morphine
gregladen | May 26, 2017What, with all the attacks on science and scientist these days, we may not want to be focusing on those times when science goes off the rails and makes a huge mess of things. But, science at its best and scientists at their best, will never shy away from such things.
Dr. Paul Offit just wrote a book called Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong, which not about an evil black dog that escaped from a box, but rather, seven instances when the march of scientific progress headed off a cliff rather than in the desired direction. People died. Many people died. Other bad things…
dr. dolittle | March 18, 2014Here I thought snails were just cute little creatures that liked to dine in my vegetable garden. You can imagine my surprise to learn there are also carnivorous snails....with venom. New research shows that conotoxin, isolated from cone snail venom, can numb pain. Conotoxin is also reportedly 100 times more potent than morphine at treating chronic nerve pain. The added benefit is that it does not appear to be addictive.
The snail to the rescue is the marine carnivorous cone snail common to the Indian Ocean and western Pacific. It hunts by stabbing prey and injecting a venom that paralyzes…
dr. dolittle | October 3, 2013
Image of a Chinese red-headed centipede from Wikimedia Commons.
Researchers from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and The University of Queensland have discovered a venom from centipedes capable of blocking pain more effectively than morphine!
According to the study authors, centipedes have appeared in the fossil records as far back as 430 million years. They are also one of the first land-dwelling creatures to use venom to incapacitate their prey as shown in the image above of a Chinese red-headed centipede (Scolopendra subspinipes mutilansis) snacking on a roach. The venom is secreted…
cmonforton | November 14, 2011She's a hospice nurse. When I tell people her occupation, I typically receive a response like this: "She must be a very special person. I could never work in a place where people go to die." Hospice is a "place," and equating hospice to death, are just two of the misperceptions that hospice care providers and proponents are constantly working to dispel. Providing correct information that hospice is a philosophy of care (not a place) takes on special importance in November because it is National Hospice and Palliative Care month.
Data from 2010 indicates that more than 68% of hospice…
ddobbs | February 1, 2010PTSD, pharma, adjuvants, bad movies -- these are a few of my favorite things, and readers' too.
What's Neil doing here? He wasn't on Neuron Culture; I posted his clip on my catch-all, David Dobbs's Somatic Marker, because I love him. So he comes first. From 1986. Looks as if he's having a particularly good time here.
Neuron Culture's Top Five from Jan 2010
NEJM study finds post-event morphine cuts combat PTSD rates in half
"This is a pretty big deal if it holds up in future trials. One caveat I've not had time to check out is whether the morphine was often applied as part of an more…
terrasig | August 31, 2009
The Boulder County coroner announced today that the July death of a Boulder teen was indeed due to opioid intoxication from preparation of a poppy pod tea.
Jeffrey Joseph Bohan, 19, of Boulder, was found dead in his friend's Boulder home about 6 p.m. July 21 after drinking poppy-pod tea the night before with his brother, according to Boulder police.
Investigators suspected the Fairview High graduate, who was going to Colorado State University, died from the psychoactive tea, which is brewed from the plant that produces opium. But they couldn't be sure until the Coroner's Office confirmed…
terrasig | May 31, 2009When one thinks of a heroin user, thoughts most often come to mind of a person living in squalor in a big metropolitan city or that of an artsy, poetic hipster (while there are many literary works on the life of heroin users, my all-time favorite is Basketball Diaries, an autobiographical account written by Jim Carroll during the ages of 12 to 15. From this description of Carroll's two works on his life with heroin at the catholicboy.com website of Carroll scholar, Dr Cassie Carter: "After reading about 30 pages of the Diaries, [Jack] Kerouac stated that 'at the age of 13, Jim Carroll writes…
terrasig | March 31, 2009A little over a week ago, we posted on the very sad story of the accidental death of a University of Colorado sophomore from ingesting poppy seed tea. The poppy, Papaver somniferum, is the commercial source for prescription narcotic painkillers such as morphine and codeine. The seeds can be had online and in retail stores. The plants can often be grown if these seeds are not roasted or otherwise sterilized.
I had originally suspected that the CU-Boulder student had not used poppy seed tea but rather some other decoction of the plant itself. I had always contended that the seeds did not…
terrasig | March 21, 2009After writing this post, I came across Alex's obituary and guestbook on Legacy.com. By all accounts, Alex was a great kid - loved and admired by many - an accomplished hockey player and musician with a love for the mountains. This could have been you or I, or worse, one of our own children.
Breaking my heart this morning is news from Boulder that last month's death of 20-year-old CU student, Alexander McGuiggan, was from consumption of "opium tea."
Police department spokeswoman Sarah Huntley said investigators believe McGuiggan and others had acquired poppy plants -- which are available…
amillikan | January 13, 2009It's been hypothesized that music may mitigate physical pain, a by-product of many medical procedures, but this has always been hard to test due to the wide range of music preferences. In a recent study that capitalized on mp3 player mania, researchers tested this theory by allowing subjects to listen to their own pre-made play list while immersing their hand in icy water for as long as they could tolerate it. Unsurprisingly, the subjects who listened to music lasted longer than the ones without.