Like, whoa, man.
According to a paper that will be published in the November issue of the Journal of Clinical Investigation, smoking the wacky tobaccy may help you grow more brain cells.
In each temporal lobe of the human brain, there is a structure called the hippocampus (so named because its shape resembles that of a sea horse). The hippocampus is a part of the limbic system and is best known for its role in memory. Those of you who have studied some psychology or neuroscience will probably be familiar with the case of H.M., a man who had bilateral hippocampectomy to treat severe epileptic seisures and who was thereafter unable to form new memories. The movie Memento is about a guy who suffered similar damage.
There is an area of the hippocampus called the dentate gyrus that contains neural stem/progenitor cells. You may have been told that the human brain never grows new brain cells, but that's not actually true; some areas of the brain, like the dentate gyrus, can indeed generate new neurons, even in a fully-grown adult. Studies of many drugs of abuse have shown that such drugs typically decrease the rate of neurogenesis in the hippocampus, but the impact of marijuana (specifically, the cannabinoids) had not been examined in detail.
Now, Dr. Zhang and collegues have reported findings that a potent synthetic cannabinoid called HU210 increases hippocampal neurogenesis in both embryonic and adult rat brains. I don't know about you, but I'm not surprised because the only two people I've ever met who could remember the complete words to Louie, Louie were total potheads.
Zhang et al also link this increased neurogenesis to the antidepressant and anxiolytic behavioral effects of the cannabinoids, which is an interesting finding in and of itself. If the rate of proliferation of neurons in the hippocampus is linked to depression and anxiety then I can spitball about half a dozen science-fictiony clinical possibilities already. Most of which would give the anti-stem cell crowd fits.
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Since you mentioned stem cells, what do you think of this? http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/
content/article/2005/10/16/
AR2005101600492.html
Studies Show New Ways to Get Stem Cells
By MALCOLM RITTER
The Associated Press
Sunday, October 16, 2005; 10:09 PM
NEW YORK -- Two new mouse experiments may show how to obtain human embryonic stem cells without ethical hurdles, a step that could allow federal funding for such research, scientists reported Sunday.
Currently, scientists must sacrifice human embryos to harvest such cells, which can form any tissue type and are seen as valuable for studying and treating illnesses like diabetes and Parkinson's disease.
I think all the "ethical hurdles" are crap spewed by people who don't have the faintest idea of the science behind these procedures, and that if there was any justice in the world it would be illegal for anybody to vote on scientific regulation without first attaining minimal competancy in the methods they are evaluating.
That said, I think we're never going to reach that point, because stupid people believe they are entitled to bash and hinder science while simultaneously demanding the right to reap the benefits that science produces. Therefore, anything we can do to placate the stupid is going to be a lesser-of-the-evils kind of option.
Currently, non-embryonic stem cells are simply not as good for many of our purposes, since they aren't pluripotent. If we could find a way to obtain pluripotent stem cells from another source, and therefore make the stupids shut the fuck up about the goddam "babies" we are "murdering," then that's just great. But I think it's disgusting that scientists have had to be hampered by the hangups of people who claim to care so very much about this issue and yet can't be bothered to read so much as a fucking journal article on the subject.
If you want my scientific opinion on the advantages and disadvantages of non-embryonic stem cells, that's going to be a much longer post :).
Ok, the scientific ignorance of the American public these days (hell, look at the kind of stuff proudly presented on your site by someone who claims to have gone to elementary school) is a pretty broad topic, what in particular don't we know about "the science behind these procedures"? Ethically, or politically to be crass about it, I am well aware of the fact that embryos harvested for stem cells are in the discard pile and that people whose issue this is should be condeming the practice of making so many embryos, not choosing to use the 'excess' for science rather than leaving it in a freezer forever. But please expand on the science you mean, if you can put it in relatively lay terms.
I just finished reading your post. There are actual words to Louie, Louie? I had no idea, although I'm the guy who went to Amsterdam and didn't indulge so I guess that makes sense.
The ignorance I am refering to, Aleks, includes many misconceptions. The big one, as you pointed out, is that people oppose using otherwise-garbage-bin-bound embryos for a useful scientific purpose. The people that oppose stem cell research often loudly support the "right" to use invitro and other fertility treatments.
People also will try to tell you that "we have plenty of stem cell lines already, they don't need to use embryos." That's 100% pure bunk. We don't have nearly enough stem cell lines, and the ones we have aren't in great shape.
And, of course, there's The Big Lie, which is that "life begins at conception" and therefore it's wrong for us to fuck around with embryos. Anybody who pulls that one out on you deserves to be beaten about the head with a intro Biology text.
