The damage caused by cannabis alone is definitely nowhere near as unmistakable as tobacco. Pretty much everybody who knows tobacco addicts can see for themselves that their lung function fails over the years, but getting evidence of such an effect for marijuana is pretty iffy, even with sophisticated statistical analysis of good studies. "COPD risk among people who smoked marijuana, but not tobacco, was slightly higher than among nonsmokers, but the increase was not statistically significant." Tan, W.C. Canadian Medical Association Journal, April 14, 2009. (they found a somewhat greater increase in risk for smokers of both tobacco and marijuana than just tobacco alone; that's not too surprising, tobacco is synergistic for the bad effects of other substances, as it interferes with the lungs' ability to clear themselves of foreign substances) "Given the consistently reported absence of an association between use of marijuana and abnormal [lung function] or signs of macroscopic emphysema, we can be close to concluding that smoking marijuana by itself does not lead to COPD" Tashkin, D. New England Journal of Medicine, 1976; vol 294; similarly http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2665954/ "Currently, the evidence that smoking cannabis causes emphysema and bullae is limited to these case reports and therefore remains anecdotal. Although Tashkin et al. demonstrated modest short-term decreases in gas transfer (DLco) among 30 men allowed to smoke cannabis ad libitum for 94 days,[15] none of the population-based studies have been able to confirm that cannabis consumption is associated with persistent impairment of DLco.[11,15,16] This is in stark contrast to tobacco smoking, for which a reduction in DLco is probably the most sensitive indicator of parenchymal lung damage. In Aldington’s cross-sectional study, exclusive smokers of cannabis were much less likely to show evidence of emphysema on high-resolution CT scans than tobacco smokers, suggesting that macroscopic emphysema is not a common consequence of cannabis use.[11]" http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/747982_4 "Smokers’ lung function was worse, unsurprisingly (pack-a-day tobacco smokers had FEV1s 63 mL lower; 20-pack-year smokers’ FEV1 were 101 mL lower). But in marijuana smokers who had smoked up to 3,650 marijuana cigarettes (10 “joint-years”), FEV1 and FVC were higher than matched nonsmokers. At these common levels of marijuana use, there was a steady dose-response relationship: the more marijuana smoked, the better the lung function (FEV1 increase of 13 mL/joint-year). Even in the heavier marijuana users, FVC remained significantly elevated by 76 mL over nonsmokers. Only those smoking large amounts of marijuana every day began to display decreases in lung function. All these trends were highly statistically significant (p 0.001), and supported by the large sample size and body of spirometric data." Pletcher MJ et al. Association Between Marijuana Exposure and Pulmonary Function Over 20 Years. JAMA 2012;307:173-181.
No more difficult than if they both increased... It's always a difficult, multifaceted problem to isolate what causes a given effect. You do not understand what the person you replied to is saying.
technically, yes; but in practice, if you want to use multivariate regression or the equivalent to demonstrate an actual correlation between two items which are negatively correlated overall, you have really got to make a hell of a strong case, with a well established mechanism for your correlation and for whatever it is that's driving your dependent variable in the wrong direction.
Not necessarily. It could be that marijuana increase schizophrenia, and some other factor decreases schizophrenia fore than marijuana increases it. I'm not saying this is the case, but you can't just look at a period where schizophrenia decreased and say that everything that increased in that time period can't be increasing schizophrenia.
it's well established that it's caused by the sun, and anyway it hasn't increased in 17 years. wait, aren't we on AGW yet?
even if you take the study at face value, and skew the cause/effect in the alarmist direction, what is it actually saying? that if you overuse cannabis, you are likely to become psychotic a few years earlier than you would have otherwise. Really? geez.
"It is still unclear whether there are safe levels of use for cannabis, she added. '" yes the epidemic of psychotic cannabis smokers is really making life difficult for the nonsmokers who are invariably sane.
