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Snortable Drug 'Replaces' Sleep For Monkeys In Trials
sporkme writes "A DARPA-funded research project at UCLA has wrapped up a set of animal trials testing the effects of inhalation of the brain chemical orexin A, a deficiency of which is a characteristic of narcolepsy. Monkeys were deprived of sleep, and then given a shot of the compound. 'The study ... found orexin A not only restored monkeys' cognitive abilities but made their brains look "awake" in PET scans. Siegel said that orexin A is unique in that it only had an impact on sleepy monkeys, not alert ones, and that it is 'specific in reversing the effects of sleepiness' without other impacts on the brain.' Researchers seem cautious to bill the treatment as a replacement for sleep, as it is not clear that adjusting brain chemistry could have the same physical benefits of real sleep in the long run. The drug is aimed at replacing amphetamines used by drowsy long-haul military pilots, but there would no doubt be large demand for such a remedy thanks to its apparent lack of side-effects."
Years ago I was asked to join a group doing government work in exploring drugs related to sleep replacement or to maintain alertness in certain groups of people. This sort of stuff made me uncomfortable then and it still gives me the creeps.
The question for me always is whether or not the drug can *replace* sleep and all of its critical physiological functions. Sleep is a complex phenomenon with very specific architectures that helps maintain learning, performance, sanity and literature suggests more far reaching benefits from regular sleep. Lots of drugs can make the brain look "awake" including amphetamines and modafinil, itself widely used by people to maintain activities in the face of sleep needs. However, there are long term biological implications for not allowing one to invoke sleep including poor long term performance on learning and memory and there is some literature that suggests cardiovascular implications as well as other problems. Now, while the adverse effects of amphetamines are well known, they have been used for at least 60 years. On the other hand, drugs like modafinil are very recent and you may be shocked to find out just how many physicians, pilots, military personnel, truck drivers and housewives are currently taking modafinil to maintain alertness in the face of lack of sleep.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
How can this replace sleep? Muscles need to rest, too. I guess it would be useful for us that need to sleep with one eye open. A drug for the paranoid.
A 2 am post about a drug to replace sleep, now isn't that ironic!
I doubt this drug would permanently replace sleep without some form of side-effect. However, I'm sure it could work as a good "supplement" to sleep for periods of time where awareness is crucial. A low side effect No Doze?
Set the wayback machine to 1925, Sherman.
On the other hand, we might get some Shakespeare out of the little critters yet.
What?
You know who else don't need sleep?
Zombies.
What will happen if we ever find a way to truly avoid sleep? Will it become a requirement that we take the drug to work for a certain company? Will the company only hire people who take the anti-sleep drug or pay more to those who take it because they work longer. Will companies whose employees take anti-sleep pills 'out-compete' those who don't? Could the world eventually end up sleepless?
So, does that imply that our pilots, right now, today, are flying around on meth? I realize that there's a world of difference between a monitored person in excellent health taking a medication under close medical supervision, and some junkie shooting up in an alley, but that's still a weird thought.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
Gosh, you can sell anything as a supplement these days even lead, you just have to have the obligatory "not intended to cure or treat any disease," on it and your good.
Provigil (modafinil) has been shown to remove the need for sleep for days on end without any side effects, including the fun ones, like euphoria. Why are pilots still popping dexies?
..."No apparent side effects"
More research needs to be done before we can have a worthwhile discussion of this as a "sleep replacement."
Also, this would not be a permanent replacement, so no trying to bash this study with the 'The human body needs sleep' argument.
Without having performed any research at all, I'm going to speculate that actual sleep is very important. In the wild it is dangerous to be unconscious for hours at a time. If it wasn't absolutely necessary, then nature would have found a way to avoid it. Or, more correctly stated, not needing sleep would seem to be a pretty amazing advantage.
But, almost anything with measurable cognitive abilities needs sleep. So there must be some very important work going on there. Probably laying down neural hardlines where temporary chemicals were making pathways before? I'm just guessing, but it's got to be something that requires a partial shutdown.
I think the technology is cool and would be useful for some things, though. I'm always in favor of exploring the outer limits of our abilities. It will be very interesting to see what happens if a person uses this chemical sleep exclusively for, say weeks at a time. Maybe we'll learn what sleep is really for by seeing what stops working correctly. My guess is that they'll not be able to recall anything beyond the past couple days. Things that happened too far back in their wakefulness will not get layed down as long term memories and will be permanently lost.