Life doesn't "begin" at any point; it's called "The Human LIFE Cycle" for a reason, and that is because at no point in the cycle does non-living material suddenly become alive. If we can't use embryonic cells because they are "alive" in some magical meaning of the word, then we also can't use stem cells from ANYWHERE. If the single-cell conceptus is "alive," then that means all stem cells--hell, all cells period--are equally "alive" and cannot be tampered with.
There's more, of course, because the list of stupid misconceptions about stem cells is long enough to span the distance from the flat Earth to the Sun that orbits it.
**People also will try to tell you that "we have plenty of stem cell lines already, they don't need to use embryos." That's 100% pure bunk. We don't have nearly enough stem cell lines, and the ones we have aren't in great shape.**
I didn't mention that one because it isn't a scientific misconception at all but a political one, result of either fanatical incompetence or deliberate disinformation from the White House at the time, I believe it was 2002, of his great statesmanlike decision on stem cell research funding.
**And, of course, there's The Big Lie, which is that "life begins at conception" and therefore it's wrong for us to fuck around with embryos. Anybody who pulls that one out on you deserves to be beaten about the head with a intro Biology text.**'
I want to start by saying that I'm not offended or reacting defensively (hell, I've known you a long time). But I am certainly one of those people, and frankly I don't think you could reach my head. You're quite right to say that science does not provide a time when life 'begins', but that's exactly the reason I'm pro-Life. If we can't determine a distinct time at which a fertilized egg becomes a human being, that magic moment when personhood begins and suddenly one has the right to be considered an end-in-oneself rather than a useable or disposable means to the happiness or convenience of someone else, conception seems like the only time to place that. Lord knows that human history is hardly littered with examples of us being too willing to extend rights and humanity to others. And the objection to stem cells from emrbyros isn't that the single stem cell is used, but that the embryo is destroyed, whereas taking that cell from an adult (whether it turns out to be as medically useful or not) does not kill the adult.
Just to keep the conversation from getting too heavy, a brief reminder of the place of a true "fiscal conservative" in Bush's Republican Party: In the latest sign of the deepening split among conservatives over how far to go in challenging President Bush, Bruce Bartlett, a Republican commentator who has been increasingly critical of the White House, was dismissed on Monday as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative research group based in Dallas.
In a statement, the organization said the decision was made after Mr. Bartlett supplied its president, John C. Goodman, with the manuscript of his forthcoming book, "The Impostor: How George W. Bush Bankrupted America and Betrayed the Reagan Legacy."
Oh come on, now you're being unfair. We all know what happened to people who questioned man's place at the center of creation (which seems absurd if the point is to elevate worship God rather than man, how does it diminish God's glory if Christ died to save people who weren't literally the center of the universe?), but when did people last actually believe that the Earth was flat?
The problem with the "personhood begins at conception" idea is that it means identical twins are a single person. It also means that over half of the worlds "people" are never even large enough to see with the naked eye, as that is a conservative estimate of the percentage of fertilizations that will be NATURALLY aborted. (Something like 30% of successful implantations will spontaneously abort, and estimates of pre-implantation spontaneous abortions run from 30% to as high as 80%).
It also means that you're setting the bar for personhood so low that it becomes meaningless. If we allow personhood to be applied to a pluripotent diploid cell with human DNA, then what happens when that cell divides into two identical daughter cells? They're each identical to the first cell, so does that make them each a person? On what criterion will you deny each of those two cells full personhood rights? Because they are identical? What if later the cells end up forming two embryos? Will you retroactively grant certain (identical) cells different personhood rights?
The idea of using "unique" DNA to define personhood can't work either, because the mitochondria inside each of your cells has its very own set of DNA, different from nuclear DNA, so that would mean that each of your mitochondria is a different person than the cell it inhabits. (Also, you get back to the identical and conjoined twin phenomenon.)
Basically, from a biological standpoint, saying that life or personhood begin at conception makes no more (or less) sense than claiming life begins when the woman's bra is unhooked. A conceptus is no more or less alive than the sperm and egg that fused to form it, and it's no more or less a person than each of the two daughter cells it will divide into.
When did people last actually believe that the Earth was flat?
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/flatearth.html
Okay, now let's get back to the real topic, if you don't mind. I find debates on when life "begins" to be as dull as debates about the flatness or roundness of the Earth.
I would vastly prefer to discuss the article I posted (which is why I posted it, instead of posting some stem-cell debate hoo-hah). Think about it: we can talk about the War on Drugs, about the clinical use of psychoactives in general, about the potential impact of finding that neurogenesis and depression are linked, or any number of other entertaining subjects!
Please, anything other than the same, tired debate about the rights of womb-boogers.
Alright, but you mentioned unhooking bras, not I. Then you want to shift back to talking about boring old marajuana. Isn't that just like a woman.
Haha, yeah, and I realize I dug my own grave when I mentioned the word "stem cell." Nothing good can come of such things...when will I learn?!
Well bless me if you didn't seem like the person to ask. When will I learn?
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