlightened" policy leading to [insert Cigarettes company] brand heroin, cocaine, or crack? Only for 18+, of course....
2. From the article's poster:
I wouldn't be surprised to find existing phamaceutical companies excited by this, having to replace cheap drugs with something new, which they can patent and control.
Come on, enough with the tired "big bad evil phamaceutical company" conspiracy theory crap. For being so incredibly evil and selfish, they sure have cured a whole bunch of different diseases the past 50+ years. The way your talk, its like you think the companies are introducing viruses just to make cures for them. I wonder if you will change your thinking if you ever have, God forbid, cancer, heart disease, or fertility problems. Probably not...
Just because they don't give away their hard-earned discoveries for free doesn't make them evil. If you don't like it, don't use their discoveries! You can get 1970's era drugs real cheap generically. Good luck surviving.
Brian Ellenberger
Brave people don't mod down, they reply. True cowards use overrated.
I really hope this is some sort of bizarre joke ...
libguestfs - tools for accessing and modifying virtual machine disk images
Take away "sex" addiction and you might take away one of the foundations of pair bonding. Take away the "high" you get from opiates and you might remove the good feeling you get from exercise as well as the body's defense against pain. Remove the addiction of gambling and you might have people unwilling to take any chance at all.
Mother Nature has built-in very specific structures for reward, and while they might be ant-survival in certain settings -- the desire for large amounts of food, for example -- the research should be to allow conscious control rather than the reduction or elimination of the reward aspect.
...will it work on religion?
Just think about it for a moment before you mod me into oblivion. The article mentions acocaine-specific vaccination, but if they are working on chemicals that target all kinds of euphoric, psychological addiction, wouldn't religion (or perhaps chronic TV-watchers) be the first to go?
If they really wanted to get rid of a lot of crime and health problems and save the world billions of dollars, here's what they should do:
Do exactly the opposite of what they're doing now. Concede that drugs can never be eliminated and instead work towards negating all the negative aspects of drugs one by one.
Research safe and approved alternatives that would provide the desired good feeling without the side effects or the addictiveness. Pop a pill in the evening, but be up for work next morning without a hangover. Beats getting wasted at the bar.
Make the stuff relatively cheap, driving the black market and oranized crime out of the drug business.
The idea is to provide a safe and supervised alternative. By supervised I mean the stuff shouldn't be provided to minors or lunatics. There should be heavy penalties for driving while under influence and/or technical solutions to make it impossible. For instance, in some places in Europe they've installed alcohol-locks in cars that seem to work pretty well.
Why it will never happen in the US:
- The tobacca and alcohol lobby would bury anyone who tried to push it.
- Unfortunately for a lot of people this sort of pragmatic solution is unacceptable. It's not about eliminating crime or saving lives, it's about legislating (their) morality.
- Once you've spent billions on something stupid it's hard to pull the plug and admit defeat. Those who've worked in IT sees this every day, some stupid project is beyond all salvation and everybody knows it but more money is being inject solely because a shitload has already been spent.
It's like deja vu all over again.
... to be told what to do, where to do it, why to do it, and how to do it. They accept mandatory vaccinations, almost near mandatory forced drug addiction of their children with government "approved" drugs,and forced social engineering brainewashing of their children in the indoctrination centers, they accept the pharmco industry dictating to doctors which drugs are "approved" and which will be "illegal" or not even available.
This attempt, which they will camofluage by calling it a "proposal", is already a fait accompli, it's in the past tense even though the article pushes the illusion that it is future tense, society in general has said, by it's inactions, that they are willing to be force-fed at the corporate government restuarant, just like geese at the fois gras farm. All this is, is a very minor menu change. The "question" of whether or not it will happen is past tense,and is a moot point, that has already been decided for you by your betters and minders.
Next step, basically the government will determine what your day to day mood should be, they will determine how alert you are, when you should be active, when you should be angry, or happy, when you should be agressive, or passive, etc, etc.
And it will be illegal to "just say no". And to make sure of that, you will be required to take the RFID internally.
I think his point was that if you take off the high, people will just take *gobs* more to try to increase their sub-high. Ie, all this vaccination will do is greatly increase your drug tolerance and if anything *that's* the major reason for escalating crime (more drugs to get you high) as well as overdosing (you might build up a tolerance to feeling good, but you don't build up a tolerance to the side-effects of the drug which lead to you dying). Work should go towards making a vaccine to decrease the rate of tolerance and/or decrease the addictiveness of the drug. This vaccine sounds more like it'll just accelerate the time between a junky's first hit and them dying of an overdose.
Eurohacker European paranoia, gun rights, and h
Kinda figures...
An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
Is this from the same people who felt they had to pump Alan Turing full of garbage to "cure" his "anti-social behavior"?
[o]_O
Without the exhiliration of epiphanies or insights where would we be?
We wouldn't be for long: we'd devolve down to the level of termites.
The human race MUST advance through insights, taken from whatever medium is there to transmit it. It's a basic human freedom.
Manufacturing a drug that seeks to make the mind duller - let's face it: It's an anti-euphoriant; will likely strip us of other forms of euphoria as well. Who wants that?
I'm shocked that governments are even permitting trials like this to take place when they haven't even done real studies on marijuana.
It's a form of fatalism for a society to start believing that it can only survive by suppressing what makes it HUMAN.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
You can't vaccinate against morphine ... it modulates ion channels which you would have to somehow remove
...and then you would have serious issues.
Yes you can. You can produce antibodies that bind the active parts of the appropriate drugs, or that bind to the receptors in ways that block them without activating them. These will reduce or eliminate the effect of the drug on the receptor.
Absolutely:
For starters, if it blocks the drugs, what do you want to bet that you'll also block the effects of the natural compounds. Then those vaccinated will be something like a drug addict in withdrawal FOR THE REST OF THEIR LIVES. Everything would HURT. Just sitting around would hurt. Exercise would hurt more. Painkillers wouldn't work.
Imagine one of these kids in highschool - the worst of "whiny wimps" just sitting there. Sports would be agony. And that's before the unimunized jocks start beating on him to watch him squirm.
Then there are the feedback mechanisms modulating the number of receptors, production of neurotransmitters, and production of antibodies. The reduced performance of the neurotransmitter-receptor system will result in the increase in the number of receptors (already known to be part of the addiction mechanism) and/or the increase in the production of the neurotransmitter.
But with antibodies to naturally produced protiens, this could produce more stimulation of the immune system: More antibodies against the receptors. Inflamation (of the BRAIN!) in the affected sites. Possible immune cascade from the inflamation causing the production of antibodies to OTHER self-antigens, and a runaway autoimmune disease akin to a cross between Graves and Lupus.
Then there's the question of what this will do to other behavior. It's making a MAJOR change to the internal reward pathways of the brain. How will these people do in school? On the job? How will they respond to advertising? Political propaganda? Religious indoctrination?
There are indications that psycopathy is the result of a failure in an emotional pathway, leading to both loss of guilt feelings and risk-taking in an attempt to achieve any feeling at all. Is THIS the pathway in question? Will an "immunization" program raise the incidence of psychopathy from about 1% of the population to the bulk of it? Will we have a generation of used car salesmen, confidence men, gangsters, death-squad members, and political dictators?
Or is it NOT the same pathway, but one that produces some OTHER pathology when it fails? Will we find ourselves with a generation of some OTHER, formerly-rare, pathological stereotype as the bulk
of our population?
Fooling around with something as basic as the reward hardware of the mind is NOT something you can do and expect no undesirable side-effects.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Its my body.. they dont have the right to mandate that i modify it for 'my own good'.
In the case of deadly viruses and plauge, being immunized protects others more then yourself ( so you cant catch/spread it )..
Having this as an option, cool.. but not mandated..
---- Booth was a patriot ----
...and no man is going to fuck with them. Well, that's what I'll say when the squad of Ned Fladers come at me with that needle.
2. Election coming very soon
3. Sensationalist public policy distracts from disasterous causus belli
4. Discussion is good
5. Comedians always need new good material
They've no intention of implementing this at all. They couldn't even reform the Lord Chancellor's role without it getting voted out in the House of Lords. There is a difference between debate and anything being tabled. Here in Britain, and other Westminster Parliament system countries, like Australia, there is no method of sneaking any motions past the keeper, as Mike Moore sensationalises that the American system permits.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
LOAD "SIG",8,1
isn't this going about the problem the wrong way round?
For tobacco it's not a high that is the problem its the withdrawl from the nicotine.
remove the withdrawl symptons and I will quit smoking.
probably the same goes for heroin and crack addicts.
given the choice between prostitution theft and the various other ways addicts have of supporting their habits. or an injection to allow pain free withdrawl I think you might see a willing majority ready to quit.
addiction is degrading and I think most addicts will admit to that and want to do something about it.
