morphine

Seven Stories Of Science Gone Wrong

gregladen — Fri, 26 May 2017 09:05:35 +0000

Seven Stories Of Science Gone Wrong

What, 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 happened.

__________
Note: I interviewed Paul Offit about his book on Atheist Talk Radio. This interview will be aired on Sunday, May 28th, and will be available as a podcast. It should be HERE.
__________

Readers will have different reactions to, and ways to relate to, each of the seven different stories, because they are far flung and cover a great deal of time, diverse social settings, and a wide range of scientific endeavors. Some readers will get mad because he talks about DDT and Rachel Carson, though I assure you his argument is mostly reasonable (I did disagree with some parts). All readers will be amazed at the poppy plant and all it can do and has done, and astonished at the immense apparent ignorance displayed by that plant's exploiters, from back in the early 19th century to, well, yesterday. Those interested in race and racism, the use of poison gas to kill people, will find things you didn't know in Offit's carefully researched histories. Also, don't forget to take your vitamins. Or, maybe, forget to take your vitamins.

The chapter "The Great Margarine Mistake" is a great example of the very commonly screwed up interface between food science, food production and marketing, and the shaping of food preference among regular people. You know, that thing where "They tell us not to drink coffee. Then they tell us to drink coffee. They don't know nothin'"

My biggest disagreement with Paul is over malaria. He did not incorporate an often overlooked fact about the disease into his discussion, and had he done so, may have written a somewhat different chapter. Briefly, in zones where there are two wet seasons (or one long wet season and a very short dry season) there has never really been success in curtailing malaria. In zones where there is a very long dry season but it is wet enough for part of the year for the mosquito that carries malaria to exist at least most years, malaria is relatively easy to beat down using a wide range of techniques, no one of which is supreme. So, for example, today, the distribution of malaria in South Africa, where it is not actually that common (thousands of cases in a normal year among tens of millions of people) is determined mainly by how wet the eastern wet season is, integrated with the movement into that area of people, usually refugees, who are a) infected and b) not getting medical treatment. (See this.)

Malaria was wiped out in country after country prior to the use of DDT, then the DDT came in and helped a great deal, in those relatively dry countries. But the wet countries, not so much. Indeed, in a place like Zaire, there are absolutely no reliable statistics on how common Malaria is or ever was over most of the country, but when I lived there in the 1980s, it was as common as the common cold in New Jersey, and DDT was theoretically in use. (That is a second correlation with causation: the wetter the equatorial country, the less we actually know about disease. I recall leaving the deep rain forest to visit the "city" to get hold of a few courses of leprosy medicine for a handful of people who visited our clinic who had it, where I had dinner with a guy from the UN who was on his victory lap for having wiped out leprosy in Africa.)

In some ways, Offit's final chapter is the most interesting, the eighth chapter (combined with the Epilog) in which he does two things. One is to identify the kind of reasoning mistake, or methodological mistake, each of his seven examples exemplifies. Such as failure to pay attention to the data, or failure to pay attention to the man behind the curtain. The other is to go quickly through what may end up being similar stories of science gone wrong just starting to brew today or in recent decades, such as the long term unintended effects of widespread use of antibiotics.

A question that Offit's book raises, indirectly, is this: When a Pandora-like box opens and some sort of monster creeps out, why did the box open to begin with? Sometimes it is jostled open, like in the case of unintended negative outcomes from the use of antibiotics. Sometimes it is opened because someone can't resist the treasures that may be inside. Sometimes it is opened because science is an open process and must always seek knowledge etc. etc. I wonder if the recent development of an engineered polio virus (three instances), or the Spanish Flu, is an example of such. Sometimes it is opened because of (Godwin Warning!) HITLER. Seriously.

I don't know what knowing these reasons gets us, but one possibility is this: when we find ignorance as a root cause of calamity, perhaps an appreciation of knowledge is gained. That is certainly the lesson of Offit's review of the products of opium, their invention, intensification, deployment, and use. Apparently addiction was simply not understood at all until fairly recently, and that lack of understanding caused science, medical technology, and medical practice to do the exactly wrong thing over and over again.

And of course, lobotomies. The invention of the latter method of doing this useless and horrible procedure is something that, if put in a movie as a plot element, would kill the movie because it is not possible to suspend disbelief to the degree necessary to stay seated in the theater.

Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong is a great read and a necessary addition to the bookshelf of any practicing skeptic or science enthusiast.

Paul Offit, who is a pediatrician and the inventor of a rotavirus vaccine (see this for an interesting podcast on a related topic), is the Maurice R. Hilleman Professor of Vaccinology and Professor of Pediatrics at the Perelman School of Medicine, University of Pennsylvania. He is also chief of Infectious Diseases and director of Vaccine Education at the Children's Hospital of Philadelphia.

Aside from Pandra's Lab, he also wrote Do You Believe in Magic?: Vitamins, Supplements, and All Things Natural: A Look Behind the Curtain, Deadly Choices: How the Anti-Vaccine Movement Threatens Us All, and Bad Faith: When Religious Belief Undermines Modern Medicine.

gregladen Fri, 05/26/2017 - 05:05

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Artificial intelligence may turn out to be the very worst case of science gone wrong. At http://discourse.numenta.org/t/free-will-volition-module and thereabouts we are rushing headlong laudably towards understanding the brain but perhaps foolishly towards creating AI.

Not really piqued by a URL that says "free will" in a "discourse" blog.

AI is entirely benign. What if your toaster had AI. What if it went bad. How would it go bad? Murder you by burning your toast all the time until you get a coronary? Your PC would do what? Decide to drop the USB packets that your mouse click made and make you lose your game of DOOM?