That is, it'll be kind of like Memento except with, say, a 72 hour working memory instead of 10 minutes.
"Thanks to modern chemistry sleep is now optional"
This sort of stuff creeps me out. As BWJones commented, we don't know enough about exactly how sleep works and what its function is in our mental health to start eliminating it by messing with the brain's chemistry. This will likely end up being abused by someone, be it the military, commercial pilots, or students trying to cram for a test, or some sicko as part of a brain washing regime, it doesn't matter, it will happen and it won't be pretty.
I'll stick with coffee thank you very much.
For YEARS I've been saying the first person to make sleep in a can would make a fortune. Being able to work all night, then "Catch up" on my sleep while driving to all day classes would be awesome.
ZOMG this is going to lead to some absolutely heinous lan parties!
or else!
...Sysadmins have recently discovered they can improve uptime by eliminating routine maintenance.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
Gamers in Taiwan, Korea, China, et al. have been dying for this.....
Boy if this doesn't sound like the beginnings of a real-life zombie infestation!
http://www.zombiehunters.org/
A few years back, I did some reading from a semi-reliable source (maybe Reader's Digest) about two people in the world who can't sleep for more than a few minutes.
One was a guy in his twenties who lived in Israel. An explosion left some shrapnel in his brain and could no longer sleep. When I read the story, he was just finishing a Law degree.
Another story was about an older man in Germany who hadn't been able to sleep at least since his teens. He was 50ish and could sleep for up to 5 minutes at best. He lived a relatively normal life.
Obviously in some cases, the body can adjust to getting by without sleep - I wonder if their bodies learned how to overproduce this chemical?
...anyone?
Considering that the brain doesn't get any rest like it's supposed to, on this dope... Will users go utterly batshit nuts from not having slept at the six or eleven day mark? Like speed freaks who've stayed up all week.
Man my productivity would increase in and out of work. My muscles get enough rest sitting in an idle state at my desk for 8 hours a day as it is. It's almost like they get a full-night's rest. If only my brain would stay awake past 2 in the afternoon...
The game.
Am I the only one who clicked on this carelessly wondering what new snort filters someone was playing with?
Electric shock will keep you awake too. In fact, I'm reminded of a study where rats were jolted awake every time REM was detected. Eventually they died, and from what I understand humans will eventually die if they are sufficiently sleep deprived as well. Sleep is healthy, and that should be obvious. Equally obvious is the fact that some people will abuse drugs to increase their productivity. The candle that burns brighter, melts away faster. People will make their own decisions, with their own lives. No law is going to change that. As long as they're not cracked out, trying to rob me and score another sleepless night I say live and let die.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6822468/
I'm not certain about your information about being able to survive without sleep. There's also what happens to people with severe sleep apnea which can cause heart problems, problems with the metabolism, paranoia, depression, anxiety and high blood pressure.
Don't let my boss see this.
As an aside, who discovered "snorting" as a delivery mechanism for drugs (as opposed to eating or smoking)? And why do people only snort certain drugs, what makes those particular ones suitable?
;-)
(I will leave the discussion on suppositories for another day
If we all could have 8hrs quality of sleep in 3hrs in a burst mode, then it would be great.
And if you do need to skip 1 day every few weeks then so be it, hey I went with 1 day a week without a sleep for 3 months and it was ok.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
A drug that needs to be snorted and makes the test subjects feel awake? Sounds to me like someone just reinvented cocaine.
If this works there's a good chance that sleep won't become optional, it will become a dream. Computers promised the same thing, paperless office, more productivity, but they brought their own issues. I love computers, don't get me wrong, but the fact remains that the promise of lots more leisure time was an empty promise.
/relax/ with their freetime instead of adding work?...
Free time will be filled with more work to do. In a world where sleep is optional, some people will be willing to work 20 hours a day or more. Slowly, this will become expected.
This tech is here to stay; trying to change that would just be silly. If, as posters above have said, this isn't really a sleep replacement then it's only a matter of time, the tech will come.
Some people will try to call it "unnatural" or "evil", it won't make a difference.
The question is,
how will you react when it happens and you're asked to come in for an 18 hour workday instead of your normal 8-12 to "stay competitive".