Blarney Quality Restaurant, Plants
I mean.. I'd count that as euphoric... I'm sure most my G/F's would too (at least I hope so:-P )
"Consider how lucky you are that life has been good to you so far. Alternatively, if life hasn't been good to you so far
Yup, this is merely a ploy by pharmaceutical companies to make more money. It has nothing to do with helping people overcome drug addiction. They will sell more drugs by preventing drug addiction. Makes sense to me. Here's the business plan:
1) Prevent drug addiction
2) ???
3) Profit!!!
Seriously, they make how much money off of people addicted to prescription drugs? I don't think this is a money making venture for them.
LRC, the best-read libertarian site on the web
...especialy from those vaccines recommended by "Professor Nutt, head of psychopharmacology "
...with their ActiveBuzzkill technology.
Assume I was drunk when I posted this.
1. Measles are transmitted via a virus vs. cocaine which is self inflicted.
2. When you vaccinated a certain percantage of the population the immunisation of the potential transmitters make it almost impossible for the virus to spread. Cocaine will spread by dealers regardless of other cocaine users. You need a measle infected or virus infected person to spread measles, you don't need a cocaine user to spread cocaine. The only way to ensure removal of a cocaine market would be to enforce a very high vaccination rate. And even then you are not guarantted any effect. It will take atleast 25 years with vaccination before one will now how well it works.
3. A measle vaccination guarantees that something like 99.5& of those vaccinated won't get measles. How will the coacaine vaccination deal with new synthetic cocaine variants?
4. Ultimatly people chooses to use cocaine (at least the first time) because of the stimulation, if one could neutralize cocaine people will find other drugs.
5. Last time I check measles causes some 800000 deaths each year (yes that is eight-hundred thousand). And that is with extensive vaccination programs in the western world and several campaigns in the third world. Cocaine is not even close.
And the concept of "preamature death" is a bit extended and diffuse. Before the medics and the health system concentrated on diseases randomly striking people and it classified those deaths as "premature deaths". But now they also (correctly) focus on more or less self inflicted diseases. How long should the society go in order to protect it's citizens against "premature death". Sure it's possible to go all the way and create a nanny state by enforcing thousands of authoritarian rules. But I just don't understand the rationale behind such a policy.
And just because the medical industry are willing to make a buck on extensive vaccination of a self-inflicted disease where is the similatity between protecting the population agains random diseases and protecting everyone agains something that some individuals chooses to inflict upon themselves?
Melius mori in libertate quam vivere in servitute.
Here's some information on the vaccines mentioned in the article. There's one from Xenova and another developed by Scripps . Both work by creating antibodies to Cocaine. The Xenova vaccine has had a phase II trial. I wonder if the specificity of the antibodies is really a settled question. If not, then you might find that pleasure, pain, and sex or something more subtle wouldn't be quite the same thing again. Not something I'd want to mess with. It seems silly, if not scary to be considering giving it to children at this point. Here are the folks at the UK Brain, Science, Addiction, and Drugs although they don't have much up.
I understand they have to make money but if they weren't advertising they could lower the costs of their products and make the same amount of money.
Possibly they could, but even if they could, the chances are, they'd keep the prices the same and increase their profits.
In practice, it's a lot more complicated than that. They advertise primarily to increase demand. The higher demand can mean that a higher price results in higher profits, but advertisinbg is a fixed cost rather than a per-unit cost, so doesn't directly affect end user prices.
Stanislaw Lem, The Futurological Congress. Right on topic.
unfortunately modern science is failing to see the full spectrum of variables related to chemical addiction one of which is the demonic side for I am convinced that after the ingestion of certain drugs demonic beings enter into the person (esp. with LSD). Without at least acknowelging the spiritual side of addicition these pseudo-remedies are bound to fail if not prove ultimately detrimental to the growth of the patient.
My second thought goes something like this: what, was A Clockwork Orange just not scary enough for these people? For God's sake, let's have clinical trials first, then prisoner/probation trials before we even CONSIDER giving this shit to millions of children and teenagers.
/rant on
/rant off
Actually, no, scratch that. Let's just not ever consider giving mind-altering substances to (relatively) heathly human beings, period. I was addicted to speed (a pseudo-amphetamine better known as Ritalin) for four years of my life (11-15), yet I still managed to ditch the habit over the strenuous objections of my parents and doctors. I suffered from extreme bouts of depression (I'd like to say that I don't anymore, but that's not entirely true...), I only grew a few more inches (my dad is 6'2", I'm 5'7"), I had incontrolable fits of rage for the first month of withdraw, and for what, a few A's? Give me a fucking break. It's been around since the 1950's; haven't they bothered to do serious long-term studies on this shit? No adult I know has anything positive to say about it... The problem is, people keep saying that things like drug addiction or ADHD are diseases and the side affects are just that--mere inconsequential inconviences one must endure while one is taking The Cure. These drugs work because they mimic certain hormones or neurotransmitters. Is it such a stretch to say that any substance that nullifies these drugs might also affect the chemically similar neurotransmitters?
The simple truth is, there IS NO CURE for the human mind. There never will be; we're just too fucking complex. Like the submitter said, what happens when an immunized kid suffers a horrible accident and winds up living with chronic pain, "immune" to any effective treatment? What happens to all of the people who actually do function better under the influence of certain recreational pharmaceuticals? I knew a lot of people who would probably either kill themselves or go berserk or quit their jobs and go homeless if they couldn't smoke/drink/smoke pot. (I worked at McDonald's btw, so when I say a lot of people, I mean a LOT of people.)
Yeah, it's sad, but taking away their reprieve is NOT the answer. There are deep-seated sociological problems underlying drug use, and bullshit projects like these only highlights just how ignorant those in power are.
"Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users".
"Meanwhile, experts at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, have developed a super-virus, harmless to humans, which produces proteins that can block or reduce the effects of cocaine."
"The Ministry of Love is developing a simple operation that reduces the drive towards dangerous sex acts by eliminating the risk of orgasm."
One of those sentences is not in the article.
... I've encountered many instances of mostly elderly people in extreme pain who sadly refuse adequate doses of painkillers because they are afraid of addiction. I've also been friends with pain patients who admit that a certain pleasurable effect from the medically prescribed medication is unavoidable ... I have tried tiny amounts of medical morphine & tincture of opium myself that my friend supplied so I'd understand what he was talking about.
I'm astounded. What has anyone of these children done to deserve forced-injection with anything? Manditory vaccination is something we do for communicable diseases, not lifestyle choices!
We have trouble convincing even at-risk first responders to accept vaccination against things like anthrax that some one might actually try to kill them with. And these people want to force vaccinate everyone against cocaine, beer and cigarettes? Insane.
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
Seems like every jesus freak I know was a prior alcoholic, drug, sex, or gambling addict. I suppose it's good to switch your addiction to something "good", but gee, lets just live our lives with some common sense, comradery, and a quest for truth....This month's Popular Science has an interview with Arthur C. Clarke who looks at religion as a virus of the mind...
Until ~2000 or so, the BSD license contained an advertising clause, requiring redistributions in binary form to have the copyright info. This was later retroactively repealed. And this is horribly offtopic.
If you feel qualified to lecture me about pharmacology, surely you're aware that the mechanism of delivery is vital to a drug's effects -- or would you care to argue that smoking opium and shooting heroin produces identical results? Both are opioids, after all. They both affect the same neurotransmitter systems.
Crack can withstand heat sufficiently to allow it to be delivered via the lungs. This is important. The high is quicker and more intense than cocaine, as is withdrawal. Addiction tends to be more severe, and consequently so are the social effects.
"The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manifacture." - Elbert Hubbard. I had always thought this quote was randomly generated....now I am not so sure.
Oh wait! This is slashdot, never mind.
I have bad news for all of you. This is unstoppable and deservedly so.
If this becomes available, pediatricians will add it to the regular vaccine series infants receive.
Parents will call it a gift from heaven. "Imagine an end to addiction", that tag line is a little tough to overcome with anti-capitalist rant.
Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users, making drugs such as heroin and cocaine pointless to take.
What an idiotic approach. The problem with drugs is not the temporary feeling of euphoria, the problem is that some of them are physically addictive and some have negative side effects. Riding a roller coaster, running a 10K, or having sex provides a temporary feeling of euphoria. Temporary feelings of euphoria are good - they are what our genes give us in return for being their host and propagation vector. The entire hedonistic meaning of life is the pursuit of temporary feelings of euphoria. Without those temporary feelings of euphoria the only reasons to go on living are religion and socialism. What will they do next? put all the children on Ritalin? Solve the physical addiction problem, eliminate the negative side effects, and promote healthy recreational use.