None of it makes any dent in free will, though. AI is orthogonal to that.And it's not going to teach us about the brain either, because the operation of the brain is in how it works, not what was put in after the fact. We can only program stories, reality doesn't do stories, it just executes one. And whether free will exists or not entirely depends on what you define as free will. Much like sound with the "tree in a forest" thing.

Skynet got rid of humanity because we gave it all the bombs. If we'd gotten rid of the bombs...

By way of background, back in 2005 I submitted the first Slashdot story -- https://tech.slashdot.org/story/05/03/24/1518224/palm-founders-form-ai-… -- about the founding of Numenta by the inventor of the Palm Pilot. Now twelve years later I stumbled into the Numenta hierarchical temporal memory "HTM Forum" while Googling for discussions of "How the Mind Works", because the 1997 Stephen Pinker book by that lofty title annoyed me with its failure to make good on its promise of explaining how the mind works.

Last night on 2017-05-25 I tried to comment in a "sensorimotor" thread, but the moderator split off my discussion into a separate "Free will Volition module" thread -- thus establishing my not-yet-D-Day beachhead into the meme-susceptible minds of the AI enthusiasts most eager to approach AI from the viewpoint of neuroscience. Here and at http://www.ai-forum.org/topic.asp?forum_id=1&topic_id=79318 I am trying to accelerate the emergence of AI by attracting talent and mind-share to the bottom-up Numenta project which may gain from my own top-down AI work.

What we desire from "free will" is the intelligent selection of goals without coercion or deception. Determinism Yes; detention, No.

Would some wanna-be please take over my AI theory and my AI software so as please to absolve me of any blame if things go terribly wrong? -Arthur

If this is the same Arthur T. Murray whose crap I've seen before, he is a long time, and well-known, crank, who doesn't have any formal training in AI or even computer science. He's learned about it "from reading science fiction".

At one time he pushed a "theory" of the mind that said, roughly,

The mind contains at its foundation a two-dimensional matrix where the columns represent senses (smell, touch, taste, etc.) and the rows represent time. As time passes, the brain stores the sensory input it receives in successive rows of this matrix.

Crank all the way down.

OK, you need to change your pitch. Woomancer words don't work on decent scientists and what you said was so laden with buzzword and salad that it's practically begging to be ignored.

You'll fleece the gullible with it, or attract the dumb's money, but the dumb money won't work, because you need the smart money to make it work.

So either you're fine with fleecing or you have the wrong pitch.

In response to "Dean" upthread from here, you are not presenting my own claims or my own words, but rather the twisted systerhood of my archnemesis who wrote a diatribe against me thirteen years ago. May I remind all here present that you are supposed to be "scientists" who reserve judgement and who deal in facts, not ad-hominem attacks.

In response to "Wow" directly upthread, there is no fleecing of anybody going on here, because the Mentifex AI project is motivated not by money but by curiosity. Now let's try something with the markup:

![Theory of Mind](http://ai.neocities.org/VisRecog.gif)

Sorry, your spiel indicates that you are either incompetent in the field or unreliable. If you're not trying to fleece anyone, you're wasting your time because at least if you WERE trying to fleece someone your pitch could have been improved and then maybe believed by investors smart enough to actually have a chance of succeeding.

But if you're not trying to fleece anyone then your spiel is clearly the best you've got and the venture is a waste of everyone's time, including yours.

It doesn't matter what your nemesis said or what dean said, your own words condemn the venture.

",In response to “Dean” upthread from here, you are not presenting my own claims or my own words, but rather the twisted systerhood of my archnemesis"

Sorry, that accurately represents the bullshit you were spreading when I first read your crap. It doesn't seem that a single thing has changed with your ignorant presentations.

Science may go terribly wrong with artificial intelligence, or perhaps AI will benefit humanity. This morning I have created a new web-page that I would like to share here while we are on the topic of Science Going Wrong. What is the formatting here for links? Please excuse any ignorance shown below:

Prosperity Engine for Human and Robot Society Based on Artificial Intelligence

So you're just here to advertise, then.

Mentifex, what I saw on your website might be suitable as an outline you make for yourself when writing a science fiction story, but it's not a theory of mind.

Wow, why would AI be installed on a toaster? AI - to the degree that it exists or will exist - would be used to make decisions, either regarding hardware or software. So, we see early AI helping to fly fighter jets, buy and sell stocks,operate remote drones like the Mars probes and military robots, that sort of thing. I can certainly imagine software capable of learning making disconcerting decisions with undesirable results.

Might as well ask why would you install it on a nuclear missile.

The point of the toaster was to show how the form the AI has to mechanically affect the world limits the ability of AI to be problematic.

But if you want to pretend serious, how about you have AI to do REAL browning control rather than a thermistor timer?

If you don't like toasters, then what about your TV? So it can direct your advertising to the right place. And how will it kill you? Turn to MTV and swap channels until you get an epileptic fit?

The point was also not about toaster AI but how bullshit the claim "AI is dangerous!!!" is, because if an AI were put inside a toaster, the claim it's dangerous is plainly ridiculous.

Maybe you just don't want to comprehend it, though. Maybe you can't.

Wow - So you're confident that the military robots the US has announced will never wield a weapon will actually never be armed? How about North Korean, Russian, or private robots? I can't help but notice that you ignored my specific examples. It's not as though we have no historical examples of unanticipated consequences or decision makers ignoring warnings. While Mars probes behaving badly would be unlikely to lead to Skynet, I can see, for instance, stock market programs capable of learning making very costly decisions which still do not rise to the level of Robot Apocalypse®.

I admit I am currently less worried about AI than I am global warming, which is not a case of science gone wrong so much as science ignored.

So kermit, you don;t know what confident looks like? Because there's bugger all that could indicate that in my post. So, yeah, it is the second option: you can't comprehend it, the situation is too hard for your poor little brain.

I'll start you like I do the more odious kids with education problems.