Is it that crazy of an idea that maybe people should
*sadly goes off and reads a book*
Happiness does not come from having much, but from being attached to little.
The folks here in Japan already don't sleep enough and use all kinds of bad for you stimulant drinks to wake you up and give you energy. I can just see everybody and his brother taking this drug in order to avoid sleep even more. But of course with Japan's record of approving and/or not banning known dangerous drugs (currently there is a scandal going on about people contracting hepatitis from dangerous drugs) that have been banned by the FDA in the 'States, I'm sure they would approve something like this for general use anyway.
-Ian
Oooh Better!
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
In Soviet Russia, sleep replaces YOU!
and,
whatcouldpossiblygowrong?!
Sometimes, you can, you go to hell for the rest of your life! That's a true thing.
Once again. slashdotters jump into a debate about the technical and logical implications of government drug testing. As always, these discussions devolve into conspiracy theories that suggest the intentions of the government are to develop chemicals that will be used on humans. Unfortunately, this line of thinking detracts from the true government agenda. We should be asking questions about what the government is planning to do with legions of sleep deprived monkeys that can pass a brain scan as fully alert. Will these monkeys be manning DMV offices and handing out licenses? Will they be working in Immigration offices making decisions on who gets citizenship based on how many bananas they offer? Will they be teaching in free government schools? If so, all of these things seem to be a step in the right direction to improve DMV, immigration and our schools, so let's not be so negative!
Here are some facts about orexin to supplement the article. It's a neuropeptide that is endogenous in the mamallian brain (probably outside of mammals, but I've never checked). It was discovered about 10 years ago, and the original biological function described for it was increasing feeding, hence the name orexin (although many scientists prefer the name hypocretin). It's also been shown to subserve the reward system in the brain as a modulating agent.
All which leads me to the question, how could this effect eating disorders and addiction? It's been shown that blocking the orexin system decreases relapse to drugs in animal models. Could artificially increasing the levels of orexin in the brain support the development or maintenance of drug abuse? Could it have similar effects on eating? It is interesting (and makes sense) that it only affected drowsy monkeys, as orexin seems to support the maintenance of wakefulness, so it's possible that there's a ceiling effect to orexin. Still, I'd be wary of longterm exposure to non-natural levels.
The FAA and military medical examiners are extremely conservative. Until a drug has been used for a long time in a large group of people with no adverse side affects, it won't be approved for flight. Even after that, it's not approved until ground testing on the specific pilot is done. For example, Allegra was approved 10 years after it was approved by the FDA, but I still had to take it for 2 weeks before I could fly with it. A stupid allergy drug, yup, 2 weeks without work. Drugs being used off label, no chance. The go pills (amphetamines) have a similar ground test, and at least for military pilots, are counted by the docs to make sure that you can't use more then so many in a certain time, with a couple of sliding windows. IIRC (don't quote me on this) but it's something like no more then 2 times a week, and no more then 5 times a month.
And for the retard who says "airplanes are on autopilot most of the time, the pilot can take a nap". No, you're just fucking stupid. One pilot must always be awake, in the seat, paying attention to the systems, navigation and radios. If there are 2 pilots, then one can go piss, but if one's napping, the other can't go piss. So, no, you can't really "Take a nap" except on C-17 sized aircraft, with an augmented crew. Fighter pilots have to use go pills; they don't really have an option for a long sortie.
"...there would no doubt be large demand for such a remedy thanks to its apparent lack of side-effects."
It's funny, just *yesterday* I was thinking to myself the following: Every decade or so a new drug is invented that is claimed to have no adverse side-effects. The young kids say "Ah, at last! We can take this drug without a downside!" And only later in the decade do the side effects appear evident.
My girlfriend can remember her mother saying in the 80's "Have you heard about this new drug cocaine? It's the first drug that doesn't have side-effects..."
So actually I was wondering when the next one would come around. And there you go.
We know where leadership by an anti-intellectual "strongman" who scapegoats minorities and likes boisterous rallies goes
100 micrograms runs about $120-$150.
1 milligram about $560.
Still, if it works. Think of all the extra billable hours...
-a.e.mossberg
It's crunch time, baby!
I RTFA and still don't quite understand. I've worked in drug discovery for over 25 years and know that getting peptides into the brain by inhalation isn't a given. Except maybe for insulin, it isn't even known. So I'm skeptical.