Stop-Prism.org: Opt Out of Surveillance
Governments have very poor records in their dabbling in drugs. In the grand days of the British Empire, the west used the opium trade and essentially encouraged opium use to control the masses in China and elsewhere.
In the US, we find that the CIA actively explored the use of LSD for the purpose of mind control. Ken Kesey got hooked during government experiments.
Sounds to me like government is still up to its old tricks of using chemicals to control minds.
Of course, immmunization against euphoria would seem like a prize to politicians. Think how much more secure we would be in our old age if the children who support us were immunized against euphoria. They would be happy little drones working their days away to our benefit. Best of all, with the big successes of Ritalin and anti euphoria drugs...government medical research will be able to get back to get back to what it does best...find ways to control people.
9/11 proved that there is just too much freedom in the world. We need to get rid of that nasty freedom thang if we want to remain free.
For your edification, here's the fortune that I found at the bottom of the comments page for this article:
:)
"The church saves sinners, but science seeks to stop their manufacture." -- Elbert Hubbard
Nice job, fortune
Oh come on this is such a joke. Im not scared for a second that this would ever happen. There are always wackos around who come up with totally fundamentalist/totalitarian/insane ideas that you never hear about again. This country isnt as big-brother as you think, we might not have a bill of rights (but we do have the data protection act and drinking at 18), but the people here have a common sense (usually) attitude, and its always ok to dislike the government (ive yet to see a patriotic flag-waving person who thinks Blair is the greatest and we should back him all the way). One thing we do have allot of is mad scientists: Professor David Nutt, speaks for itself really.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
The fact that it's taken over forty-five minutes for no one to find this as hysterical as I do frightens me. Is my definition of humor so warped that I'm your only victim being brought to tears?
As a consolation (hopefully), welcome to my friends list.
Mom says my
It is interesting what you say about psychopaths being theorised as being unable to feel. I have noticed this in them myself.
So I have no doubt this page is filled with outraged posts about this idea. However, I come at this from a little differnt angle. I don't have any problem with government mandated mind alteration so long as it really made people happier/better off (the reason that we tend to view it as so objectionable it is always imagined to produce a situation that is on the whole less pleasant). However, this is simply a BAD idea which quite likely will make things significantly less pleasent.
The suggestion of vaccinating children againt morphine or cocaine reminds me of the claims of supposed health benefits for drinking radioactive water (it was eventually banned when someone drank so much their lower jaw fell off). People are jumping over a nifty new technology they don't understand and injudisciously pushing it on the public. I don't say this lightly, I am usually quite disgusted when people cry wolf about new technologies and demand they adhere to a higher safety standard than current options. However, just as in the radioactive water example it isn't merely that we can't guarantee something isn't harmfull but we have good reason to suspect something might be harmfull.
In this example scientists are blindly screwing with important neural circutry. This is analagous to inserting random bytes into your kernel until affects the option you desire. Even if on observation in a differnt enviornment from the production one (rats instead of humans) the kernel still appeared stable you wouldn't trust it for production. Even worse people age, go through puberty etc.. unlike a computer so even a vaccine that seems fine now might manefest problems years later. Also in people we care more about just their external behavior, what if this makes people unhappy.
This is precisely what I fear. More and more evidence keeps mountaing that all sorts of everyday activities cause the same brain activity as drug use. This includes things like eating chocolate and socialization. In fact many important experiences, like the glow of love or post orgasmic bliss are caused by natural versions of illicit drugs (endorphines affect the same receptors as opiates like heroin). Most likely the same receptors these drugs target exist to give important human experiences and perhaps drug addiction is nothing more than an extreme version of desire caused by enjoyment. Quite likely if we give someone these vaccines you would permanetly impair their happiness or experience.
These drugs might be usefull for some severe addicts who desperatly want to get clean but don't have the willpower. The drug lifestyle might be doing them more harm then they risk from this vaccine. Unfortunatly, since they are quiting narcotics (or continuing) it is virtually impossible to tell if the vaccine impaired their natural enjoyment of life (feeling this way can be a sideeffect of longterm drug use). While I'm normally all for testing I'm leary of even giving *one* human test subject this vaccine unless it is their only reasonable hope. Death is one thing but being still alive and finding you can't enjoy life like you were before is simply dreadfull.
If you liked this thought maybe you would find my blog nice too:
I know %1 sounds like a reasonable guess, but actual estimations of psychopathy rates performed by psychologists I've seen were a full %5. I expect in some societies the rate to be significantly higher than that.
According to this article, Dr Robert Hare (emeritus professor of psychology at the University of British Columbia) estimates psychopathy at 1% of the population at large.
However, psychopaths tend to gravitate to particular professions -- "business, politics, law enforcement agencies, law firms, religious organisations and yes, the media" -- where percentages are probably much higher.
-kgj
-kgj
as long as that shit don't block my natural feeling of HAPPINESS and my euphoria when I'm either drunk og training, I say go. But why can't you just give the vaccination to people that already are addicts?
If new druges must be developed to replace the ones that are not working anymore, so be it, as long as the project saves money.
Also, I'm 100% sure the drug-designers (kokaine, lsd, xtacy etc) will come up with new drugs! It will spur drug-innovation!
People are creating pills to immunize people against fealings of guilt and remorse.
Slightly ironic that the
Drugs are:
1. Fun
2. Addictive
3. Unhealthy
1 is not a problem, 2 and 3 are. So why not just develop drugs that are just as much fun, but aren't unhealthy or addictive?
I do... They are no better than mengele, experimenting with how much horror a human can stand... Fucking nazis...
Right, if it solves less than 100% of the problem, then it must be the equivalent of 0%. We've all seen this line of argument before.
"If you feel qualified to lecture me about pharmacology, surely you're aware that the mechanism of delivery is vital to a drug's effects -- or would you care to argue that smoking opium and shooting heroin produces identical results? Both are opioids, after all. They both affect the same neurotransmitter systems."
Sorry -- your comparison of opium to heroin and crack to cocaine is just plain wrong. Opium consists of a mixture of many different types of opiates, codiene, paperivine (sp?), and many others -- heroin is diactylmorphine, (again, sp?) a single opiate. The difference between crack and cocaine is that crack is the free-base form of cocaine, that is , within the molecule you substitute one hydrogen atom for one oxygen-hydrogen pair.
From the article: "Professor David Nutt, a leading government drugs adviser who sits on the committee, told the IoS that anti-drug vaccines for children are likely to be among the panel's recommendations when it reports next March."
Now did you not read that, or do you think they were just lying about that? Drawing unfounded conclusions is shoddy reporting, lying about what people have actually said is far beyond that into the range of libel.
So at least as far as the claim that they're considering imunization of children, there doesn't seem to be any shoddy reporting going on. There might very well be some shoddy thinking going on by those who are developing the vaccines and those who are planning how to use them, but that is an entirely different (and more serious) issue.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
A person I know got totally hooked on heroin and wound up getting sent to a clinic (in Mexico, from memory) to straighten out. After returning, their system was cleared of heroin and, further more, had been drugged up to prevent their body from processing opiates. Basically, opiates just go straight on through the body - so long as they keep taking their booster pills, they can't get off on heroin/opiates.
Guess what - it wasn't the heroin that was the root cause of the problem. It was the fact that this person didn't like their life, couldn't handle reality and wanted to escape it all.
Guess what - the booster pills don't block Special K.
Guess what - a few months later, this person is whacked out on Special K all the time, stops taking the boosters and, a few months after that, is back on heroin again.
All the "blocking" in the world doesn't mean shit when the root cause of the problem is how a person handles "reality." When I hear of these things, I think of my friend's story - I wonder what'll happen to the suicide rates if they find some way of totally blocking addicts to everything (heroin, Special K, coke, LSD, speed, E, etc etc etc) - when "reality" is the problem and they can't "escape" temporarily, how many will choose the permanent solution?
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
This, and the whole War on [some] Drugs, is the most ethically, medically, and fiscally wasteful form of government oppression this side of totalitarian dictatorships.
First of all, humans have used mind-altering substances for one reason or another throughout all of recorded history.
Nicotine in the form of cigarettes is the most addictive and deadly (by a number of scientific and clinical standards, which go beyond its legal status), and alcohol impairs judgement far more than most of the Schedule I/II (Schedule I/II / Class A in the UK, since this article is about something on there) substances do. At least there's slightly less hipocracy in this program since they're vaccinating against nicotine too.
I don't know about over there in the UK, but the government here in the US puts out propaganda ranging from distortions of facts up through blatant lies, in fact far more blatant than issues regarding Iraq. My personal favorites are the "drug money supports Al-Qaeda" claim, which was thoroughly discredited and now officially discredited in the 9/11 report, and opiates fry your brain... in reality they cause no permantent physical damage anywhere in the body and the vast majority of overdoses are either suicides or a direct result of supplies being controlled by the black market leading to doses of unknown amount.
