January 2012
39 posts
It’s time to end the failed war on drugs →
telegraph.co.uk
Treating addicts as criminals has done absolutely nothing to address this crisis, writes Richard Branson.
Angry Nerds: Copyright Theft Is Bad, When It Happens To People We Like →
pandodaily.com
Wrong is wrong, not just when it’s done to us and our friends.
Key Step in Evolution Replicated by Scientists →
universetoday.com
One of the great puzzles in science has been the evolution of single-celled organisms into the incredibly wide variety of flora and fauna that we see today. How did Earth make the transition from an initially lifeless ball of rock to one populated only by single-celled organisms to a world teeming with more complex life?
“I’m not recommending anyone taking any drugs. I’m just suggesting we need to have a more scientific rational approach to drugs and vilifying drugs like psilocybin [mushrooms] whilst at the same time actively promoting much more dangerous drugs like alcohol is totally stupid scientifically.”
— former UK government drugs adviser Prof David Nutt
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16678322
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-16678322
A Point of View: The tyranny of unwelcome noise →
bbc.co.uk
Honking horns. Household appliances that beep. Other people’s music. Should we turn down the volume, or get better at concentrating in a noisy world, asks historian Lisa Jardine.
Why there's no such thing as sex addiction →
telegraph.co.uk
A much talked about new film tackles the very modern illness of sex addiction. But one leading psychologist has been attacked for suggesting that it isn’t an illness at all – it’s a weakness.
The Internal Clitoris →
mosex.wordpress.com
Consider this: In over five million years of human evolution, only one organ has come to exist for the sole purpose of providing pleasure – the clitoris. It is not required for reproduction. It doesn’t have a urethra running through it like the penis, and thus, does not urinate. Its sole function – its singular, wonderful purpose – is to make a woman feel good!!
Drug Expiration Dates - Do They Mean Anything?
With a splitting headache you reach into your medicine cabinet for some aspirin only to find the stamped expiration date on the bottle has passed - two years ago. So, do you take it or don’t you? If you decide to take the aspirin will it be a fatal mistake or will you simply continue to suffer from the headache?
This is a dilemma many people face in some way or another. A column published in Pyschopharmacology Today offers some advice.
It turns out that the expiration date on a drug does stand for something, but probably not what you think it does. Since a law was passed in 1979, drug manufacturers are required to stamp an expiration date on their products. This is the date at which the manufacturer can still guarantee the full potency and safety of the drug.
Most of what is known about drug expiration dates comes from a study conducted by the Food and Drug Administration at the request of the military. With a large and expensive stockpile of drugs, the military faced tossing out and replacing its drugs every few years. What they found from the study is 90% of more than 100 drugs, both prescription and over-the-counter, were perfectly good to use even 15 years after the expiration date.
So the expiration date doesn’t really indicate a point at which the medication is no longer effective or has become unsafe to use. Medical authorities state expired drugs are safe to take, even those that expired years ago. A rare exception to this may be tetracycline, but the report on this is controversial among researchers. It’s true the effectiveness of a drug may decrease over time, but much of the original potency still remains even a decade after the expiration date. Excluding nitroglycerin, insulin, and liquid antibiotics, most medications are as long-lasting as the ones tested by the military. Placing a medication in a cool place, such as a refrigerator, will help a drug remain potent for many years.
Is the expiration date a marketing ploy by drug manufacturers, to keep you restocking your medicine cabinet and their pockets regularly? You can look at it that way. Or you can also look at it this way: The expiration dates are very conservative to ensure you get everything you paid for. And, really, if a drug manufacturer had to do expiration-date testing for longer periods it would slow their ability to bring you new and improved formulations.
The next time you face the drug expiration date dilemma, consider what you’ve learned here. If the expiration date passed a few years ago and it’s important that your drug is absolutely 100% effective, you might want to consider buying a new bottle. And if you have any questions about the safety or effectiveness of any drug, ask your pharmacist. He or she is a great resource when it comes to getting more information about your medications.
From: http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/update1103a.shtml
Alcohol is more dangerous than crack!
Alcohol is more dangerous than illegal drugs like heroin and crack cocaine, according to a new study.
British experts evaluated substances including alcohol, cocaine, heroin, ecstasy and marijuana, ranking them based on how destructive they are to the individual who takes them and to society as a whole.
Researchers analyzed how addictive a drug is and how it harms the human body, in addition to other criteria like environmental damage caused by the drug, its role in breaking up families and its economic costs, such as health care, social services, and prison.
Neuropharmacologist David Nutt, MD, of Imperial College London, and colleagues rated 20 different drugs on a scale that takes into account the various harms caused by a drug. Drugs are rated on nine harms a drug causes an individual and seven harms a drug causes society.
The scale, developed by a panel of experts called the Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs (ICSD), ranges from 0 (no harm) to 100 (greatest possible harm). It is weighted so that a drug that scores 50 is half as harmful as a drug that scores 100.
“The highest and lowest overall harm scores … are 72 for alcohol and 5 for mushrooms,” Nutt and colleagues calculate. “The ICSD scores lend support to the widely accepted view that alcohol is an extremely harmful drug both to users and to society.”
Alcohol was found to be the most harmful drug to society and the fourth most harmful drug to users.
The findings should come as no surprise: Alcohol has been linked to more than 60 diseases.