Military planes seem ideal to be remote controlled. Why bother with drugs if you can have groups of people steering the plane from the ground? Is the human CPU in the plane there to prevent interception? Cryptography would solve that to an extent, coupled with some not easily replaced friend-or-foe logic. They talk about ground robots already proving themselves in Iraq, when building a ground robot is surely more complicated then setting up a remote joystick for a plane.
Sorry, but I'm a drug/organic chem geek.
The amphetamine in the "Go Pills" used by the USAF is dextro-amphetamine. This is NOT a derivative of methamphetamine. They are both derivatives of phenethylamine, and belong to that class of drugs. Amphetamine is an acronym of Alpha-Methyl-PHenEThylAMINE (ie: it's a phenethylamine molecule with a methyl group attached at the alpha position). Amphetamine is chiral, meaning that it has a stereocenter: because the molecule exists in 3D space there are two "versions" of it (called "isomers") that have the same atomic makeup, but are turned in different directions, and are thus non-superimposable. Dextroamphetamine is the dextrorotary isomer of regular ol' amphetamine. (The other isomer is called levo-amphetamine.)
This is NOT even remotely the same thing as methamphetamine. Do you know anyone on Adderall for ADHD? They are on dexamphetamine. Adderall is a mixture of both isomers of the amphetamine molecule (called a "racemic mixture"). Remember that seemingly minor changes in structure can cause a drug to have vastly different effects. The fact that the amphetamines are stimulants is something of an anomaly, since they're part of the larger class of Phenethylamines, and most PEAs are actually psychedelics (including drugs like MDMA, mescaline, MDMCat, MDA, and the 2C and DOx classes of "research" psychedelics).
I just want to counter any assumption people might take from this post that Air Force pilots are flying around jacked up to the gills on meth, fiending for a hit from the pipe, and screaming about the spiders crawling underneath their skin. Methamphetamine is the scary, back alley, black sheep cousin of the amphetamine family; similar to how heroin (diacetylmorphine) is the scary, back alley, black sheep cousin of morphine or fentanyl (80 times stronger than morphine, and not uncommonly used in epidurals during childbirth). As the parent suggests, there isn't anything dangerous in an expertly trained pilot taking dexamphetamine at a reasonable dose under medical supervision. If there is, there are thousands of college students out there popping Adderall illegally to study for exams because it intensifies concentration who would probably like to know about it! Methamphetamine, however, as I'm sure you've all seen on the news, is an entirely different animal...
This isn't so much a reply to the parent as a clarification of a lot of the "USAF pilots are taking meth!" posts I've seen in this thread. It's just not the same thing.
--Obyron
They did this experiment already. It was with a drug called cocaine. At first, the monkeys didn't sleep. Then, they slept for a real long time because they died. In fact they are still sleeping.
"Productivity" is great if they reward you. Otherwise it's just more fucking slavery.
Uberman's or Everyman's schedule works fine already. Of course it requires some time of adaptation and some sacrifices, but it's a lot better that taking drugs for the rest of your life. Google it.
...Welcome our new sleepless ape overlords.
I wonder if anyone at DARPA read Kress' Beggars in Spain?
If it works with humans and the side affects are limited, it seems that such a drug (if it were cheap, availible, and had minimal side effects) would appeal to much of humanity for many different reasons. This could change how we live, work, and play on so many levels it boggles my brain.
As for me, I am going back to bed....
A new drug for procrastinating college kids who need a 24hour study-binge before their exam. Brilliant!
No yesterday, no tomorrow, and no today.
And I, for one, welcome our new, sleep-free monkey overlords! I'd like to remind them that, as a trusted internet personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground typewriting caves.
My sister opened a computer store in Hawaii. She sells C shells by the seashore.
The main methods of taking drugs are: Ingestion, insufflation (snorting), inhalation and injection.
With ingestion, the chemical is absorbed through the digestive system. When insufflated, it is absorbed via the mucus membrane at the top & back of your nasal cavity. Inhaled drugs are absorbed through the lungs, and injection needs no explanation.