So how did these substances become illegal in the first place? Drug laws came into existence as a result of racism. Opium and the Chinese, marijuana and the blacks. Nicotine being a cash crop for whites, and alcohol being a long-time product used by a large number of whites, were not outlawed despite them not having been shown more harmful at the time (they're still not shown to be more harmful).
To expand on the governments false assertion that Al-Qaeda derives income from drug traffiking, in reality it turns out that the War on Drugs actually supports terrorism; here's some exerpts from the 9/11 report (page numbers in parenthenses):
- "[FBI] priorities were driven at the local level by the field offices, whose concerns centered on traditional crimes such as white-collar offenses and those pertaining to drugs and gangs. Individual field offices made choices to serve local priorities, not national priorities." (74)
- "In 2000, there were still twice as many [FBI] agents devoted to drug enforcement as to counterterrorism." (77)
- "Al Qaeda has been alleged to have used a variety of illegitimate means, particularly drug trafficking and conflict diamonds, to finance itself. While the drug trade was a source of income for the Taliban, it did not serve the same purpose for al Qaeda, and there is no reliable evidence that Bin Ladin was involved in or made his money through drug trafficking." (171)
On top of that, the DEA sends large teams in full riot gear with rifles into nursing homes to arrest elderly medical marijuana patients in CA despite it being acceptable under state law. The Bush also actively blocked funding for scientific research into the issue, and have recently been sued for doing so. A few years back, they attempted to censor studies (by the NIH no less) showing the DARE program to be horribly ineffective. Way to protect the nation from the horrors of drug use guys.
There is a inverse link between funding for the drug war, and funding for education. Further, the war on drugs has been increasingly funded since its inception and now costs billions in taxpayer dollars, but has drug use solidly gone down? No. Has availability of illegal drugs been reduced? No. Prices have gone down, and purity has gone up for many drugs (ironically, while this is true for cocaine, heroin, and a couple others... it is NOT true for the THC content of marijuana despite the governments recent ad campaign saying otherwise).
Medically, the cost to patients who actually need some drugs is continually escalating. Doctors are being scared into outright refusing to prescribe effective pain management programs no matter how severe the pain. Heroin is a very effectiv
The other 42% of the babies became gun totting, cocaine vacuuming machines bent on global chaos.
Diaper changes required riot police!
I can't even begin to describe all of the ways that this pisses me off. First and foremost is the assumption that if you're young that you are somehow at risk of becoming a druggie. Only idiots and losers do drugs. Protecting idiots and loser does nothing but degrade the gene pool in the long run.
I think drugs are a wonderful purifying force in the world. The only problem I have with them is that they don't kill those who use them nearly fast enough or in sufficient numbers.
I think we need variants of crack, smack, and crystal that will kill anyone who uses them regularly in a matter of months instead of the years that are required for the standard variety of these drugs.
Drugs are not the problem, people who use them are. A better solution than developing drugs that kill the effects that other drugs have is to simply sterilize anyone who is an addict. If someone wants to use drugs, fine, but they're not about to start breeding more people like them.
yes, we've all seen that argument before. but that's not the argument being made. the argument being made is that first, an addict continually increases his intake of the drug because he develops a tolerance, or in another way of looking at it, a resistance, to the chemical affecting his brain in the ways he desires. the second part of the argument is that this vaccine does not make taking cocaine pointless, it merely lessens the effect, ie gives you a resistance, or tolerance. in this particular case, that doesn't seem useful, because it's the same effect as having the usual tolerance, and likely the same result will occur, increased cocaine intake.
i agree the x x=0% effective argument is massively flawed, but it's not being used here.
Try as they might I sincerely doubt, for chemical and psychopharmcological reasons, we would see an anti-psychedelic (most familiar are tryptamines and phenethylamines) vaccination. If they did I would definitely think there would be a decreased or nulled response to anti-psychotics, mono-amine inhibitors, and anti-depressants. I hope I am never wrong on this or we might be seeing "1984" not too long after 2004!
I want my Brave New World!
Dammit, now give me my Soma!
"Unheard of means only it's undreamed of yet,
Impossible means not yet done." ~~ Julia Ecklar
So you need 4 times as much cocaine. So you wouldn't cut it and the farmers in the andes would get a few dollars more. Sadly that is not where the mark up happens so i wouldn't be surprised if you wouldn't even notice it on the endsellers price.
Now we might even start vaccinating people so that they don't try out these demonic drugs. Jeez, someone get me off this damn planet.
Don't you know that if you smoke the pot, you'll shoot your best friend in the head, then run over a little girl on her bicycle after watching an infant drown?
All the while financing terrorists!
You child-killing terrorist supporter!
You can't take the sky from me...
...welcome our new government overlords. Oh... no... wait a second here. They want to do WHAT?!?
"False hope is why we'll never run out of natural resources!" - Lewis Black
My favorite part was talking about "spiraling addiction."
This is pretty much directly linked to Britain's rise in amphetamine interdiction raids. Amphetamines and cocaine are often used interchangeably, depending on market rate. When they start busting more cocaine, you'll see a rise in amphetamine use, with the re-emergence of mainlining amphetamines ("speed") - on par with crack cocaine.
My other favorite part:
Perhaps it would be better to say that the cost of the drug war is 12+ bn pounds a year. The only way to know the cost of drug addiction would be to know the approximate number of addicts and the approximate yearly public cost of a legal addict.
Oh, that's right: Britain does* have those numbers. There used to be a program for distributing legal heroin to addicts in Britain, and the entire program was quite cheap. Certainly not 12 billion pounds a year: heroin maintenance wasn't even a major budget issue.
The Daily Mail reports here
Yes, except every now and then there are small outbreaks of measles and whooping cough because society gets a bit slack or some pseudo-science nuts start panicing everybody. Measeles will hospitalize about 1 in every 1000 unimunized children and kill about 1 in every 30,000. With some vaccines when 90+% of the population is immunized most of the others "catch" the vaccine and are also protected. Polio, measles, smallpox, these and other nasties were the scourge of my parents generation, they killed indescriminantly and often. OTOH: The article would make the naive think coke is deadlier than measles. What really interests me is where do I get a nicotine jab. I've been smoking for 30yrs. For those who don't know, nicotine is far more addictive than coke, it is more like heroin than coke for addiction factor and is clearly worse on your health. What's that you say, to get my nicotine jab I have to take a combination vaccine that will also take the pleasure out of grog and ganga, forget it, pass me the lighter. I have a reasonably sound mind and belive I have the right to treat my body badly now and then but I do think we have a responsibilty to stop the spread of fatal & dibilitating disiese. Yes, I know, addiction can be classed as a dibilitaing even fatal disease but the difference is that addiction is normally illegal not contaigous.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Damn. I blame my 3rd grade teacher who fought against my parents wishes and wouldn't give spelling tests. He had a kind of 'hippie' attitude about it that was common among the young teachers of the era.
/I blame my poor handwriting on computers
I used to be an absolutely horrid speller, but 23 years later I'm only suffering the occasional lapse.
Stupid hippies.
As for the Parties as a whole, in a recent bill to allow states to set their own rules for Medical Marijuana, only 10% of Republican Reps voted in favor of it, while nearly two thirds of Democrats did. While we need to flush the bad third of Dems out, most of them chose the sane option. They aren't the same, one Party is salvageable, whilst the Republicans are wholly controlled by an evil, backward, sect of Puritanical monsters.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,126869 0,00.html/
http://www.cannabis.net/presidentialpot.html/
http://www.maryjanesgarden.com/legalization_of_mar ijuana.php/
Is it just me, or does advertising prescription drugs tell us that something is horribly wrong in the US?
I mean, these are controlled substances that have to be prescribed by a Doctor. The idea is that the DOCTOR is supposed to know what's right for you, based on years and years of education and practice.
Welcome to the 21st Century, the dawn of a Brave New World.
vi ~/.emacs
Four crude but effective "levers of control" on society are, water, food, sex and drugs. The last two tend to be lumped together by some churches & poli-critters.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Secondly - the newspaper article is so obviously a typical 'scare' story; it's in the Independent for starters; it's in a Sunday edition (the day when the Uk press is crazier than normal); and just how likely is it that any government would even suggest such a thing to parents? Heck, they can't even get parents to vaccinate kids with the MMR jab. (And hey - when did Slashdot get to suggest 'quango' when it didn't say such a thing in the original article?)
Thirdly - the clinical trials carried out on the TA-CD vaccine appear to be limited in duration so I'm not sure they would actually last as long as a vaccine.
