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Long-Lasting Enzyme Chews Up Cocaine
MTorrice (2611475) writes "Despite cocaine's undeniable destructiveness, there are no antidotes for overdoses or medications to fight addiction that directly neutralize cocaine's powerful effects. A natural bacterial enzyme, cocaine esterase, could help by chopping up cocaine in the bloodstream. But the enzyme is unstable in the body, losing activity too quickly to be a viable treatment. Now, using computational design, researchers tweaked the enzyme (full paper, PDF) to simultaneously increase stability and catalytic efficiency. Mice injected with the engineered enzyme survive daily lethal doses of cocaine for an average of 94 hours."
Daily lethal doses? What a way to go...
And, this will do nothing at all to fight additiction.
You'll still be addicted, only the cocaine doesn't do anything. So you'll take more of it. Then you may die.
Me, I think they should put it into the water on Capitol Hill and on Wall Street, and see how many people start going through withdrawal symptoms. The ones which start going squirrely for no good reason are probably the hypocrites doing lines off their secretary's cleavage. ;-)
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
A helluva drug.
The "Rick James... Bitch!"
I wish i could say that therapy is worth a hoot but so far what I see is cell therapy (the iron bar type) works better than a two thousand dollar a day rehab.
All qualitative arguments aside, and sticking to purely quantitative evidence: imprisoning drug users has resulted in no reduction in drug users over the last 30+ years. Drug use has risen, unabated by the threat of prison, from the very beginning of our misguided war on drugs.
Punishing addiction is bad policy. There are far deeper psychological issues surrounding drug addiction that cannot be addressed by the penal code.
But who will benefit, apart from the mule himself/herself?
And, it's not purely psychological issues. Some of it is social issues.
If you're poor, starving, abused, and miserable ... well, one can see why you might turn to something to tune all that crap out.
If the 'solution' is simply "Yarg! Throw 'em all in jail", you completely ignore the reasons why people do these things in the first place. Psychological, sociological, illogical, and all sorts of things.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
... just like we do!
[/joke]
Yes that's what we should definitely do, lock people up for doing something they like. Lets line up the smokers, alcoholics, gamblers and everyone else with a form of addiction and put them behind bars for 20 years. They'll sure solve societies problems.
I can't say this politely, you are a fucktard.
How about we let people do whatever they want as long as they aren't physically hurting anyone else.
Punishing addiction is an efficient way to reduce crimes. Addicts are often criminals in order to pay for their drug use. Many drugs can enable more violent crimes with both short term and long term effects. Examples: short term effect = feeling numb, indifferent to inflicting pain on others, long term effect = permanent damage of brain functionality.
Your platitudes aren't supported by facts.
Mice injected with the engineered enzyme survive daily lethal doses of cocaine for an average of 94 hours.
It's things like this that make me think that if there ever was an extinction event like a large asteroid collision or gamma ray burst, I wouldn't feel too bad about it. People create a highly addictive drug. People abuse the drug. People kill each other over purchasing, selling and law enforcement issues regarding the drug. Now people are torturing animals by forcing them to overdose on the drug, reviving them, and repeating the process until they die in order to find a way to combat the effects of an overdose in humans. Am I the only one who sees this as embarrassingly stupid and shameful behavior for the top dogs on the planet? An infinite number of Picards could not facepalm enough to make me feel better.
Buy your next Linux PC at eightvirtues.com
This should make it easier to convince people to swallow balloons...
The effect is only temporary, unless you're going to incarcerate them for life or execute all of them. They get out, they commit more crimes unless the cause is addressed first.
"Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
Now we have expensive resources handle all kinds of mundane tasks and tasks they aren't suited for. Setting up a meeting that requires ordering food, handling the facilities and communicating with other groups? We now pay $100k/yr+ burden cost instead of someone at half the burdened cost.
There are a number of socially acceptable ways of tuning out _for a while_. Drinking is legal. Pot is as good as, if not legal (you can see my garden on Google earth). Adrenaline is legally available, usually as expensive as cocaine. Psychedelics are readily available, freaks rarely cause problems, so cops ignore them.
Conflating self destructive behavior with adults occasionally partying hard is half the problem. There are many people who are 'poor, starving, abused and miserable' because of what they do.
Look at who the cops jump on...tweakers and heroin addicts (YMMV, West coast. Florida will be different.)
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
I presume by "lethal doses" they mean "doses that would have been lethal to mice not injected with the enzyme".
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register
The powers that be may want to get this classified as a controlled substance in short order. This enzyme could be used by dealers and users to "sober up" quick before the board meeting. Or dealers might just cut their product with the stuff in order to reduce the duration of the effects and thus increase demand for their product. Which in turn could further confuse addicts regarding their own tolerance levels and if they obtain coke from a different source, say on a business trip, they'd run the risk of overdosing. Needless to say, this stuff should be at least as controlled as Sudafed.
"Cocaine esterase? It's a helluva drug!"
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.