The Genetic Conspiracy

An in-depth examination of the possible selection pressures to account for psychopathology.

The very latest research shows that ketamine, an anaesthetic with hallucinogenic properties, can reduce the symptoms of depression quickly and effectively, and that MDMA (popularly known as ecstasy) can be beneficial to sufferers of post-traumatic stress disorder when used in combination with behavioural therapy.

By contrast, new research into the effects of the classical hallucinogens has progressed at a much slower pace, probably because these drugs are categorised as Class A in the UK (Schedule I in the US), and researchers who wish to obtain them therefore face numerous regulatory barriers.

Nevertheless, it now seems quite clear that psychedelic drugs have enormous potential for treating a wide variety of psychiatric conditions. Much still remains to be discovered about exactly how they affect the brain, however.

Amazing what can happen when people quit freaking out.

STATESVILLE, NC (WBTV) - A man who was with about a dozen people who were looking for a legendary “ghost train” in Iredell County was hit by a locomotive and killed early Friday morning. 

There’s a lesson in here somewhere…

We are the Rude GMO Critics, bitches.

Dr Ben Carter, from the University of Liverpool, presented his research on dry water at the 240th National Meeting of the American Chemical Society in Boston.

He said: ‘’There’s nothing else quite like it. Hopefully, we may see dry water making waves in the future.'’

Dr. Carter, you crack me up. This story reminds me of the line by comedian Stephen Wright-”I bought some powdered water, but I didn’t know what to add.”

Munich - A recent Testbiotech survey shows that DNA fragments from transgenic plants are increasingly found in animal tissue such as milk, inner organs and muscles. Most recently, in April 2010, scientists from Italy reported DNA sequences stemming from genetically engineered soy in milk from goats. These DNA fragments are presumably, entering the blood stream from the gut and then from there reaching the udder and the milk. Traces of specific DNA were also identified in kids fed with the goat’s milk. These findings are not the first to be reported after DNA fragments have been found in the tissue of animals fed with transgenic plants.

Today Judge Jeffrey White, federal district judge for the Northern District of California, issued a ruling granting the request of plaintiffs Center for Food Safety, Organic Seed Alliance, High Mowing Organic Seeds, and the Sierra Club to rescind the United States Department of Agriculture’s (USDA’s) approval of genetically engineered “Roundup Ready” sugar beets.

Let’s not forget,  all you biotech boosters, that this ruling results from the failure of genetic engineering enthusiasts to follow federal law and do basic environmental science.

A fine post on DKos about climate change. Summary: The shit is hitting the fan.

Charles Hawley, editor of Spiegel Online International, joins us from Berlin to explain. Charles Hawley, how much of a problem are these wild boars?

Mr. CHARLES HAWLEY (Editor, Spiegel Online International): Well, the wild boar problem has certainly been growing in recent years. The population has been skyrocketing. The number of wild boars is estimated to be around 2.5 million in Germany, and the numbers of those shot by hunters has more than doubled in the last two years.

So there are certainly a lot of wild boars, and as they multiply, they come into contact with humans more often.

BLOCK: What kind of contact?

Mr. HAWLEY: Well, there are stories of them bursting into supermarkets. Occasionally, they’ll break up a church meeting. Quite often they’ll be causing car accidents, that kind of thing.

BLOCK: And they’re radioactive to boot.

Mr. HAWLEY: Quite a few of them are indeed radioactive, mostly in southern Germany. That was sort of the major fallout zone of the Chernobyl disaster, and so as a result, there’s quite a bit of radioactivity still in the ground.

I can’t wait for the movie.

TEOTIHUACAN, Mexico — A long-sealed tunnel has been found under the ruins of Teotihuacan, and chambers that seem to branch off it may hold the tombs of some of the ancient city’s early rulers.

Every nuke ever.

Biotech boosters love to go on and on about how GMO crops reduce pesticide use. But once again, reality intervenes.

One weed scientist, David Mortensen at Penn State University, said the government should restrict the use of herbicide-tolerant crops and impose a tax on biotech seeds to fund research and education programs.The resistant weeds cannot be killed by the sole use of glyphosate, the active ingredient in Roundup herbicide, which has become broadly popular with farmers with the advent more than a decade ago of soybeans, cotton, corn and other crops that are immune to the chemical. The weeds now infest about 11 million acres, a fivefold increase in three years, Mortensen said.

Thus requiring more and harsher pesticides.

Tasty Eye Candy.

What is even more troubling is that the United States Government actually did a secret follow up-study on the Virginia findings, in the mid ’90’s. When it only served to confirm the results of the 1974 research, and showed that THC (one of the main active ingredient in cannabis – and the one the government loves to hate), when administered to mice, protected them against malignancy, true to form, our government attempted to bury the results. Fortunately, a draft copy of the study was leaked to the journal, AIDS Treatment News, and the media covered the story. An excellent article by Paul Armentano, Deputy Director of NORML, covers this part of our shameful history.

Imagine if policy were determined by objective scientific findings instead of politics.

The sowing season may be just around the corner, but this year German farmers will not be planting genetically modified crops: German Agriculture Minister Ilse Aigner announced Tuesday she was banning the cultivation of GM corn in Germany. Under the new regulations, the cultivation of MON 810, a GM corn produced by the American biotech giant Monsanto, will be prohibited in Germany, as will the sale of its seed. Aigner told reporters Tuesday she had legitimate reasons to believe that MON 810 posed “a danger to the environment,” a position which she said the Environment Ministry also supported. In taking the step, Aigner is taking advantage of a clause in EU law which allows individual countries to impose such bans.

Righteous.

God I love Wikipedia.