Fourthly - what the heck has this got to do with computers? ;>
The best way to kill a bussiness is to take away the profit. Moderately priced and leagal drugs will do that. BTW: What ever happened to all those bootleggers?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Drugs work only because they attach to receptors that occur naturally. The natural neurotransmitters and compounds that normally fit into those receptors have some useful if not essential biological purpose. Now we add an antibody that targets a chemical that fits into these receptors. This triggers the immune system to attack and destroy anything that looks like the chemical. But what happens if due to variations in luck and genetic variation that immune response starts targetting the natural neurotransmitter because of its essential physical similarity? All of a sudden you see a rash of people developing fatal depression (serotonin misreaction instead of the targetted ectasy), Parkinson's (dopamine misreaction instead of the targetted amphetamines), and worse. Who wants to take the bet that people will die if this catches on, particularly if it's made compulsory.
Just wait until the day this is no longer mandatory...
What? Did you expect the goverment to let you keep your intolerant moral? You incensetive cloud!
How will we respond? What we respond to can be figured out later by those who rule us; what matters is that we will respond more predictably than they did before.
> There are indications that psycopathy is the result of a failure in an emotional pathway, leading to both loss of guilt feelings and risk-taking in an attempt to achieve any feeling at all. Is THIS the pathway in question? Will an "immunization" program raise the incidence of psychopathy from about 1% of the population to the bulk of it? Will we have a generation of used car salesmen, confidence men, gangsters, death-squad members, and political dictators?
> Fooling around with something as basic as the reward hardware of the mind is NOT something you can do and expect no undesirable side-effects.
You look at it from the limited perspective of one not in power. Place yourself in the mindset of your leaders. If they're psychopaths, the benefits are obvious -- but the benefits are also obvious from a humanitarian standpoint. From either vantage point, this is an exquisitly beautiful development.
A society at war with itself will fall; to defend against threats from without -- we must first eliminate war from within. Imagine the millions of us, all of our neural reward pathways under complete control - a harmonious society whose population exchibits a perfect unity of thought, purpose, and deed.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a human face, with the mind behind it re-engineered so that it no longer need the boot that would otherwise have to stomp on it, forever.
- "these chemicals dont(sic) have any good effect on the humna(sic) body" - it's obvious you haven't tried them so... butt out and leave my kids alone.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
...when they pry it from my limp, cheetoh-orange-encrusted fingers while I sleep.
do not read this line twice.
"I refuse to sanctionise those murders by taking advantage from them." (a lot of christinas and others belive abortion is murder)
"Parts of a human sacrifices is the most powerfull bearers of curses! No way!" (in some occult tradisions, a curce can easyly be carried by a object. It will be extra powerfull if it is placed near / inside the one that is cursed. A powerfull bearer will be a pice of a sacrifice. Humansacrifices are considered the most powerfull, the younger the better)
Spelling/grammar nazis welcome (English is not my first language and I am trying to improve my spelling/grammar)
I agree that he chose a poor analogy, here, but his point is valid. Delivery mechanism makes a drug behave differently. In some cases, it can be quite different indeed. The freebase form of cocaine, when smoked, lasts a shorter period of time, builds up to a higher level in the brain, and wears off faster. Much faster. This causes a peaking effect. Fast, intense high and a fast, intense drop-off. That said, crack is not necessarily any more addictive than cocaine, it's just that if you're spending money on cocaine or crack, you're going to run out of crack first, and have to go buy more sooner. If you're doing coke, you may just run out right about the time you're tired of doing it or have to do something the next day, and decide to go to bed instead. Most of it is just spin, though. The effects seem different in the short time, the long term effects are the same.
-1, "1337" speak
Spelling/grammar nazis welcome (English is not my first language and I am trying to improve my spelling/grammar)
The CCLE (CEnter for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics) has a good article about this, and ihas prepared a 50 page report about this. http://cognitiveliberty.org/news/Pharma_press_rele ase.html
... recurrent kidney stones.
;)
Yeah, laugh if you will. Women who've had many kids claim the stones were worse than childbirth. I've been incapacitated, crawling on the ground out of the bathroom with shakes, chills, vomitting, and god un-ending unbearable pain.
I used to take lortab (vicadin). 5/500's worked. Then I had to up it to 7.5/250's. I personally was starting to get freaked about all of the tylenol, deadly poison as it is, that I was ingesting.
The 2nd to last stone I had required 6 5/500s in a 30 minute period and STILL did nothing. I finally got the docs to up me to Endocot. Didn't help.
I'm told the last resort is Oral Morphine. I won't lie when I say that dosing on that brings a 'rush' and it is nice, but I can't honestly say whether or not it's pleasure or just relief from the unending fucking pain. Those stones never seem so bad in retrospect, but on the last one I decided to try and rate it by scraping my skin with a pin- didn't even compare.... and I'm too afraid to try it without the stone because I'm betting it's gonna hurt
SO... would vaccination help? I don't take those pills for the rush, I take them because I've had 18 kidney stones (doctor misprescribed medicine). I can't imagine what life would be life if I'd had to start on something stronger than lortab for the first 14 stones.
Dupont Chemicals was one of the main pushers for the ban on marihuana (hemp) because they wanted to sell Nylon. Lots of other industries wanted hemp to go also: timber companies wanted hemp gone so they could sell tree-based paper, clothing companies didn't want to sell clothes that lasted forever... lots of people wanted hemp out of the way for all kinds of reasons.
convienently enough, the director of the Fed Bureau of Narcotics was related to the U.S. Secretary of Treasury (who also happened to be a banker for Dupont. Oh surprise!) and with all their business buddies, helped create the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937 ----} which directly led to an effective ban on industrial hemp.
I won't disagree with the whole Asians & Opium thing, but I thought the Cocaine ban was related to crime (which i guess you could say was b/c of blacks). Anyways, what triggered bans on the remaining drugs that hadn't been discovered / weren't illegal yet was the fact that social outsiders were using them. Hippies, non-whites, whoever wasn't your avg WASP. Here's a choice quote which summarizes why many many drugs were banned. "Fears that respectable white women were being seduced into a life of prostitution and debauchery." That's cocaine, opium, mary jane, LSD & a whole host of others
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It's not ironic because the /. article and VV article are about different drugs that block different things. The /. article is about a drug that blocks the euphoric feelings one gets when taking recreational drugs, so vaccinated against vices is the appropriate title. The VV article is about a drug that blocks feelings of guilt and remorse, and it's taken after an event, so it's more like a cure than a vaccine. Anyhow, the two articles are different, so no irony.
Nice Marmot
Soma.
You clearly don't understand society if you think that someone who is distracted from thier "responsibility" is no longer eligible for that societies help. And where does all this crap about "society is becoming less personally responsible" keep coming from, are you less responsible, has there been a poll? This is the same attitude as "we know what's best for you". By your logic we should ban cars and trucks because of the massive medical cost of socially irresponsible drivers. I mean anyone who runs a stop sign should clearly be left to die on the pavement and thier estate should be used to pay for the damage.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
http://www.scifi.com/sfw/issue109/classic.html
THX 1138
I saw a standup comic who gave several good examples of irony after a few minutes' criticism directed at Alanis Morrissette. The one I recall best is,
Irony is naming an airport after the president who fired all the air traffic controllers.
Mom says my
It is not 1 April yet, but I guess, it is THE Independant. Nuff sed.
Excellent - thanks for this one - I'd forgotten about it (yes, been off discussion boards/usenet/mailing lists for a while now :)
:)
Does this count as some sort of record for time taken to reach the end point?
Thanks for the laugh
I left my body to science, but I'm afraid they've turned it down...
After being vaccinated, I can't get addicted to gambling, pr0n, any drug, shopping, anything! I'm desperate!
Someone help me! I can't stop trying to get addicted to something! I keep trying, over and over, and nothing! I can't stop!
I need help...
These aren't the sigs you're looking for.
I'll bite. You're missing the point. It's not that it's less than 100% effective. It's that it actually makes the problem worse by making them need more cocaine.
The dream reveals the reality which conception lags behind. That is the horror of life- the terror of art. -Franz Kafka
Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria...
Gee, I wonder what happens when a child grows up and realizes that the fact that he can't feel any euphoria is directly connected to something the government forced on him without his consent or knowledge.
Now multiply by ten million. Somehow, I don't think "But our party wasn't in power at the time!" will really be an adequate excuse. Britian at least has strong gun laws, but I don't expect this little "scheme" to stay on that side of the pond. If you think that the current "cutting" epidemic [a syndrome where depressed adolescents surreptitiously slice their skin in order to "feel something"] is bad, just wait until America has to deal with the 'britting' epidemic: kids running amok down city streets spraying everything in their path with AK-47's, screaming "Can you feel me now?!!!"