Not really. We get recycled like all the other things that die. The great extinctions which occur periodically are, by definition, natural; we're just the current meteor impact substitute. As far as climate change, for the majority of the earth's existence it had more CO2 and was hotter and more humid, until the plants pulled all that carbon out of the air and buried it. So, the current climate is a metastable cooler one, and in addition all that carbon represents a big potential energy. So at some point, the metastable state is going to go back to the real stable state; the potential energy is going to be expended; the evolutionary niche represented by that energy will be exploited by some living critter. And having thus outlived its niche and changed its environment in ways to which it is not optimally adapted, that species will, if not become extinct, at least lose its dominant position. So, that's our natural process, and there's nothing unnatural about it, and no reason nature would be better off if we suicided early. We are just another evolutionary process, another agent of entropy, another event in the long working out of the big bang on its way to the heat death. There is no value system. The irony comes in the fact that our elimination would serve the purpose of preserving current conditions, to which we are adapted and therefore find pleasant; but we won't be here to enjoy it so there'd be no good/bad after all. Well, nobody ever said that intelligence was a survival trait. They did? Well relying on that just proves that it isn't.
Oh, there was a moral panic about a year ago; Haaretz (I think it was) broke a story basically stating that like 30 Ethiopian Jewish immigrant women reported that they had been told by the doctors doing their immigration physicals that they needed a Depo-Provera contraceptive shot before they could get an immigrant visa. Of course that hit the news as "Forced Sterilization by Zionazis!!!" (Depo-Provera shots only last like 3 months, not what you'd usually call sterilization). Of course the government denied all knowledge, announced an investigation, etc. They also sent out a memo to all doctors saying nobody should be getting administered any drugs without informed consent, and of course that was taken as evidence that confirmed the original story. I haven't heard what the final verdict on the investigation was, if it's done yet.
Heck, I don't think anybody back then predicted that we'd be using what would at that time have been supercomputers just as wristwatches, and magazines would be giving them away with subscriptions. And still not selling enough subscriptions.
I just happened to read Heinlein's 1980 review of his 1950 predictions for the year 2000, and he points out how hard out is to foresee the social effects of technological change. The example he gives is that nobody saw the effect that automobiles would have on mating. For the record, his 1950 predictions included "Your personal phone will be small enough to carry in your handbag. Your house telephone will record messages, answer simple inquiries, and transmit vision. " Close. But he didn't foresee the social changes that would bring.
Well when you come right down to it, not counting housework, child care, etc is a flaw in the gnp or similar. If I clean my house and my neighbor cleans his house, that's not labour, but if we each clean each other's house and pay each other equal sums, now that contributes to the good of society? Reminiscent of the days not long ago when America was becoming vastly wealthy by all of us selling each other out houses at ever increasing prices. You know, in some countries, if you stay home to take care of your disintegrating parent, the health care system pays you for it just like it would pay a stranger to do it.
We're partly there already, with so many working poor, people getting the minimum wage or thereabouts, who get welfare or food stamps to survive. This is welfare for the business owners as much as their employees. Might as well just guarantee everybody a minimum level of life's necessities so the minimum wage could start at zero. Employers would love that. And yet they don't like it when socialists do it.
What would be your motivation to work if you weren't paid? I dunno, what's your motivation for posting here? Or are you getting paid? Humans consistently demonstrate that things like social status mean more to them than money or material possessions; in various different cultures, including ours, they will bankrupt themselves throwing parties or otherwise trying to acquire status. It's just that our culture puts exceptional emphasis on material wealth as a measure of status, then justify it as herein, by asserting the silliest thing ever said, I.e. that you wouldn't be poor if you just work hard.
I've had similar experiences which were actually shared with another person at the time, but I still classify the whole thing as a possible needle in a haystack of horseshit. Whatever reality is there will only be revealed after some unknown advance (s) and will likely turn out to be something for which we don't even have basic concepts yet.
"There was an interesting experiment where people's bodies would detect erotic images before they saw them." Yeah but that's not time travel, that's just the time lag between lower level brain responses to stimuli and their appearance to your consciousness after quite a bit of additional processing.
Or something like the Bermuda triangle that wasn't in the middle of the ocean. Yeah, ships and planes vanish in the ocean. You want to impress me, have an Amtrak train vanish in the middle of new jersey.
Slashdot Mirror
The damage caused by cannabis alone is definitely nowhere near as unmistakable as tobacco. Pretty much everybody who knows tobacco addicts can see for themselves that their lung function fails over the years, but getting evidence of such an effect for marijuana is pretty iffy, even with sophisticated statistical analysis of good studies.
