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China's Controversial Brain Surgery To Cure Drug Addiction
kkleiner writes "A small handful of doctors in China are using a highly controversial procedure to rid people of drug addiction by destroying a part of patients' brains. The procedure involves drilling small holes into the skulls of patients and inserting long electrodes that destroy a part of the brain called the nucleus accumbens. This area, often referred to as the "pleasure center" of the brain, is the major nucleus of the brain's reward circuit. Is it worth being cured of addiction if, losing the addiction, we also lose part of who we are?" The practice has been officially banned, but apparently continues nonetheless.
They worked out so well last time.
is it worth being cured of addiction if, losing the addiction, we also lose part of who we are? Is it worth being cured of addiction if, losing the addiction, we also lose part of who we are?
is it worth reading slashdot, if, reading it means reading poorly edited summaries like these? Is it worth reading slashdot, if, reading it means reading poorly edited summaries like these?
Couldn't control his drug issues. His birth mother was addicted.
Now he is gone. Would he have been better served to still be here w/o some "reward center". I don't know. I will never know.
When it comes to a real problem a change in personality wouldn't be such a problem, but losing dopamine forever? Never to feel positive emptions again ever? I don't care who you are that's not worth it. Surely the reason people get addicted to begin with is they don't have enough dopamine and serotonin in their life for whatever reason.
FIX THIS SHIT!
There's no more nice way to say it. This isn't a case of leaving the unit off a measurement, a simple typo, or even the ever so common case of a grammatical mistake a 10 year old could pick out.
This is YOU timothy not bothering to read 111 words that you put in the summary, let alone edit them.
Know what happens to me when I go to work and don't do any work, worse still I embarrass the company I work for? I get fired.
The practice has been officially banned, but apparently continues nonetheless.
Of course, we're not going to let that stop us from calling it "China's", as if it were some kind of official and mandatory procedure.
Most of the West, the U.S. included, was big on this kind of "experimentation" (i.e. lobotomies as a kind of medical treatment) a few decades ago. No need for Hitler here.
On a positive note, much of our current knowledge of how the human brain works comes from destruction of various kinds, either from intentional and misguided treatment or from strokes. The side effects are often interesting.
Dr. John Adler, professor emeritus of neurosurgery at Stanford University, collaborated with the Chinese researchers on the publication and is listed as a co-author. While he does not advocate the surgery and did not perform it, he believes it can provide valuable information about how the nucleus accumbens works, and how best to attempt to manipulate it. “I do think it’s worth learning from,” he says. ” As far as I’m concerned, ablation of the nucleus accumbens makes no sense for anyone. There’s a very high complication rate. [But] reporting it doesn’t mean endorsing it. While we should have legitimate ethical concerns about anything like this, it is a bigger travesty to put our heads in the sand and not be willing to publish it,” he says. cite.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Yep the rest of the world only stopped with the eugenics, forced sterilizations and routine lobotomies because Hitler made them uncool.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The first transorbital lobotomy was performed in 1946, one year after Hilter's death.
Lobotomies stopped being routine in the 70's.
No need to Godwin yourself. Checkout what the Canadians were up to (with a little funding from the CIA): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Ewen_Cameron#Project_MKULTRA
Cool art gallery, if you're into that sort of thing.
The worst thing about this is that it is totally uneccesary. There was a study in the '60s that showed that targeted therapy in combination with psychedelic drugs can cure addiction with a very high success rate (compared to other methods) and almost no side effects. After lsd was made illegal research stopped but recently people have continued the program with ibogaine. The research is still far too preliminary for conclusive results but the fact that a potential treatment exists makes brain surgery even more inadvisable.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transorbital_lobotomy
If your drug addiction is going to kill you in the next 6 months
There are no certainties about that sort of thing, but there is a certainty about the sort of brain-damaging lobotomy described in TFA: it is irreversible and destructive.
Palm trees and 8
"Well I believe the puppet on the left shares MY beliefs, well I believe the puppet on the right has MY interests at heart...hey wait a minute, there is one guy controlling both puppets!"...Bill Hicks. The man has been gone more than 20 years and its even more true now than it was back then.
I urge all of those who think "If only my party got control things would be better" to watch the truth about voting and ask yourself some simple questions like : How many decades have been people voting for less government intrusion? less war? Less handing out billions to third world thugs? hell how many years have we been complaining and voting about the horribly broken borders? the corruption? the influence of lobbyists?
At the end of the day you can NEVER change a corrupt system by working within that system, why? Well the answer is obvious, its corrupt! That would be like handing a petition to some corrupt police force demanding they stop taking bribes...why would they care what you think? Like pro wrestling its all kayfabe and thanks to the revolving door between the corps and government today's senator will be tomorrow's lobbyist so by voting him out all you are doing is giving him a pay raise while letting someone else get a shot at the money!
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I agree. The 16 year old girl who has sex with her 15 year old boyfriend should be sterilized, and part of her brain should be destroyed.
But if you think about this it's actually a pretty lousy argument. It makes your conception the most important fact in history. Think how many other IFs you could justify just to make yourself happen. 'If your mother hadn't been raped, you wouldn't have happened. If your father hadn't had one of his balls shot off you wouldn't have happened. If Hitler hadn't existed your parents wouldn't have met. If Nagasaki hadn't been bombed the celebration of the end of the war would have been a day later so you wouldn't have happened,.......' Once you start thinking like that EVERYTHING that happened becomes a good thing, since it resulted in the miracle of YOU. So why not look at it without such selfish thought. If your parents filtered out that gene, they would have had the child without that gene. That's it.
Moderators, please mod him up as informative. Here is the take away paragraph.
testing out my trending skills