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Sequencing the Weed Genome
GNUman writes "Maybe soon we'll be able to genetically modify humans so that a specific action (e.g., tapping your nose, pinching your ear) triggers the release of THC directly from your own cells. From the Nature blog post: 'At last, the field of genomics has something to offer Cheech and Chong. DNA sequencing hit a new high last night with the midnight release of the Cannabis sativa genome. The raw sequence was posted on Amazon's EC2 public cloud computing service by a young company called Medicinal Genomics, which aims to explore the genomes of therapeutic plants.'"
Somebody needs to make a version of weed that causes cancer
They have that. It's called tobacco.
Now all we need is for someone to take an existing food plant that is legal to grow (and that couldn't be banned) like corn and add some weed genes so that when its consumed, it gives the effects of weed (i.e. make the corn contain the THC and things that the weed contains)
No way for the cops to detect it short of chemical analysis and there is far too much corn grown in the US to make that possible.
what I can and cannot put in my body.
It's not your fucking business, or anybody else's.
Take the goddamn safety labels off of everything, for fucks sake.
I'm not reading "high times", I'd rather not see this sort of junk.
Then grow some thick skin and ignore it.
While you might think the world evolves around you, it doesn't. In fact, most of us don't even care what you think.
Sorry, did that hurt?
Seriously though, i don't give a fuck that you don't care about this. It's science and it's news.
Oh, and oddly enough, a lot of people smoke weed and don't see any problems with it. I know that hurts ya, but deal with it.
Be seeing you...
This is the biggest argument against medicinal pot. The THC is the psychoactive component, this is what gives you the munchies and what gets you high. But in its pure form without the other cannibinoids to fuck up the balance of cannibinoids already in the brain, the high is more "harsh".But THC in the form of Malarone does stimulate apatite and relieve pain, nobody disagrees with that. So why is smoking it a better pain reliever and apatite stimulator? It isn't! It's like prescribing whiskey to someone who is dying, because fuck, they won't live long enough to become an alcoholic. (In fact, during prohibition, doctors did exactly that.) It's backwards and primitive, the same kind of thinking that gave us heroine as a treatment for opium addiction. This isn't "the man" trying to keep dying people from their medicine. It's got no benefit vs purified form.
TFS makes ridiculous claims like you may be able to get a dose by tapping your nose or pinching your ears. I can't think of a single medicine that is administered this way and we have plenty of therapeutic genomes available. Imagine if you could, say, stimulate Factor 8 production by tapping your nose or tugging your ear? I bet the hemophiliacs would take that over constant injections. Same with diabetics and insulin. But the fact is, it doesn't work that way. This is nothing but an outlandish stoner fantasy. Really slashdot, you need a biology editor. Regardless of the position I took in the first paragraph which could be construed as opinion, the claim of someday administering medication in this manner is over the top, especially with people out there with life threatening ailments that require constant injections to stay alive. I await being modded into oblivion by the pro-pot slashdot crowd. [/rant]
You could make an evolutionary argument that a medicine which has coevolved with our species, been ingested by billions of people over millions of years, and has been taken by people from most different genetic groups around the world, has been better tested, and proven safer, than something someone came up with in a lab and tried out on a few mice, and wants to push on consumers for profit.
Korma: Good