"COPD risk among people who smoked marijuana, but not tobacco, was slightly higher than among nonsmokers, but the increase was not statistically significant." Tan, W.C. Canadian Medical Association Journal, April 14, 2009.
(they found a somewhat greater increase in risk for smokers of both tobacco and marijuana than just tobacco alone; that's not too surprising, tobacco is synergistic for the bad effects of other substances, as it interferes with the lungs' ability to clear themselves of foreign substances)
"Given the consistently reported absence of an association between use of marijuana and abnormal [lung function] or signs of macroscopic emphysema, we can be close to concluding that smoking marijuana by itself does not lead to COPD" Tashkin, D. New England Journal of Medicine, 1976; vol 294; similarly http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2665954/
"Currently, the evidence that smoking cannabis causes emphysema and bullae is limited to these case reports and therefore remains anecdotal. Although Tashkin et al. demonstrated modest short-term decreases in gas transfer (DLco) among 30 men allowed to smoke cannabis ad libitum for 94 days,[15] none of the population-based studies have been able to confirm that cannabis consumption is associated with persistent impairment of DLco.[11,15,16] This is in stark contrast to tobacco smoking, for which a reduction in DLco is probably the most sensitive indicator of parenchymal lung damage. In Aldington’s cross-sectional study, exclusive smokers of cannabis were much less likely to show evidence of emphysema on high-resolution CT scans than tobacco smokers, suggesting that macroscopic emphysema is not a common consequence of cannabis use.[11]" http://www.medscape.org/viewarticle/747982_4
"Smokers’ lung function was worse, unsurprisingly (pack-a-day tobacco smokers had FEV1s 63 mL lower; 20-pack-year smokers’ FEV1 were 101 mL lower). But in marijuana smokers who had smoked up to 3,650 marijuana cigarettes (10 “joint-years”), FEV1 and FVC were higher than matched nonsmokers. At these common levels of marijuana use, there was a steady dose-response relationship: the more marijuana smoked, the better the lung function (FEV1 increase of 13 mL/joint-year). Even in the heavier marijuana users, FVC remained significantly elevated by 76 mL over nonsmokers. Only those smoking large amounts of marijuana every day began to display decreases in lung function. All these trends were highly statistically significant (p 0.001), and supported by the large sample size and body of spirometric data." Pletcher MJ et al. Association Between Marijuana Exposure and Pulmonary Function Over 20 Years. JAMA 2012;307:173-181.
No more difficult than if they both increased... It's always a difficult, multifaceted problem to isolate what causes a given effect. You do not understand what the person you replied to is saying.
technically, yes; but in practice, if you want to use multivariate regression or the equivalent to demonstrate an actual correlation between two items which are negatively correlated overall, you have really got to make a hell of a strong case, with a well established mechanism for your correlation and for whatever it is that's driving your dependent variable in the wrong direction.
Not necessarily. It could be that marijuana increase schizophrenia, and some other factor decreases schizophrenia fore than marijuana increases it. I'm not saying this is the case, but you can't just look at a period where schizophrenia decreased and say that everything that increased in that time period can't be increasing schizophrenia.
it's well established that it's caused by the sun, and anyway it hasn't increased in 17 years. wait, aren't we on AGW yet?
even if you take the study at face value, and skew the cause/effect in the alarmist direction, what is it actually saying?
that if you overuse cannabis, you are likely to become psychotic a few years earlier than you would have otherwise.
Really? geez.
methinks your sarcasm detector is busted.
i don't get it.
Many Republicans now report belief in evolution; however they want it to be a choice, not a mandate.
"It is still unclear whether there are safe levels of use for cannabis, she added. '"
yes the epidemic of psychotic cannabis smokers is really making life difficult for the nonsmokers who are invariably sane.
Well if you love it so much why don't you marry it?
"One day to go before I retire!"
It's still early.
Not really. We get recycled like all the other things that die. The great extinctions which occur periodically are, by definition, natural; we're just the current meteor impact substitute. As far as climate change, for the majority of the earth's existence it had more CO2 and was hotter and more humid, until the plants pulled all that carbon out of the air and buried it. So, the current climate is a metastable cooler one, and in addition all that carbon represents a big potential energy. So at some point, the metastable state is going to go back to the real stable state; the potential energy is going to be expended; the evolutionary niche represented by that energy will be exploited by some living critter. And having thus outlived its niche and changed its environment in ways to which it is not optimally adapted, that species will, if not become extinct, at least lose its dominant position. So, that's our natural process, and there's nothing unnatural about it, and no reason nature would be better off if we suicided early. We are just another evolutionary process, another agent of entropy, another event in the long working out of the big bang on its way to the heat death. There is no value system.