OK, so what do you think is the dangerous part about AI? Not guns, not weapons, AI.

"I resent the implication that I'm a one-dimensional, bread-obsessed electrical appliance."

For some reason, people refuse to heed the lessons of Red Dwarf. Clearly toasters are disruptive.

"I toast, therefore I am. "
~Talkie Toaster

@15 AI will make unexpected decisions. If those decisions are bad ones by our standards, there could be bad results. I am not worried that my toaster would make wrong decisions for me about how brown to make my toast, I am worried that AI which runs stock purchasing, military robots, medical programs, etc could make wrong decisions. And by "wrong" I mean a decision with which most or all humans would be unhappy with.

An abstract AI sitting alone in a thought experiment will not hurt anything, of course. But they are and will be attached to weapons, and our bank accounts, and transportation. I think AI connected to the internet will be the most dangerous, with the unpredictability increasing by orders of magnitude..

You claim that your post does not indicate confidence, yet you said "how bullshit the claim 'AI is dangerous!!!' is, because if an AI were put inside a toaster, the claim it’s dangerous is plainly ridiculous." I inferred that you were confident of safe military decisions etc. because I can't make heads or tails of your statement otherwise. I am a bear of very little brain, however, and perhaps I misinterpreted you. But AI isn't safe because it can be put into toasters; it's dangerous because it won't *only be put into toasters.

Guns, unloaded, and not used, are safe. But that's not their only circumstance, is it? I can see danger in genetic engineering, AI, cars, and the use of fire, without wanting these things to be banned, forbidden, or even discouraged. Any technology is safe if it's not used. Generally, tech is developed because it is already used or somebody anticipates it being used.

"@15 AI will make unexpected decisions. "

And why is that a danger?

No, again, not what's dangerous about guns or the metal of war, AI.

"If those decisions are bad ones by our standards, there could be bad results"

Uh, stock market crash?

"You claim that your post does not indicate confidence"

Yup. Remember you said I was confident that the future would have no future AI robots/terminators. The post said nothing about robots, only about AI.

What's dangerous about AI?

The only valid one so far is both null because cockups are done by humans so it's not an AI thing and also requires we decide an absolute right and proper answer. HFTs show that there's a shitload of argument about what is right and proper with the stock market, so you get good or bad not based on AI but on the moral codes of the person making the assessment.

What is dangerous about AI?

"Guns, unloaded, and not used, are safe"

No, they can be loaded. Or sold or stolen to be used in a crime.

#16 I forgot the RD toaster. Thanks for refreshing memory.

I thought of the drink dispenser in Douglas Adams Restaurant at the end of the universe.

“That drink,” said the machine sweetly, “was individually tailored to meet your personal requirements for nutrition and pleasure.”
“Ah,” said Arthur, “so I’m a masochist on a diet am I?”
“Share and Enjoy.”
“Oh, shut up.”

#20

"Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that Cylons are, in the final analysis, little more than toasters... with great-looking legs."
~ Baltar: Battestar Galactica

Terror at the breakfast table:
http://www.geeky-gadgets.com/battlestar-galactica-led-toaster-14-07-200…

There is also Futurama episode "Mom's Day". Which is a world where they build robots that are insane or perverted or hobos.

Welp. I guess I can't condemn AI as a concept which is not being applied in any way, so I'll have to let it go.

Where do you see yourself in a few years?

I see myself trying to escape blame and censure for what I have created, while the villagers with their pitchforks and firebrands storm the castle where I am hiding out.

Don;t create it, then. If it's already done, undo it. Don't pretend you've created something when you have not. Don't fuck up and THEN ask forgiveness.

Apply those appropriate and cut out the fucking histrionics.

"Welp. I guess I can’t condemn AI as a concept which is not being applied in any way"

You haven't condemned AI at all, you've made strawmen to attack and argued about how weapons are bad. You can't condemn AI as a concept not because you are forbidden but because you cannot work out how, only have the desire to condemn it.

“Which leads me to the inescapable conclusion that Cylons are, in the final analysis, little more than toasters… with great-looking legs.”

Ew. Where do you put the bread???

"I see myself trying to escape blame and censure for what I have created, while the villagers with their pitchforks and firebrands storm the castle where I am hiding out."

You are confusing "storming" with "laughing hysterically" , which people are already doing at the bull crap you're producing.

Wow, @2 you said "AI is entirely benign. What if your toaster had AI. What if it went bad. How would it go bad? "

I allowed that to distract me, and I derailed the thread, I apologize to all . There is a difference, of course, between bad science and science that can produce bad results. AI development is coming along nicely, in fits and starts and detours and a few wrong turns, but the little I read news of it indicates that it's doing well, and already has real results. Sentient robots and such, if possible, will be here in due course.

Both the means and likelihood of our end coming from AI are unpredictable, and a rather different matter altogether.

Can AI get bored? I know I'm getting bored waiting for it.

"I allowed that to distract me, and I derailed the thread, I apologize to all "

Ah, no probs.

"Both the means and likelihood of our end coming from AI are unpredictable"

The means will be via things we let AI do, not the fact of AI itself. And to some extent we may find that AI is no worse than HI (Human Intelligence) at fucking things up, or that HI fucking up an actual AI implementation could lead to problems. But both of those are seen without AI, just automation.

There doesn't appear to be anything at all dangerous about AI in and of itself. All the problems appear either as a conjunct with some task it is supplied to do or its equipment.

The two best known examples of "bad AI" were both because of human fuckups. HAL "lost it" because it can't decide NOT to obey (see Robocop II as well, but there the human overrides the programming) but was given conflicting goals. And Ash in Aliens was likewise given an overriding task that caused the "best option" to achieve it to be "kill all humans".

They are all dependent on either the machinery being inherently weaponisable, or given full authority over safety critical systems.