Great article. His conclusions:

1.) This new found love of lower government spending is politically motivated. It has nothing to do with altruism or love of country. It’s about the November elections. Period.

2.) Government spending has been and always will be part of the the GDP equation

3.) Countries that tried austerity are worse off for it.

4.) Countries that inject massive amounts of the proper stimulus (such as infrastructure spending) grow at high rates.

The facts have a politically progressive bias.

UFOs in China

The BBC elevates patronizing to the level of art with this wretchedly titled bit of pap “Fussy Eaters- Whats wrong with GM food?”

Some fear GM food is bad for health. There are no data that support this view.

In the US, where many processed foods contain ingredients derived from GM maize or soy, in the most litigious society in history, nobody has sued for a GM health problem.

Some fear GM is bad for the environment. But in agriculture, idealism does not solve problems. Farmers need “least bad” solutions; they do not have the luxury of insisting on utopian solutions.

It is less bad to control weeds with a rapidly inactivated herbicide after the crop germinates, than to apply more persistent chemicals beforehand.

It is less bad to have the plant make its own insecticidal protein, than to spray insecticides.

It is better to maximise the productivity of arable land via all kinds of sustainable intensification, than to require more land under the plough because of reduced yields.

Some say GM is high risk, but they cannot tell you what the risk is…

Your pals at New Scientist never took up the challenge after we dropped this house on them. Perhaps you all will be a bit more sporting, wot?

This is freaking fascinating:

The new theory, proposed by the researchers and driven by ideas from evolutionary psychology, holds that drug attitudes are really driven by people’s reproductive strategies.

When the Penn researchers questioned almost 1,000 people in two subject populations (undergraduate students and Internet users) a clear winner emerged between the competing theories: differences in reproductive strategies are driving individuals’ different views on recreational drugs.

Researcher Robert Kurzban said that while many factors predict to some extent whether people are opposed to recreational drugs, the most closely related predictors are people’s views on sexual promiscuity. “This provides evidence that views on sex and views on drugs are very closely related,” he explained. “If you were to measure people’s political ideology, religiosity and personality characteristics, you can predict to some degree how people feel about recreational drugs. But if, instead, you just measure how people feel about casual sex, and ignore the abstract items, the predictions about people’s views on drugs in fact become quite a bit better.”

Somewhat controversially, the study also concludes that considering morality from the standpoint of strategic reproductive interests is a potentially useful way to understand why humans care about third-party behavior.

Nice website as well.

The glitch between the two vehicles occurred about 25 minutes before the Progress ship was due to automatically park itself at a berthing slip on the station’s Russian Zvezda module.

Instead, Progress floated past the station at a safe distance of about 2 miles, said NASA spokesman Rob Navias, adding that the six-member Russian-American crew was never in any danger.

“This is the fastest genetic change ever observed in humans,” said Rasmus Nielsen, UC Berkeley professor of integrative biology, who led the statistical analysis. “For such a very strong change, a lot of people would have had to die simply due to the fact that they had the wrong version of a gene.”

The widespread mutation in Tibetans is near a gene called EPAS1, a so-called “super athlete gene” identified several years ago and named because some variants of the gene are associated with improved athletic performance, Nielsen said. The gene codes for a protein involved in sensing oxygen levels and perhaps balancing aerobic and anaerobic metabolism.

A couple/few months ago, I called Senator Amy Klobuchar’s office and said she should be more like Al Franken. By that I meant, among other things, do more visible pushback against the right, and freaking tear it up a little. The nice man I spoke to there assured me it was all about the fact that Sen. Franken was in fact a celebrity before joining the Senate, and that Sen. Klobuchar was working on other important, but less sexy, stuff. That was all good with me; I just wanted to apply a little pressure in that direction, because I think it’s valuable. Well she finally delivered, and went on a fatal rampage against some GOP idiot in the Kagan hearings who was on about how we were “more free” in 1980 or some shit. Thank you, Senator Klobuchar, for sticking it to that weasel.

This new study seems to validate the role of cell phone radiation as a contributing factor in declining bee populations.

Andrew Goldsworthy, a biologist from the UK’s Imperial College, London, has studied the biological effects of electromagnetic fields. He thinks it’s possible bees could be affected by cell phone radiation.

The reason, Goldsworthy says, could hinge on a pigment in bees called cryptochrome.

“Animals, including insects, use cryptochrome for navigation,” Goldsworthy told CNN.

“They use it to sense the direction of the earth’s magnetic field and their ability to do this is compromised by radiation from [cell] phones and their base stations. So basically bees do not find their way back to the hive.”

More from the Gulf

Comments anyone?

Washington, Jun 21 -
Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a long-time advocate of family farmers and organic foods, today made the following statement after the Supreme Court voted 7-1 to allow the experimental planting of genetically modified alfalfa seed before an environmental review is completed:

“Today the Supreme Court ruled that when it comes to genetically modified organisms, we as consumers, have to wait until the damage is done and obvious, before we can act to protect health and the environment, even if that damage could be irreversible.

“Haven’t we learned from the catastrophe in the Gulf of the dangers of technological arrogance, of proceeding ahead with technologies without worrying about the consequences? Why do we continue to throw precaution to the wind?

“Tomorrow I will introduce three bills this week that will provide a comprehensive regulatory framework for all Genetically Engineered (GE) plants, animals, bacteria, and other organisms.

Call your reps.

The mess we have today in the Gulf of Mexico is not the first time BP has committed crimes against the environment and against people. This is a proverbial drop in the bucket for BP. This outfit has been cheating humanity since its inception.

How not to contain an oil spill starring BP. Then let your stomach churn reading this Kos post about the potential for future catastrophes.