The difference is usually a duration/intensity trade-off based on how quickly the chemical enters the bloodstream in its entirety. I listed them above with the longest duration on the left and the highest intensity on the right. This is usually the deciding factor in administration for drug users, however some drugs are not suitable for some methods for various reasons. For example, MDMA (ecstasy) is particularly painful to snort, amphetamine has a longer tail-off period when ingested (making sleep difficult) and obviously you'd find it difficult to snort cannabis. You can usually snort nearly any water-soluble powdered substance.
Some drugs also have different effects when administered differently. Ketamine is much more of a tranquilliser when ingested than when snorted (when it is a more enjoyable dissociative). Cocaine acts as a (powerful) local anaesthetic making it well-suited to insufflation, whereas if you rub it into your gums you lose all feeling in your mouth. MDMA has a "threshold" dosage for its main effect making it unsuitable for absorbing through the gums as gauging the dosage is tricky.
I should point out that whereas the summary implied inhaled drugs are "snorted", this is incorrect. Inhalation is different to insufflation - I would be impressed to see someone get a monkey to bosh a fat line of charlie.
For years there has been a very cheap and safe drug that does just that - Modafinil. It is a pill, it does not have to be snorted.
You can stay awake on modafinil for up to 3 days in row without sleep - it is not pleasant since you dont feel refreshed but you are also not exhausted. Modafinil is devoid of the manically stimulated, clenching-jaw, no-one-can-stop-me-now driven delusional state like with amphetamines. Modafinil has no pleasure-producing qualities and no long-term ill effect. But rats kept on modafinil for over a week without sleep suddenly developed immune system failure and internal infection. It is known independently that lack of sleep makes one more prone to infection so it seems sleep is needed for proper functioning of immune defense.
I doubt that we will ever figure out - and I suspect that even if we did figure out we couldn't do much about it
There is already Provigil which has no effects on metabolism. Its only effect is to remove sleepiness.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
They want their drugs back
I have a prescription for Provigil and take it regularly. I am a third shift Linux System Admin over thousands of individually configured Internet-facing servers. I also share day duties (when off work) with my wife to care for our children. Switching from Day to Night and Night to Day schedules is not only easy but actually possible because of modafinil (Provigil®).
Usually I have a 24 hour break between finishing my work-week (4 10 hour days) and starting my day-time responsibilities. However, sometimes I need to start day-time responsibilities immediately. On those occasions I take a pill after my shift and then I am good until 10 to 12 hours later. However, I then need serious sleep time. While needing to be awake I am well served by Provigil -- on 5 hours of sleep and having 2 Provigils spaced 12 hours apart I am awake and alert without amphetamine jitters for 30 hours straight. Not bad.
And the effects of Provigil when on normal schedule are enough to keep me prescribed. Acuity, alertness, focus, and ability to recall is fantastic. A real "smart pill."
-- @rjamestaylor on Ello
...perform like well-rested monkeys on cognitive tests.My only thought about the whole article was that I wished I could perform like a well-rested monkey on cognitive tests...
You're thinking small. Why miniaturize the laser, when we could instead enlarge the sharks? -John Searle
Isn't this more commonly known as cocaine?
A few of the military pilots may need a gel version of this drug: U2 pilots have to eat and drink during long-haul (>12 hours) flights through a tube into their space suit helmet. They currently have two options: a delicious caffeine-laced chocolate pudding, or a tube of the amphetamine gel. They would need a special device to enable snorting of this new stuff. For the U2 pilots, flying the most-difficult to land plane in the military arsenal, being in top form mentally is pretty essential to the landing, considering that, even during a normal/short operation, another pilot will typically help them to land by following the U2 down the run way in a muscle car, calling out altitude and position to the pilot.
Life is tough. Life is even tougher when you're stupid.
eat tasteless food all day, everyday too. After all, taste doesn't have any direct impact on what nutrients we actually need. But... why would you want to? (goes back to sleep.)
please... let me sleep... a little more... yay, no longer annonmyous coward.
Based on this quote, Dr Siegel strikes me as a jerk in a white lab coat. Exactly why do we "have to realize" this little fact about caffeine? Has he been viewing too many spokesmartians for the Bush administration on late night TV?
How about "We have to realize we live in a society where Paris Hilton is a top-ten Google search keyword." OK, I realize that this is true, but I've never much felt I *needed* or was *mandated* to realize this. When I leave my front door in the morning I don't look around my city block and say to myself "wow, there are probably dozens of voyeuristic celeb-stalkers within a one block radius, and these people constitute the society in which I live, so I better conduct myself accordingly".