If we were really worried about that, we could just not use AI in those roles.

Singularity here we come! I just spent six hours of Memorial Day 2017 coding the free open-source http://ai.neocities.org/ghost.txt artificial intelligence which Netizens may rename as ghost.pl and run immortally on their AI Lab computer. Watch the ghost in the machine think with concepts, then teach your fellow AI enthusiasts how to run the ghost AI so as to learn How the Mind Works.

“Guns, unloaded, and not used, are safe”
Okydoky.
Heres some scifi.
Imagine if you can, an app thingie for phone.
Its called a death app.
It works by holding your phone in your hand
pointed at someone like a tv remote, pressing
a button on the phone, and a little lazer thingie
zaps the targetted person and kills em.
Neat app eh!

Rather EXACTLY like guns are now actually!

Theres no issue with people carrying death apps
around the place able to kill anyone in a 20 metre
radius is there?

Fucking dumb yanks with their cowboy scifi crap.

The point that is missed with the "If you ban guns, only criminals have guns" is that the criminals may be the only ones with guns, but they have fewer guns and don't need to carry them as a matter of course unless they're expecting to meet armed resistance (such as armed police or other armed criminals).

And to the "The only thing that defends you from a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun" needs to watch Pulp Fiction, where two armed criminals hold up a diner and are stopped by two bad men (criminals, hit men) with guns.

So if your mantra were valid as an argument for keeping guns, you should also allow criminals to keep guns. Stop disarming criminals, it only makes you less safe.

So you went from wondering if you can get help to write AI to releasing AI in, what, two weeks???

No, apparently you've been doing this shit for thirty years:

http://www.nothingisreal.com/mentifex_faq.html

Wow - "criminals may be the only ones with guns, but they have fewer guns and don’t need to carry them as a matter of course unless they’re expecting to meet armed resistance (such as armed police or other armed criminals)"

So your "logic" is that criminals don't need to carry guns unless they are dumb enough to expect resistance from law enforcement or other criminals who feel they have to carry guns because they are also dumb enough to expect resistance from law enforcement.
Yet, if you are unarmed, you should feel at peace that you will most likely be robbed or assaulted by a smart unarmed criminal, since he is smart enough to know you are unarmed.
Oh, and if you are still confused, I recommend watching certain scenes in Hollywood movies that I have selected because they fit my narrative.
Yes, my name is Wow and my opinions are based on fictional movies, particularly ones that have the word "fiction" in the title.

Now, back to reality...
Wow, you are quite possibly the dumbest person I have ever come across.
Now, please go and continue to collect those dividends from that profiting co-op you consider to be a criminal enterprise...

So you're dumb enough to think that criminals will carry guns, which would make them criminals even if they did nothing else, merely because they're criminals?

No, not even failed criminals are as dumb as you, betty.

Sadly, this thread has been hijacked by a subject that cannot be resolved. Before I abandon that, let me point out that high-powered machines for killing people at a distance cause death and injury, in flesh and blood people. The more there are, the more that happens. Death is death. Thankfully, so far the people who are recently crowding my inbox with efforts to persuade me to arm myself before they outlaw weapons (again, under Trump and a Republican Congress? the paranoid will believe anything, and of course life and liberty are less important than killing machines) have not yet made my life a place where I need a gun, hidden or otherwise, let along one that includes overkill in its capabilities. But it's clear that marketing, not safety, is their concern.

Obviously, I took the bait, so will save my "real" comment for a new frame.

Distraction 2: I did a lot of looking around on DDT. It's an interesting point that the arguments for rolling back DDT restrictions can be based on politics and obviously dishonest, but if one looks a bit further there is something to be discussed. One of the biggest problems is the undoubted fact that insects evolve faster than humans, and DDT kills other predators such as birds along with its harmful effects on humans. There are alternatives and as far as I was able to discern, they are better than DDT. I'm not going to look it up again, and perhaps I misremember, but it seems to me I read that the ban on DDT in critical areas is not total.

When it comes to us humans not reaching for the first chemical overkills we can find, regardless of side effects such as unintended consequences and the insect (and other disease vector) ability to evolve to resist the poisons, it is not a good sign for our future.

Panic does not seem to be a good guide for action, but expecting most people to move past the visceral to the thoughtful appears to be too much to ask.

Susan, about the time DDT was being heavily rolled back there as good evidence that the mosquitos were gaining tolerance of it. It is possible that if re-used in areas it has not been used in for a while that will go away temporarily.

The alternatives may be better or worse, I'm not sure, but there are two things that I think we know: 1) The alternatives do not have the long lasting persistence in the environment (that's goo) and 2) the alternatives are way more expensive (that is probably bad)

The main reason beyond what I discussed above that Malaria is hard to deal with is that as a species we don't want to spend any real money on those particular children beings saved from dying from this particular disease.

DDT is still allowed as a specific, though, and this is what it was meant to be used for, what it was licensed as.

But protection against malaria is more effective and cheaper done by putting netting up on the beds. Doesn't stop it being a problem when working out in the fields, but it is very effective protection at a time when you have no other defences, and it does stress the population to have a lack of easy food sources for a long stretch of time.

I think that last sentence is part of what what I was reaching for. Instead of a statement, how about a question: how can people discover the joy of knowledge and the usefulness of admiring hard work and intelligence in others and in themselves?

I remember like it was yesterday the day I finally admitted I didn't know and started the hard work of not looking for a secret or a key but learning my craft by looking hard and telling the truth (in my case, drawing). It wasn't easy, but it was probably the best day of my life.

Most people don't like to acknowledge that the mental clothing they wear can be armor against learning. It's hard to admit one doesn't know. It's hard to give up on secrets and magic thinking.

Anyone who wants to know how bad it can get might read John Brunner's The Sheep Look Up (1972).