The irony comes in the fact that our elimination would serve the purpose of preserving current conditions, to which we are adapted and therefore find pleasant; but we won't be here to enjoy it so there'd be no good/bad after all. Well, nobody ever said that intelligence was a survival trait. They did? Well relying on that just proves that it isn't.
âoeBut first, letâ(TM)s check the death count from the killer storm bearing down on us like a shotgun full of snow!â â" Kent Brockman
It could ask you which porn site you visited yesterday.
My computer got hacked. Now my mother has to change her maiden name.
Oh, there was a moral panic about a year ago; Haaretz (I think it was) broke a story basically stating that like 30 Ethiopian Jewish immigrant women reported that they had been told by the doctors doing their immigration physicals that they needed a Depo-Provera contraceptive shot before they could get an immigrant visa. Of course that hit the news as "Forced Sterilization by Zionazis!!!" (Depo-Provera shots only last like 3 months, not what you'd usually call sterilization). Of course the government denied all knowledge, announced an investigation, etc. They also sent out a memo to all doctors saying nobody should be getting administered any drugs without informed consent, and of course that was taken as evidence that confirmed the original story. I haven't heard what the final verdict on the investigation was, if it's done yet.
Heck, I don't think anybody back then predicted that we'd be using what would at that time have been supercomputers just as wristwatches, and magazines would be giving them away with subscriptions. And still not selling enough subscriptions.
And Arthur Clarke was predicting us farming whales for food. ...
Whoa, where's that /. thread on time travel from earlier today?
I just happened to read Heinlein's 1980 review of his 1950 predictions for the year 2000, and he points out how hard out is to foresee the social effects of technological change. The example he gives is that nobody saw the effect that automobiles would have on mating.
For the record, his 1950 predictions included "Your personal phone will be small enough to carry in your handbag. Your house telephone will record messages, answer simple inquiries, and transmit vision. " Close. But he didn't foresee the social changes that would bring.
Well when you come right down to it, not counting housework, child care, etc is a flaw in the gnp or similar. If I clean my house and my neighbor cleans his house, that's not labour, but if we each clean each other's house and pay each other equal sums, now that contributes to the good of society? Reminiscent of the days not long ago when America was becoming vastly wealthy by all of us selling each other out houses at ever increasing prices.
You know, in some countries, if you stay home to take care of your disintegrating parent, the health care system pays you for it just like it would pay a stranger to do it.
We're partly there already, with so many working poor, people getting the minimum wage or thereabouts, who get welfare or food stamps to survive. This is welfare for the business owners as much as their employees. Might as well just guarantee everybody a minimum level of life's necessities so the minimum wage could start at zero. Employers would love that. And yet they don't like it when socialists do it.
What would be your motivation to work if you weren't paid? I dunno, what's your motivation for posting here? Or are you getting paid?
Humans consistently demonstrate that things like social status mean more to them than money or material possessions; in various different cultures, including ours, they will bankrupt themselves throwing parties or otherwise trying to acquire status. It's just that our culture puts exceptional emphasis on material wealth as a measure of status, then justify it as herein, by asserting the silliest thing ever said, I.e. that you wouldn't be poor if you just work hard.
I've had similar experiences which were actually shared with another person at the time, but I still classify the whole thing as a possible needle in a haystack of horseshit. Whatever reality is there will only be revealed after some unknown advance (s) and will likely turn out to be something for which we don't even have basic concepts yet.
"There was an interesting experiment where people's bodies would detect erotic images before they saw them."
Yeah but that's not time travel, that's just the time lag between lower level brain responses to stimuli and their appearance to your consciousness after quite a bit of additional processing.
Or something like the Bermuda triangle that wasn't in the middle of the ocean. Yeah, ships and planes vanish in the ocean. You want to impress me, have an Amtrak train vanish in the middle of new jersey.