The fact is, life without the normal emotions -- and euphoria is indeed a normal emotion -- is not worth living. Are the authors of this "radical scheme" ready for the wave of early adolescent suicides/homicides that this little experiment of theirs will unleash in about a decade? And I don't expect that hundreds or thousands of their grieving/pissed-off parents will be inclined to "listen to reason" at that point either.
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
First take a vaccine against pain receptors.
Then be careful when reading so you don't bleed to death from paper cuts.
Whatever the origins of the drug war, some drugs are absolutely harmful in untrained hands (Note: I specifically said untrained hands... cocaine, opiates, and amphetamine derivatives do have legitimate medical uses, provided they're prescribed by someone with the proper expertise). I'm speaking particularly about hard drugs. Anyone who denies this either has a political agenda, or is not connected to reality. In a perfectly Libertarian world, it wouldn't matter, because society wouldn't be liable for the costs of people drowning their bodies in illicit drugs. However, fortunately or not, society does end up paying.
I don't have many problems with marijuana in my clinical practice... but cocaine? Meth? Heroin? Oh hell yes... I could curl your hair with the stories of some of my overdoses and trauma patients, many related directly to those drugs.
Admittedly, other common drugs can also cause mortality and morbidity (eg. angioedema from ACE inhibitors is an absolute nightmare), but those drugs are typically treating an actual medical condition... they're not simply being used by those individuals who seem to spend their days seeking the ultimate buzz.
I don't necessarily feel people should be prevented from making their personal choices... but when they're sucking up the resources of others in the process of exploring the depths of their addiction, I understand society wanting to have some say in the matter.
As an aside, depending on the receptor specificity of the vaccine involved, it might be possible to block some of the euphoria without blocking the analgesia. If they could engineer a drug to be that specific, I'd be inclined to use it... I don't see where blocking the buzz (and other side effects) could be anything but beneficial. After all, when I'm straightening someone's broken arm or leg, I could care less if they're high as a kite; my primary goal is that they're spared the exquisite agony that comes from bone grinding/crunching on bone...
Even if a man chops off your hand with a sword, you still have two nice, sharp bones to stick in his eyes.
"Meanwhile, experts at the Scripps Research Institute in San Diego, California, have developed a super-virus, harmless to humans, which produces proteins that can block or reduce the effects of cocaine."
I'll tell you right now this will be a disaster. There is no way they can have any reasonable degree of certainty this will be harmless.
Wait until they develop a vaccine against caffine.
Using my irony-strong will (irony as in "made or consisting of iron"), I actually took the time to look it up, and picked the dictionary whose definition gave me the most slack...
I guess you were using the "ignorance feigned for the purpose of confounding" definition in your highly ironic post.The anti-smoking vaccine is only in phase I testing (safety), while the anti-cocaine vaccine is in phase II (effectiveness). But it looks like both are going to work.
In some ways, the anti-smoking vaccine is more promising. The cocaine vaccine might well be overwhelmed by injected overdoses. That's unlikely to happen with smoking.
Isn't this like trying to cure the violently criminal mind with eye-drops?
Mind the gap
And do you really think that if this "vaccination" is put into practice, it will be used voluntarily by the person it's used on in more than a tiny minority of cases?
Irritable, left-wing and possibly humorous bumper stickers and t-shirts
The New World Order just *loves* vaccines.
Just ask any gulf war syndrome veteran...
/. needs a +1, Terrifying mod option.
Wow, hard to know who to root for there. Sure, that's a pretty blatant violation of free speech, but hey, since we have that here in .us too, at least over there someone is telling those fscking Xians to STFU.
Now I'm curious. Have to google for Sweden's position on other things now...
What next, mandatory chemical castration?
t ion%22+site%3Anews.bbc.co.uk&sourceid=firefox&star t=0&start=0&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
2 coff=1&q=%22chemical+castration%22+site%3Acnn.com& ;btnG=Search
Already happened. cf. Alan Turing.
In fact, it's being considered for so many things that a Google for "chemical castration" on the BBC news site returns over a dozen recent hits:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22chemical+castra
A similar search on CNN:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c
Immunization against opiates is very dangerous, since the immune system is at its core a diversity generator, that is, it is random.
Drugs and opiates are very similar, that is why they work, so the immune system might react against your own biological signals.
You are almost assured to get some people as a result of the immunization who will be unable to feel joy, and who will learn badly.
I believe you should refuse this treatment for your child unless you have several examples in your family that show a tendancy to abuse drugs.
Or unless you live in a really really bad neighborhood and cannot move.
I'm still trying to figure out what people mean by 'social skills' here.
it blocks somone from addiction, but if it actually stops the drug working or makes the person have a physical reaction to the drug i.e. be sick this would be a worrying step. If it works on stopping someone getting addicted good but anything more than that is to far a invasion of someones body.
Saying Apple is better than MS is like saying Botulism is better than rabies.
In the unlikely case that you haven't figured the standard slashdotter codex by now, it goes somewhat like this:
/. whiner should never have to pay for anything. Yeah, verily, the pharmaceuticals corporations should just donate medicine for free to everyone.)
/. it's _fashionable_ to be a misfit.
- Any form of corporation is pure evil. (Unless they're currently fighting Microsoft or SCO, that is.)
- That goes double for corporations which actually invest in research, and need patents to protect their investment. (Here's a thought for all the anti-IP zealots: no company would invest hundreds of millions in researching a new drug, if after that everyone could legally brew the same thing in a bathtub and drive down costs to the point where you can't recoup the research costs.)
- Paying for anything is evil. (Whether it's patent license fees, music, movies, or medicine, the ISO-standard
- Governments are inherently evil (and sometimes controlled by every single conspiracy ever invented.)
- Any kind of hierarchy or authority is bad, for that matter. (Gee, life would be so much easier without these pesky bosses telling me what the client wants. I know the client would be happier if they got a flight sim, not a B2B web site.)
- Anything can be explained by a good conspiracy theory. (E.g., if some disease can't be cured yet, then every single medic, pharmacist and pharma company is part of a conspiracy to not invent a cure.)
Sad thing is, I don't even think that we simply have a population of mentally-deranged social-misfits. My theory is that, well, we basically have what another site called the SFV (Stupid Fashion Victim) syndrome. On
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
What is kind of ironic (though not by dictionary standards) is that the same government that is handing out speed tablets (Ritalin) to school kids, is also looking to give them an anti-drug drug. Some sort of strange double standard is in action here. Of couse, the kids can take the Ritalin as prescribed, but wouldn't it be more fun to save it up for the weekend (assuming your older siblings haven't already nicked it) ;->
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
Though we shouldn't be too surprized- it's not much different than the air-force kids that we pumped up with methamphetamine before the bombed the first Canadians in Afganastan.
I guess this stuff is OK so long as it has a big pharmecutical company's trademark on it.
Come on guys, this is obviously a April's Fool hoax,.. wait a mo', just checking my calendar...
There are some observations one can make about this article, though - notic for example that one professor Nutt is involved; certainly inspires confidence, a name like that.
Apart from that - the ability to feel euphoria is a natural thing and part of the brain's reward system. I can't imagine any responsible person who knows what he doing would ever want to disable or impair a person's ability to feel rewarded - this would have extremely grave consequences, expecially for a the development of a child. Just imagine that you couldn't feel that it was good to have done something: you would probably either develop severe depression or perhaps psychopathy (if you don't feel good about empathic and doing nice things for other people, you'd avoid it, right?)
No, this kind of wanting to prevent a minor problem with something that is so profoundly insecure and potentially devastating is way out of this world. When I say minor I am of course thinking of the fact that only a small minority actually becomes addicted to anything - most people who try drugs will walk away from them after a while, simply because it doesn't appeal to them anymore.
In the US, we find that the CIA actively explored the use of LSD for the purpose of mind control. Ken Kesey got hooked during government experiments.
LSD is not addictive. Get your facts straight.
Daniel
Carpe Diem
So far as The Man is concerned, both vice (not doing as you're told) and virtue (not thinking as you're told) are rebellious and undesirable.
Crucial Note: I'm not too good at sarcasm.
With great power comes great electricity bills.
We've seen this line of argument before - ignore what the poster said and spew a line of irrelevant bile instead - but the original argument is actually pretty unassailable.
The chemical reaction used to make crack from cocaine is required to "freebase" the active parts of the molecule - in other words, crack can be ionized without destroying it, while cocaine is destroyed by vaporization.
You can smoke cocaine in a reefer but the high is not the same as crack.
People take drugs as a form of escapism I believe. If you take that away, they will find something else. The solution is to find out why they are trying to escape.
Let's assume that this solution is ethically acceptable, that the pharmaceutical companies can be trusted on messing with childrens' brains, and that the vaccine works flawlessly for opium and derivates, marijuana, tobacco, alcohol.
Do you expect that organized crime will give up on drug dealing? Nope, they will push other drugs that will need a new vaccine to be developed, if possible. I don't think a neural system can withstand so many vaccines without side effects.