Wow: Requires a bed. Oh, and a net.

And Mosquitos.

But, uh, you can buy beds. And nets. Just like you can buy DDT or any insecticide.

But unlike insecticides,you can make a bed and net. They're cheaper too.

Know what you can also do? Impregnate the net with insetcicides. then when the mozzies come along they die trying to get to your sweet sweet blood.

This, apparently, is a really good way to kill mozzies. Instead of spreading enough to kill a trillion mozzies over an acre, you do enough to kill hundreds where they will go in their scores.

Cheaper too.

What about some sort of mosquito bait in a trap like a fly trap?

That's pretty much what an anti-moz bed net is, with the human as the bait.

Ok Mmmm
Surely some sort of chemical super bait trap
away from camp/dwelling a bit in conjuction
with nets would help.

The problem with that is that the human is still open to being bitten. You could cover the animal pen, but we don't catch malaria from eating cows or goats, so the only benefit is healthier livestock. It would be done in addition to anti-moz impregnated nets.

Where there's a noted breeding place, DDT can still be added there as a spot insecticide. At the larval stage, though, there are much better options, including adding dragonfly larvae, if it's moist enough to allow them to survive.

Though I'm mostly at the limit now of what I know, since this is all from conversations with someone who works in Africa and Asia rather than me working there myself. So I couldn't give an assessment of the chemicals or predator species that could be used in what area.

Wow - "So you’re dumb enough to think that criminals will carry guns, which would make them criminals even if they did nothing else, merely because they’re criminals?"

Shorter Wow - "Someone planning on robbing someone would never carry a gun for fear of breaking the law"

Can't make it up.

Didn't stop you, though.

But I guess you're pissed off that you got sacked from your council job cutting trees in the road and have no other skill than "can climb a ladder without falling off all the time" and "can use a saw as long as it doesn't really matter if it's straight or precisely placed".

Now you're putting your imagination in quotes...

Again, can't make it up.

Good stuff. Thanks.

A problem with large scale off site traps is the behavior of the mosquitos. They tend to act on a very local basis, and they know a human from a non-human using a lot of different cues. It is very hard to attract them away from humans.

Right, the net that kills the insect surrounding the human, while possibly a hazard for the human, works as bait.

I can not verify if this is for real, but people in Tanzania and South Africa, AFAIK, swear by it: A tall ceiling with a constantly running ceiling fan will attract then either occupy or kill mosquitos.

The bit I know about that is the better theory on how the ceiling fan works is by fiddling about with the air currents and causing the mozzies to both be drawn up there AND lured by the pheromones and evaporated oils drawn up there too.

I have no idea whether it's valid or not, but I thought it an interesting hypothesis.

I never got malaria while sleeping under a ceiling fan.

Where did you get malaria then?!?!?!

English is such a silly language. Practically begs to be used in a sitcom, though: so many ways to get the wrong meaning!

Snails to the rescue!

dr. dolittle — Wed, 19 Mar 2014 00:54:00 +0000

Snails to the rescue!

Here 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 their victim as seen in this YouTube video:

David Craik (University of Queensland, Australia) is the lead investigator of this new research. In a recent press statement, Dr. Craik was quoted saying, "This is an important incremental step that could serve as the blueprint for the development of a whole new class of drugs capable of relieving one of the most severe forms of chronic pain that is currently very difficult to treat."

As opposed to existing conotoxin-based medications, like ziconotide that must be infused, Dr. Craik is studying the effectiveness of five new oral compounds. As is typical for snails and clinical trials, testing in humans is not expected to begin for a couple of years.

I tend to agree with Invertebrate Diversity that this just may in fact be the coolest snail in the world.

Source:
Discovery News

dr. dolittle Tue, 03/18/2014 - 20:54

Tags

This is interesting to hear and read about. Do researchers think that this will actually happen and become a new resource for teaching pain? Why do they think that this snail's venom will be more successful than the pain killers we are already using in the medical field?

How it's possible that there are no comments yet about this story, is beyond me. The relief of pain is one of medicine's greatest achievements. Yet it has come at a price, as our most effective pain relievers produce physical dependencies and addictions that, when all is said and done, are miserable for chronic pain patients to endure.

The discovery of new types of pain relieving medicines that don't have those risks, has got to count as an enormous breakthrough. This would be even more so if the new pain relievers have few if any adverse interactions with other commonly-prescribed medicines. Further news of these developments will be eagerly anticipated by many.

Morphine and other drug relieving agents may induce a numerous amount of negative consequences; some of which include becoming addicted, suffering withdrawal, confusions as well as hallucinations and gastrointestinal side effects.

Thus, the discovery of a drug relieving agent which may not cause these intense and dire side effects is a tremendous contribution to the medical field.
Another immense advantage of this discovery of conotoxin is that it is so much stronger than morphine, which means less induced drug therapy is needed for a more productive effect. It can also mean that pain can be regulated more efficiently than with other drugs - such as morphine.

The conotoxin drug uses the conotoxin toxin to block ion channels (calcium channels) which then blocks the signal transfer from neuron to neuron, thus allowing paralysis as well as relieving pain from the area.

I believe that this is a truly meaningful discovery of science and an immense contribution to the medical field. This discovery can have a considerable impact on the lives of terminal patients, as well as less life threatening conditions because the drug is not as addictive as its competitors.

Thank you,
Elri van den Berg (u14008425)

This is very interesting and could become a great achievement. To get an analgesic for relief of pain that is not addictive or have serious side effects will be a major break through.
I have to ask if it is not too good to be true for it to have no side effects at all?
If it does seem to have lower side effects than other pain stillers, I can not wait to hear about new developments in this research.

