Our blogs about
America's Wars
War on Iraq
War on Drugs
War on Afghanistan
War on Columbia
War on Philippines
War on Venezuela

More
Matrix Masters
Blogs
World Events
US News
Science & Health
Earth News
Free Speech
News from Africa
News from Palestine
Bill of Rights Under Attack

Matrix Masters'
SUPPORTERS

Lorenzo's
Random Musings
. . . about Chaos,
Reason, and Hope

 

Envisioning uses for hallucinogens
(Faye Flam, Philadelphia Inquirer, November 17, 2003)
Long before Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey and the counterculture generation discovered hallucinogenic drugs, the Indians of western Mexico were using peyote to commune with their gods. . . . Anthropologist Peter T. Furst, who spent 30 years among the Huichol people, says that Indian shamans have been using hallucinogenic plants as a doorway to the divine for thousands of years, likely following a tradition carried by their ancestors over the Bering Strait. . . . And now, some U.S. scientists are exploring how these substances might be used by doctors to battle anxiety, mental illness and alcoholism. . . . "These compounds hold tremendous potential for helping us understand how the brain functions, and they have untapped potential for healing," said Charles Grob, a psychiatry professor at UCLA Medical School. . . . Some early studies suggest that LSD can ease the sense of dread that people feel when they are dying. "There were some very interesting and promising results," said Grob. He recently secured approval from the Food and Drug Administration to continue this line of inquiry using the milder drug psilocybin, the active ingredient in hallucinogenic mushrooms. . . . "We're really on the threshold of a new era of formal and very tightly controlled sanctioned studies with hallucinogens to study their safety and efficacy," Grob said. . . . Archaeological finds in Texas show remnants of peyote that date back around 7,000 years. Even earlier finds show a hallucinogenic seed associated with remains of giant mastodons and other Pleistocene animals that go back at least 10,000 years. . . . Furst said he believed it was likely the Huichol and other tribes brought a tradition of hallucinogen use from Siberia before they entered the Americas more than 15,000 years ago. . . . Others see evidence for shamanism in early Europe. "Shamanism emerged at least 40,000 years ago and is reflected in Paleolithic rock art," said Michael Winkelman, an anthropologist from Arizona State University. "Not all societies depended on hallucinogenic plants but where they found them, people built up institutions around these substances," he said. "They are seen as a source of divine inspiration." . . . When the Spanish invaded Mexico, they labeled peyote the "diabolic root," Furst said, and tried to stamp out its use. . . . Arizona's Winkelman said he believes there is something in human biology that makes us want to reach for such altered states. And one infamous incident known as the Good Friday Experiment seemed to show you didn't have to practice shamanism to have a spiritual experience with hallucinogens. . . . On Good Friday 1962, some researchers at Harvard gave a small group of divinity students either psilocybin or a placebo. Psilocybin, then legal, works much like peyote. "Eight of the nine people who got the drug reported they had had the most profound spiritual experiences of their lives," Winkelman said. . . . People use the term hallucinogen loosely to apply to many mind-altering drugs, but peyote belongs to a small family that share similar modes of action on the brain. They include psilocybin, LSD, and morning glory seeds. . . . The chemical structure of these resembles a critical messenger molecule in the brain known as serotonin, said David Nichols, professor of medicinal chemistry and pharmacology at Purdue University. When serotonin is created in the brain it works by attaching, lock-and-key fashion, to molecules called serotonin receptors. . . . The brain has 14 different types of serotonin receptors, said Nichols, and the hallucinogenic substances dock in just one of these, called the 5HT2a receptor. "You get the overstimulation of one receptor at the expense of the others," he said. . . . Hallucinogens act on receptors in the frontal cortex, sometimes called the executive part of the brain because it's used for higher reasoning, he said. They also act on a part of the brain called the thalamus, Nichols said, which works to help us distinguish what's novel and important. That may explain why people on LSD can become mesmerized by a flower or by their own hand. . . . Studies like the Good Friday Experiment ended after psilocybin and other hallucinogens were made illegal in the late 1960s and early '70s, but a handful of scientists today are looking at ways these types of drugs might help people. . . . John Halpern, associate director of substance abuse research at Harvard University and McLean Hospital, is investigating the possibility that peyote prevents alcoholism in American Indians. . . . In a study he plans to publish within the next several months, he compared cognitive and psychological health measures among Indians who were alcoholics, those who regularly used peyote, and those who used no drugs or alcohol. . . . Halpern said he can't reveal his results yet, but he will say he sees no evidence that peyote damages the brain. "There's no history of it being addictive, or trafficked or abused," he said. Peyote can be dangerous if people use it to get stoned and then do stupid things, he said, but that's not what happens in religious ceremonies . . . "I've never seen any harm coming from this. In fact it's just the opposite - it really brings families together," he said.

posted by Lorenzo 11:48 AM

 

Mysterious Whale May Be New Species
(Discovery Channel, November 19, 2003)
Japanese researchers said they have uncovered a previously unidentified species of whale, a discovery that is extraordinarily rare on a planet where more and more large mammal species are at risk of extinction. . . . The 12-meter- (40-foot-) long creature joins the elite club of baleen whales, or Mysticeti in Latin. These are whales that use fringed plates, or baleen, to trap small particles of food, as opposed to toothed whales. . . . The newcomer has been dubbed Balaenoptera omurai in honor of Hideo Omura, one of the top names in Japanese whale research in the 1960s and 70s. . . . In the late 1970s, Japanese research vessels operating in southern latitudes on the border between the Pacific and Indian oceans caught eight specimens of a baleen whale, which experts found impossible to identify. . . . Then, in 1998, a similar kind of whale washed up dead on Tsunoshima, a Japanese island on the Sea of Japan. . . . The advent of biotechnology gave Wada's team the chance to do a DNA identity check against known whale species and make a close comparison of its skeleton and other body parts. . . . Their conclusion was that B. omurai is a unique species. Not only is its molecular identity unique, its cranial structure is distinct from other whales, and it has a notably smaller number of baleen plates. . . . The DNA work has thrown up another discovery — that two outwardly similar baleens, the Bryde's whale and the Eden's whale, are in genetic terms so different that they deserve to be considered different species. . . . If this suggestion were accepted internationally, that would boost the number of known living baleen species, also called rorquals, from six to eight. . . . The other five are the blue whale — the world's largest mammal — the humpback whale, the fin whale, the sei whale and the minke whale.

posted by Lorenzo 4:40 PM