Do you expect that youngsters will give up on trying to feel high? Nope, they will find other ways: if it's not illegal substances it will be with illegal activities like gambling, shooting people, running with a car at 100mph. Some people simply want to escape from the cage modern society is putting around them and don't realize that illegal activities are part of the same cage.
So it won't work, period.
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
so why don't we sterilise them while we're at it?
As with all medical procedures in this country, you cannot be compelled to receieve anything without your will (Or without your parents' will if you are a minor).
There has been over the last few years a scare over the MMR (Mumps, Measles and Rubella) vaccine and the vaccination rates have gone right down. In some areas the rates of unvaccinated children have hit a critical mass, so you are seeing mini epidemics of measles. I read a couple of months ago about some children who were disabled by bad cases of measles. The irony of it was that their parents wanted them vaccianted, but due to an allergic reaction to the vaccine, they couldn't take it. Their only defence was other parents doing their duty and vaccinating their own children.
These children would have been spared if vaccination was mandatory, but rightly the state cannot force treatment onto an individual without their consent.
We invaded a sovereign state just because they wouldn't buy our trade goods..probably many other examples through history as well...
Opium Wars, 1839-42 and 1856-60, two wars between China and Western countries. The first was between Great Britain and China. Early in the 19th cent., British merchants began smuggling opium into China in order to balance their purchases of tea for export to Britain. In 1839, China enforced its prohibitions on the importation of opium by destroying at Guangzhou (Canton) a large quantity of opium confiscated from British merchants. Great Britain, which had been looking to end China's restrictions on foreign trade, responded by sending gunboats to attack several Chinese coastal cities. China, unable to withstand modern arms, was defeated and forced to sign the Treaty of Nanjing (1842) and the British Supplementary Treaty of the Bogue (1843). These provided that the ports of Guangzhou, Jinmen, Fuzhou, Ningbo, and Shanghai should be open to British trade and residence; in addition Hong Kong was ceded to the British. Within a few years other Western powers signed similar treaties with China and received commercial and residential privileges, and the Western domination of China's treaty ports began. In 1856 a second war broke out following an allegedly illegal Chinese search of a British-registered ship, the Arrow, in Guangzhou. British and French troops took Guangzhou and Tianjin and compelled the Chinese to accept the treaties of Tianjin (1858), to which France, Russia, and the United States were also party. China agreed to open 11 more ports, permit foreign legations in Beijing, sanction Christian missionary activity, and legalize the import of opium. China's subsequent attempt to block the entry of diplomats into Beijing as well as Britain's determination to enforce the new treaty terms led to a renewal of the war in 1859. This time the British and French occupied Beijing and burned the imperial summer palace (Yuan ming yuan). The Beijing conventions of 1860, by which China was forced to reaffirm the terms of the Treaty of Tianjin and make additional concessions, concluded the hostilities.
See A. Waley, The Opium War through Chinese Eyes (1958, repr. 1968); H.-P. Chang, Commissioner Lin and the Opium War (1964); P. W. Fay, The Opium War, 1840-1842 (1975).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia, 6th ed. Copyright © 2004, Columbia University Press.
But things will have changed since the doctor was at medical school, and the advertising for these drugs must target the doctors as well.
But over here in Australia , we don't do that (that I notice, or at least remember), so I could be wrong about how things are in the US.
That's not the reason for jewish 'forced genital mutliation' (as you put it). There isn't even a clear concept of sin in modern judaism.
-
------- Oh damn.... the Sigfile escaped... -Great OM
Sounds kinda farmiliar
Childhood immunisation would provide adults with protection from the euphoria that is experienced by users.
So the drug pushers will tell people that to counter the vaccine, you have to take more of their drug. So a guy takes three times his normal dose, and ends up with an overdose, having never noticed any effects.
And what about people who already have a biochemical dependence on a drug?
tasks(723) drafts(105) languages(484) examples(29106)
In Sweeden, it is now illegal to say that homosexuallity is wrong. (My fellow europeans, this is wrong because it breaks bouth free speach and religous freedom, since preacing from the Bible (Romans 1) and claiming it is the truth can now get you to jail)
Jail is indeed wrong for that. Claiming the bible is the truth should have you committed to an asylum, not prison.
Just start dishing out Tabernanthe Iboga (Ibogaine in the USA), and drug addictions will be a things of the past. Good times, and no more heroin!
You create your own reality - Leave mine to me.
That's why there's things like medical journals and the like. The thought of my doctor learning how to treat me from TV ads is a bit frightening.
vi ~/.emacs
I don't know how serious you are since you consider yourself to be ranting...
However "responsibility" is a huge problem in the current day and age. Lack of Responsibility. If it is a good outcome then it is because of the President/CEO/leader's abilities, if it is a failure then no one is to blame (eg. any company), if it is a failing then someone/thing else is to blame (eg. drugs), and even if the supposed facts point directly to one or more persons they still have a stable of scapegoats (eg. GWB). It is amazing to me how wrt 9/11 all the government officials can decry proof and their own mistakes and expect the world to carry on as if nothing had happened - and the American people oblige!
From what I know it is the government's fault (and possibly some other organizations) for making drugs into a hobgoblin instead of controlling them as they do (or don't) alcohol. The most recent info I have was a PBS (Frontline?) special on Ecstacy where Reagan's (single) scientist who "proved" and reported on all the bad side effects later turned out to be purely lying. That was so Federal Drug Enforcement officers could start attacking the drugs users since it was so new that it wasn't on any of their illegal lists. And that was the basis of Reagan's "Tough on Drugs" policy which has never been overturned.
Who is responsible for that? The now-dead president who could get his name on a new US currency? Even if it is (not *was* - he is still, currently responsible!) him at the highest level, even if everyone else followed his lead to prosecute citizens, I still don't see any mechanisms in place - government, military, society, capitalist, anywhere, at any level - which do what should be done:
1. proportionately reprimand those in charge - no slap on the wrist for starting an open military conflict
2. proportionately compensate those unjustly persecuted - time, money, public apology...
3. proportionately change most people's attitudes about those responsible - put out the correcting propaganda instead of obliviously letting Reagan remain "that charismatic old codger"
4. takes actions to help prevent similar mistakes from happening again in the future in the same or other areas.
It truly is a mad, mad, mad, mad world. If you find an alternate universe I can join, I'd be happy to hear about it.
8-PP
To me, the thought of anyone learning anything more than where to go for a meal from TV ads is frightening.
Ken Kesey was never hooked to LSD, if you've ever used the stuff you'd understand why. Acid is both fun and gruelling, its one of those things you love to do..rarely.. cos its a heck of a journey. He did however use Psycosyblin after a researcher gave him some., and started his drug use there.
Its all detailed delightfully and bizarely in "The electric cool aid acid test".
Excuse the Unicode crap in my posts. That's an apostrophe, and slashdot is busted.
No, but he was most certainly hooked on it, and he'd be the first to say so. That was one of his biggest anti-drug-law arguments: That the government created LSD, got him hooked on it and then made it illegal. Man, there's whole books written on this subject, so lets not be so damning about which facts are 'straight'.
Remember, we may like black and white, but everything is really a shade of gray.
No Comment.
Actually, that IS the problem: Drugs are TOO fun. They are often times more fun than other things in people's lives that turn out to be useful to society.
If that were the case, we'd all be drug addicts. But we aren't. Why? Because most people know that many things that are a lot of fun aren't good for them, so they don't do them. Furthermore, most people who try illegal drugs (the majority of Americans) manage to stop taking them on their own, so it isn't the case that you automatically become a slave to drugs if you take them.
You have a reward system in your brain that has evolved for hundreds of millions of years to promote evolutionarily useful behavior.
Yes, and a few million years ago, another system evolved that lets us evaluate the future consequences of our actions and make choices accordingly. If that newer evolutionary system isn't working for you, then you have a problem, and that problem goes far beyond the potential for drug addiction.
In fact, I think the reason many people end up having drug problems is because they believe that their lives are so miserable that they might as well take drugs--probably quite a rational decision for many of them. And you aren't going to stop that by vaccinating them.
Anyone else remember this from Neuromancer? They stopped Case from getting a kick off anything to keep him focussed on the job, as I recall. And in the same book that he came up with the concept of cyberspace, 20 years ago! What are the chances of that, eh?
this seems much like the future shown in Equilibrium. The citizens must take their emotion repression drugs or else they're in violation of their governmental law. truly a scary thought...
"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience." -C.S. Lewis
Fat, drunk and stupid is no way to go through life, son.