This is definitely one of the most interesting discoveries of all. A creature that can be used to fill an appetite now has another species that can numb pain. This will be a brilliant product for the medical industry, conditions such as Rheumatoid Arthritis results in unbearable pain across individuals and maybe this discovery would be the answer to relieving the pain on numerous occasions without becoming addicted to this medication - killing two birds with one stone. In the bigger picture, most medical conditions result in some kind of pain associated with it, this snail might have the solution to those too. In contrast, as the last post raised the questioned, there must be some kind of negative side effects?

Snail venom as a pain killer sounds like an odd concept but this may not be a bad idea if it is non addictive. Many patients become addicted to morphine and so this is a good alternative. Nerve pain is also a big problem, especially in older people. If this new "drug" is able to help them it would make the lives of many a lot more comfortable. I hope that these clinical trials will progress quickly so that there will be a good new drug on the market.

Centipede venom blocks pain more effectively than morphine

dr. dolittle — Thu, 03 Oct 2013 17:41:49 +0000

Centipede venom blocks pain more effectively than morphine

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 from a pore in the tip of their first set of legs that evolved into claws (forcipules).

Certain voltage-gated sodium channels (Nav1.7) are involved in the sensation of pain. In fact, people with mutated Nav1.7 channels are insensitive to pain. In a new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA this week, researchers purified a component of the venom that can specifically inhibit Nav1.7 sodium channels. In the article, they describe it as "a highly selective inhibitor of Nav1.7 that is a more effective analgesic than morphine in rodent pain models." Prior inhibitors of Nav1.7 channels have been less specific resulting in undesirable side effects. The good news about this new peptide is that it is more specific and according to the results of this study had no negative side effects on blood pressure, heart rate or motor function.

As exciting as these findings are, more studies will be required to determine the safety and efficacy of this new peptide in the treatment of pain in humans.

Source:

Yang S, Xiao Y, Kang D, Liu J, Li Y, Undheim EAB, Klint JK, Rong M, Lai R, King GF.Discovery of a selective Na_V1.7 inhibitor from centipede venom with analgesic efficacy exceeding morphine in rodent pain models. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. Sept. 30, 2013. doi:10.1073/pnas.1306285110

dr. dolittle Thu, 10/03/2013 - 13:41

Tags

An awesome post! Looking forward for more articles from you! Bookmarked!

Cite material for each

The information in the post was cited as being from the PNAS article (refer to sources at the end of the article). The image was also cited as being from Wikimedia Commons. Is there a specific section in the blog that you would like more references for? I would be happy to find more information for you.
-Dr. Dolittle

These poor centipedes..please eat cannabis and drink valerium tea for your pain. I put them on earth for those modes.

i love your blog and i think its going to my favorite!!i love viagra and cialis too!

My sister is not Death's Grim Reaper

cmonforton — Mon, 14 Nov 2011 16:00:00 +0000

My sister is not Death's Grim Reaper

She'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 patients reside (and eventually die) in the place they call home. This includes 40% of patients living in private residences, 9% in assisted-living facilities and 19% in long-term nursing homes. These figures are consistent with hospice's delivery of care model that aims to create an environment for an end-of-life experience that is most natural and comfortable for patients and their families. A hospital's linoleum floors, fluorescent lights, intercom noise and equipment alarms are anything but natural or comforting. It makes sense that most people who are approaching the end of their lives would like to be in their own bed or recliner chair. (I feel that way when I just have a head cold or influenza.) In fact, some studies suggest that more than 80% of Americans want to pass away peacefully at home.

In the hospice model of care, the patient needs a primary caregiver who is willing to oversee the patient's needs. Over time, the caregiver's responsibilities may increase as the patient becomes less able to care for herself/himself. The primary caregiver is typically a spouse, child, sibling or close friend, but she or he could also be someone paid by the patient or family to serve that role. Because hospice's healthcare providers do not provide round-the-clock in-home care, the primary caregiver plays an essential role in hospice care.

The hospice model of care places the patient and primary caregiver in the center ---at the core of the care team--- as they are the key decision-makers. This makes hospice's model of care quite different from traditional medical care. An interdisciplinary team including the nurse, social worker, hospice aide, spiritual care practitioners, a physician or nurse practitioner and volunteers provide special services and guidance to the patient and primary caregiver. In essence, they surround the patient and caregiver with support and expertise. They make scheduled in-home visits to provide symptom management, personal hygiene services, and counseling, but are also on-call 24 hours per day to provide guidance and support. I can actually imagine some patients and caregivers feeling a bit overwhelmed by the degree of in-home contact they can receive from hospice care providers.

At its best, hospice is a holistic model of care. A case manager---typically a registered nurse----will usually visit the patient at least weekly to discuss symptoms, medications, and nutrition, as well as special equipment needs like a mechanical bed. A hospice aide will visit to assist with bathing; a social worker will visit to discuss issues of family dynamics, finances, respite care for the primary caregiver, and feelings of loss; a volunteer coordinator will offer visits by others, such as spiritual care volunteer, a musician, a beautician, a chess player. You get the picture. Importantly, the patient and caregiver are encouraged to make decisions about whether they want these services; to think about how a particular service might enhance their comfort, make them smile and feel hope, help them find inner strength, or ease burdens on their mind, body and spirit.

At my request, my sister thought about and asked her hospice colleagues about other misperceptions about hospice care. A few key themes emerged. First, that hospice care accelerates a person's death. Some people erroneously believe that once an individual signs onto hospice, the care they receive is designed to assist in hastening death and the patient will succumb to their illness sooner than if they were receiving standard care. The evidence shows the opposite.

One study published in 2007, for example, compared survival time for hospice and non-hospice patients with congestive heart failure or one of five cancer diagnoses. Of the representative sample of Medicare beneficiaries with these six ailments, the hospice patients lived an average of 29 days longer than the patients who had not entered hospice.