How about the phrase "already living in"? The barn door is open, the horse has already bolted. In the 1950s and 1960s we were "already living in" a society where second-hand smoke was unavoidable in public. It's possible we are "already living in" a society where global temperatures are warming. The human race gets itself into no end of stupid situations we don't fully understand at the outset. What is your point, Dr Strangesnooze?
But wait, there's another hit from the all-nite pharmacy: "already self-medicating". Another horse has bolted through the open door at the other end of the barn. Surely it is no longer even logically possible to put the horse back in the barn. Even if you close the door after the horse, it will still escape the open door at the other end. That's that, then.
Original sin: self-medicating with table sugar, in the form of dried apple slices. From what I've heard, Eve went on a bit of a bender.
I need to run this infomercial one more time, to fully savor the sweet Folgers aroma: "We have to realize that we are already living in a society where we are already self-medicating with caffeine," he said. If the goons from the Orexin Casino show up to foreclose this crazy mortgage, and orexin A becomes a schedule III controlled substance, Dr Strangesnuggle has a bright career ahead of him as a BALCO spokesman. There must be plenty of women out there already conniving to date rape their men so that they can't fall asleep after sex and avoid the cuddle talk.
You could have written a very similar note about heavier than air flight in 1899, and many people did.
Just because something hasn't been solved yet, doesn't mean it won't be solved in the future.
Perhaps there is some fundamental reason that this simply can't be done. But we have yet to discover that as well.
Bottlenose dolphins never truly sleep, at least not like humans. Half their brains shut down, while the other side keeps a watchful eye for predators. A couple hours later, the other half does the same trick.
It's likely that sleep is essential, but there are various tricks to minimize it if evolution demands.
I'm with you on the resources thing. I think the planet as a whole is already stretched pretty thin to start taxing food stores with 30% more resource usage in the span of a few years.
Also, as someone else mentioned, could we really afford (financially) our extra free time expenses without working more? Count me out...
If the spray actually does replace sleep, it'd be like extending your life by 30%. I wouldn't mind an additional 20 years.
"I improvise. It's my greatest talent. I prefer situations to plans..." --Wintermute, William Gibson's "Neuromancer"
As a narcoleptic person myself, I'd just like to say how .[;'/
Mountain Dew
It's bad enough that people have already been brainwashed into believing that somehow there aren't enough hours in a day to get everything done. What's even worse is that there are some people who will no doubt look at this as some sort of saving grace. As if this will provide people with more time to spend with their families, or to get more done at work.
Guess what? If you can't find the time to be with your family now, it has nothing to do with how many hours you're awake in a week - it's your priorities that are fucked up. Time is like money or possessions. No matter how much you have, it's never going to be enough. Be happy with the number of hours you already have; because if you can't make it work now, you never will. Regardless as to the quantity of sleep-replacing drugs you take.
induced during an extended WIDE-AWAKE (sleep deprivation) binge?
Like: GRRRRRRRRRRR! I'm gonna go kill something!
RR
Surely it would take less money, time and effort to equip long haul aircraft with twin pilot seats and a place to sleep. One flies, the other sleeps. Truckers do this already.
I'm sure they have other applications in mind, for which there'd be more sensible solutions as well.
Seems like all the slashdotters are looking at this from the perspective of people who just want to have less time sleeping.
I agree that not sleeping on this stuff (or other meds) long term is crazy, but you are not going to stop people who want to risk their health by refusing to sleep like some (or many) truckers for instance on long hauls. Better that they be alert than risking my life on the road due to falling asleep at the wheel. What about somebody who only has x amount of days/months/years to live due to a disease? Reducing sleep gives them more life. I say give it to whomever wants it and let em sign a release form.
How did they get monkeys to snort?
Wasn't there a story recently about how upsetting the circadian rhythm (night shift) may be causing cancer?
I'm betting this one is going to cause humans to evolve into one giant cancer node.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/22026660/
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
A weird point, for one somehow those U-2S pilots have been fine without this since the 50ies, for another they even inhale special mixtures starting an hour before the take-off (Wikipedia sez). Anyway I must had been the only one not aware of this craziness with those muscle cars in the military, nice article I found here http://www.hemmings.com/mus/stories/2005/07/01/hmn_feature20.html