Of course, being drugs, alcohol and nicotine would be included. I suspect up here in Canada, it just wouldn't fly and be a voluntary vaccination if anything... I mean get real, we're about to (sometime in the near future) decriminalize marijuana again and making it a legal recreational drug won't be far behind (if the Americans don't have a conniption anyway)... of course it's not physically addictive so this vaccination would be of limited use. Oh, wait, I love smoking cigarettes, but don't anymore because they are so addictive. With a vaccination like this, I can again without worry. Yipee!
As a cancer patient, I too worry that programs to lessen the 'abuse-ability' of certain drugs will make them useless to those fighting serious pain. At age 22 I was diagnosed with bone cancer, the tumor wrapped around my right pelvic bone and was inmeshed in with my nerves, giving me tremendous pain in my hip and all down the front and back of my right leg. In the last months leading up to the experimental surgery (amputation), I filled at least ten different pain perscriptions, at my doctor's suggestion, to attempt to find one that helped the pain (we'd try one, it wouldn't work, he'd write me a perscription for another...etc). After the first two, my perscriptions took longer and longer to fill...they would call the doctor and wait to get a call back confirming I really needed these drugs, and I wasn't just an addict. I know fellow cancer sufferers who were refused drugs, had perscriptions torn up, because the pharmacy believed they were drug addicts due to the amount of medication they required. I can only imagine how vaccinations would make this worse.
My surgery is another case where I am grateful vaccinations such as those in the article are not in use. I was given massive doses of Fentynol and various other heavy drugs in the hospital to attempt to control the tremendous pain from the hemipelvectomy (amputation of hip and leg, had part of my spine messed with, as well). If I had resistance to such medications, I never would have made it. As it was, it took about three months for me to get off the 'hard stuff' and onto the regular stuff (ie Percoset) because of the pain. If I had been resistant, I imagine I would never have been able to get out of bed, do physical therapy, and hell, eat because of pain.
I'm sorry to hear of your chronic pain...it makes me wish that instead of trying to 'fight drug use' they would put that money toward better pain medications with less side effects.
Voices--Art, Poetry, Photography
irony is a scotsman cloning a sheep
We went on vacation, and ironically, it rained the whole time.
or
Dad didn't see the irony in getting a flat tire on the way to work.
My above post would be more appropriate if it had been in reply to a similar statement.
However, there is still no irony in the original grandparent. He made an interesting observation and shared it with us; he deserved his mod up. But irony was mentioned where there was none.
I liked your reference to "irony-strong will" (really), but you admittedly
"picked the dictionary whose definition gave [you] the most slack".
This is precisely the problem.
Ironic is a great word, and I would hate to see it trashed by the disparaging trend of "Well, enough people have misunderstood the definition or pronunciation of this word, so we may as well expand it to include what the uninformed masses believe, so that more of us can be correct." that has snowballed more and more of our words. A couple examples of what I mean:
We had a word with a clear, efficient meaning, but now when someone wants to have bimonthly meetings, we're forced into checking context to determine whether the speaker actually meant two or only .5 times per month, and in written form, it's rarely clear.
The reason this happened is beyond me; I'd never tell anyone I'm bi-finished mowing the lawn, or that I had to let my bi-eaten lunch get cold when my toddler fell down the stairs.
The Boston Keltics?
The prevalence of the incorrect method is so complete that I've never heard anyone use it correctly. So everyone says "raowter" (or however you choose to spell it phonetically). I can't say "router" properly because it sounds stupid (yes, I'll admit that).
The wrong way is collectively perceived as the right way, and those who resist the change give up or are overpowered. The change becomes official. It is effectively conceded, "that's wrong, but enough people believe it, so now I guess it's right." It's this lazy way of "P.C.-ing" the language so no one gets their feelings hurt that gets the snowball rolling. Communication breaks as the meaning is diluted.
Mom says my
Are you familiar with (forgive my spelling, I am not medically-inclined) Sharko-Marie-Toothe, or Tapetoe Retinal Degeneration?
If so, I'd like to hear your input on these fairly rare conditions. Barring that, are there any places I can search online for insight into their details?
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail.
Yeah, that was fun.
"but you admittedly "picked the dictionary whose definition gave [you] the most slack". This is precisely the problem. "
Bottom line - I actually agree with you totally (even to the extent that I think your definition is more correct than Merriam-Webster's, and that they should swap their primary and secondary definitions); but was just having fun too.
Join us down here south of the Manson-Nixon line.
I've been here 12 years and I still can't make myself say "karry-okey" when I mean karaoke. And if that's not a tip-of-the-iceberg kinda statement, well, then this post is ironic.
Quantum materiae materietur marmota monax si marmota monax materiam possit materiari?
Shop as usual. And avoid panic buying.
Saying "hooked on" does not imply clinical dependency. It was the thing Kesey wanted to explore. "Hooked on Phonics" does not imply a clinical dependency on phonics. The only stated fact in the post was that governments have an on going interest in using drugs for controlling people.
Heh.
"even dictionaries ... sometimes have such bad definitions"
I thought about checking several, but my post was already too long, and I knew I wouldn't be able to resist including anything I might find in their discrepancies.
was just having fun too.
This was cool... Touche' ;)
Too bad you post anonymously; I'd add you to my friends list. Anyway, thanks for the chuckles. And for the thought-"provoking."
Mom says my
Heh. I only saw the extra "n" at first and thought it was a typo. I've only been there once, and it was Orlando, so I doubt that counts in your context. In other words, I'm lost. Is that "karry-okey" as opposed to "kara okeh?" I've got such a hodge podge of varied pronunciations here where I live that I'm rarely surprised by hearing something said differently.
It's ironic that I am such a pedant, considering where I live. ;)
Mom says my
[sarcasm] I'm glad to learn that we are making rapid progress to where humans will learn to control their military with drugs. Good thing we're not still a dangerous, savage child-race, or anything.[/sarcasm]
"We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
It's actually me, the ron_ivi guy who started this tangent with my overly casual misuse of the term ironic. No doubt this'll lose (it'd almost be fun to say 'loose') me the spot on the friends list, but I do most of my off-topic posting as an AC.
I've never been that good at grammar/linguistics, but kinda enjoy the topic anyway and know how to use a reference book when/if I need to - so when someone hits one of my posts with a grammar flame, I can't resist responding in kind.
Nah, but if it had become a dubious matter, the 'loose' joke would have tipped it for me anyway (see below).
I've never been that good at grammar/linguistics, but kinda enjoy the topic anyway and know how to use a reference book when/if I need to - so when someone hits one of my posts with a grammar flame, I can't resist responding in kind.
- You did it well.
- You can admit when someone makes a good point (too rare on
/.).
- You make good points yourself.
- It was fun.
- You're clearly not giving yourself enough credit on the grammar thing. Even so,
- I'm interested in a ton of things I absolutely suck at doing.
- I'm a hopeless idealist, strangely (ironically?) crossed with a healthy dose of cynicism, and I appreciate people actually being human instead of elitist "c4n y00 f33R m3 n0|/\|? 600d!" dickheads.
Thanks again for the debate. Hope exiting the closet doesn't get you any offtopic mods.Mom says my
A group in the US, the Center for Cogntive Liberty & Ethics just published a report earlier this month called "Pharmacotherapy and the Future of the Drug War" that predicted the entrance of compulsory "vaccines" against illicit drugs. It details exactly what these drugs are, who's testing them (Big Pharma) and who's funding it (NIDA). The report is available for free as a pdf .
Jesus what balls !
Fight Frist Psoting!
Browse Slashdot with 'Newest First'!
I also support worker safety protections and environmental regulations. I'm from the old school of business ethics, the companies obligation is to maximize its profits and nothing else. The markets tend to support this kind of thinking, and so it must be true. In such a non-utopian outlook on the market, the government must step in and set a bottom line on business practices because the market won't. This is far fairer than expecting companies to go out of their way to run ethical businesses; if the government sets the line than all companies have to start from that point and nobody is at a disadvantage for doing the right thing. If the market sets the line than only the ethical companies see their profits hurt.
Income tax collection was established in the 16th amendment, so it must be Constitutional. If you don't like it vote to have the amendment removed. And you'll find that when you look at Kerry's "flip flops", most are merely Republican over-simplifications of Kerry's positions. For instance, the "flip flop" over "No Child Left Behind". He supports the bill, but critized Bush* for not funding it properly. Yet somehow the "liberal" media has managed to turn that into a flip flop. He notably has changed position on the PATRIOT act, probably because they were expected to vote for it a few hours after recieving the several hundred page document and so didn't realize some of the nastier provisions contained therein. It's a shame stuff like that happens in the Senate. But people make mistakes, I'm willing to forgive if it means getting better policies.
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJR J8OVF&b=44515
http://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/constituti on.amendmentxvi.html
Dead druggie is much cheaper to handle than one in intensive medical care.
So, folks dropping from overdose like flies is much better for the government...