A second related theme heard by these hospice professionals involves perceptions that patients are forced to give up all their medications. As my hospice-nurse sister explained, the patient decides which medications to take or forego. This is consistent with the principles of patients' rights and autonomy, such as those adopted by the Patient Self-Determination Act of 1999. This includes a patient's right to accept or refuse any medical treatment. Similarly, if a hospice patient changes her mind and wants to resume curative therapies, she can leave hospice care at any time.

The notion that hospice "takes away" a patient's medications may emerge out of discussions hospice staff have with patients, especially new patients, about all their current treatments and medication. It's not unusual today for individuals, especially the elderly, to be taking daily a dozen different types of medications. Some pills may be prescribed by their cardiologist, some tablets from a neurologist, more pills from their orthopedist, and others from a general practitioner. On admission, the hospice staff and patient discuss and evaluate the pros and cons of continuing to take those medications. Ultimately, the patient has the final say.

The hospice staff may recognize, for example, that a patient in transition (i.e., physical symptoms suggesting he only has a few weeks to live) is having trouble swallowing. The nurse may recommend that he continue taking medications that help him in the short-run (e.g., Lopressor for high blood pressure) but consider stopping his daily dose of cholesterol-lowering pills and baby aspirin. A few less tablets to swallow in the morning could be the difference between a good or bad day, but that choice is left to the patient.

A third major misconception described by my sister is that hospice means the patient has given up hope. She explained, however, that hospice providers recognize hope is not limited to a cure or a miracle. Patients who have a life-limiting illness may find hope in other accomplishments----big and small---like seeing an old friend another time, attending a wedding, finishing an art project, catching a glimpse of the first cardinal in springtime, or an opportunity to settle an old grievance with a loved one. Defining hope is extremely personal and depends on where one is on life's journey. Hospice care helps patients and families maintain and embrace hope, however they define it. The founder of the modern hospice movement Dame Cicely Saunders (1918-2005) used to say "we'll do all we can to help you not only die peacefully, but also to live until you die."

Probably one of the biggest misunderstandings about hospice care is that the medications used for symptom management, such as morphine, will shorten a person's life. Nothing is further from the truth. Morphine is an extremely effective pain reliever. Healthcare providers who specialize in hospice and palliative care consider it the "gold standard" for pain relief. (Not all people at end-of-life experience pain.) My sister and her colleagues' experience tells them that when morphine is administered properly, it can help patients with pain live each day to the fullest. A hospice nurse will offer the individual a low dose of morphine initially and as the patient begins to tolerate that amount----and the temporary side effects like lethargy subside--- the patient's dose can be increased if needed.

Hospice patients, their caregivers and nurses use the phrase "start low and go slow." It refers to both the dose of morphine and how it may be increased over days, weeks and months. Like any medication, morphine must be prescribed and taken as directed. If a patient takes or a caregiver administers an overdose of morphine, the patient can be harmed or even die. That's no different than other pharmaceuticals.

Unlike morphine, other pain medications have a "ceiling" above which higher doses can't be prescribed. Pain relievers such as those containing acetaminophen (e.g., Tylenol #3 or Vicodin), are toxic to the liver, and just a couple too many pills in a single day can have a deadly consequence. A patient taking acetaminophen for pain is limited to eight 500 mg tablets per day, an amount often inadequate to control their intense symptoms. Without opiode-based pain medications, the patient may not get adequate pain relief and will suffer.

In the six years that my sister has worked with hospice patients, I've heard her frustration with just one part of her job. It's this: many patients are referred to hospice care too late in the dying process for them to reap its benefits. (In Michigan where she works, the most common length of stay is only 3-7 days.) This same sentiment was expressed poignantly by the anonymous practitioner writing on Hospice Physician's Blog:

"Here I sit at the end of hospice interdisciplinary team (IDT) meeting with a sense of sadness. ...We have just reviewed and had a quiet moment for all the patients that have died in the last week. The list is long as usual but what saddens me the most is there are names on this list that I've never heard before. To be the Medical Director of a hospice and to not recognize a name is a tragedy. If this only happened once in a while it wouldn't be so sad but it happens every week without fail. Why does this happen?

It happens because so many patients and families don't know about the benefits of hospice care. They don't realize that hospice is about LIVING not dying. It's about living the rest of your life on your terms, living your life with as much quality as possible, it's about allowing your family to participate in a part of your life that will unfold no matter what we do.

If you couple the above, with physicians avoiding conversations related to end-of-life care, you get patients referred to hospice in the last hours and days of their life.
I look at these names and feel regret for the patients and families as I think how much help our hospice team could have been physically, spiritually, psychologically and socially if we'd been involved during the last six months of their life. Next week I'll have to start my apologies all over again to a list of names I've never seen before. 'Sorry, I don't recognize your name' I'll be muttering under my breath as I go down the list and read the names one by one."

Ultimately, personal physicians are responsible for having conversations with patients about end-of-life care. We know, however, that current medical practice and physician training emphasizes treatment and cure. Most physicians don't receive training in end-of-life care, and many probably want to avoid the subject of death because it may make them feel like a failure. Although many of us in the U.S. have not learned how to talk about death; death is part of life's journey. I welcome the day when all of us, including healthcare providers see the value of discussing end-of-life care, and understand the consequences of failing to do so. The national average length of stay for those in hospice care is only 26 days. We have a lot of work to do to educate the public about the physical, emotional, and social benefits of end-of-life care for patients and their families.

Some medical schools recognize that physicians-in-training need hands-on experience with end-of-life care. Wayne State University (WSU) School of Medicine in Detroit, Michigan, for example, typically has four medical students per month teamed up with a nurse from Livonia, Michigan-based Angela Hospice. The students may accompany an admission nurse as she evaluates patients who have been referred by their physicians for a hospice evaluation, and will observe and participate in typical days of a nurse case manager on visits with her patients. My sister is one of the Angela Hospice nurses who welcome the chance to show the medical students a patient-centered model of care. The students don't use the terms "depressing" or "morbid" to describe the experience; most frequently, they say it was "awesome" and "great." I'm confident they tell their fellow students and professors the following: "hospice is not a place," and hospice workers consider it a blessing, not a burden, to be part of patients' final journeys.

Physicians who are uncomfortable speaking to patients about end-of-life care should take a few minutes during National Hospice and Palliative Care month, to read "How do I talk to my patients about hospice?" and "Why are early referrals important?"

A dear friend used to remind me "don't be sad for me, we're all terminal." It's up to us to decide how we will spend the time we have, whether years, months or a few days.

Celeste Monforton, DrPH, MPH is grateful to her sister Denise Grabowski, RN of Northville, Michigan and her colleagues at Angela Hospice for sharing their insight about hospice care.

cmonforton Mon, 11/14/2011 - 11:00

Tags

cancer

mental health

Public Health - General

Excellent post! The last comment is so true, but of course our society wants to deny it.
And to think the right demagoged the concept of a discussion on end of life issues.

What a wonderful and true article about hospice care. My husband is now on hospice care and has been for two months. With hospice we are able to manage his illness at home. It is our plan that he will die at home, surrounded by people who love him. It would be impossible without hospice care. We have the advantage of trained medical professionals available night or day, and access to the medicines he needs to keep him comfortable. Hospice is a great comfort to the caregivers, like me. I cannot say enough good things about hospice care. Thank you for the excellent article.

Celeste, great post. I hope everyone has a chance to read this. Thank you for including me in this very passionate, thorough and informative post. I especially love the quote from Dame Cicely Saunders (1918-2005); "we'll do all we can to help you not only die peacefully, but also to live until you die." I think that is the key essence of hospice care. I want to help people LIVE until they die. I will send out a tweet with your post. Thank you again.

-Hospice Physician
www.twitter.com/Hpm_doc

Hospice Physician,
I came across your blog when I was researching for my post and read through many of your entries. I sensed your disappointment in knowing that end-of-life care expertise is available yet so few people take advantage of it. That's exactly what I've heard from my sister. I know she feels frustrated when she admits a new patient who is in severe pain, the hospice team kicks into action with their expertise to begin relieving that pain, but the patient succumbs to their illness in just a few days and before the patient has a chance to feel at peace. The hospice team knows they could of done so much more for the patient but they didn't have a chance to do so. I know one of the real challenges is knowing if the time is right to sign onto hospice. We need to break the stigma that hospice is about dying.

Thank you for this wonderful post.

Both my mother and my husband opted for hospice when their conditions became terminal and insofar as such things can be 'good', it was wonderful - they were able to stay at home, with family and remain (relatively) comfortable during their final days.

It amazes me to hear that some folks believe hospice shortens life or reduces quality of life - my own experience says otherwise.

Wonderful post, Celeste - and many thanks to your sister and the other hospice providers who do such important work!

I love this two-minute video featuring hospice patient Doris Jones from Sutter Health in California - it really captures that hospice is about living the rest of your life the way you want to.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pxKI-xwUThA

Thanks for this post. My mother was in hospice shortly after her congestive heart failure was diagnosed. She was actually in hospice for quite a long time, over a year. Hospice was so beneficial to her that she actually stabilized and improved, and had to be discharged from hospice. Several years later she's still here. In my mother's case, I believe hospice is actually responsible for helping extend her life.

Anonymous,
Our 87-year old dad is also a "graduate" of hospice care. He signed onto hospice this summer but with the patient-centered care he received at home from the hospice team, he gained weight and his symptoms improved. At his 90 day evaluation he no longer met the criteria for hospice (as defined by Medicare) and "graduated" from their care.

Top 5 Neuron Culture hits from January - plus Neil Young

ddobbs — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 16:23:27 +0000

Top 5 Neuron Culture hits from January - plus Neil Young

PTSD, 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 robust medical response in general, which itself might reduce later PTSD symptoms. I hope the DOD soon follows up with another, larger study, for as Ben Carey notes, the has some substantial implications if indeed it holds up."

Avatar smackdown!

I talk movie smack down to my buddy Jonah Lehrer. He hasn't spoken to me since. I think he's just busy selling way more books than I am.

The Weird History of Vaccine Adjuvants

This originally ran in October 2009 and topped the charts then. It got a boost this month when the editors of the sciblog anthology OpenLab 2009 selected it as one of the 50 winning entries.

Danny Carlat on the big new antidepressants-don't-work study

Shortest post ever to make the top hits list. Carlat offers some caveats on the big JAMA study. I tossed up an excerpt and a link hoping I'd find time to lodge my own take soon. Still waiting for that time -- though I did make a little time to comment on the next take on that study, which was

Why do antidepressants work only for the deeply depressed? A neuroskeptical look.

In which Neuroskeptic carves a delicious historical arc.

ddobbs Mon, 02/01/2010 - 11:23

Tags

Since the dawn of civilization the good thinking and all that is good are culture. It is complete picture of life. It represents what we do in our daily life. Language ,music,ideas about what is bad and good,ways of working and playing, and the tools and other objects made and used by people in the society-all these are part of a societyâs culture.
Cultures vary from society to society or country to country.

Second confirmed poppy tea death in Boulder, Colorado

terrasig — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:02:35 +0000

Second confirmed poppy tea death in Boulder, Colorado

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 Monday that Bohan's cause of death was morphine overdose, and his manner of death was accident.

Here is also coverage from The Boulder Daily Camera.

This marks the second death in Boulder from young adults mixing up decoctions of seeds or pods from the poppy, Papaver somniferum. We reported in March on the death of CU-Boulder student, Alex McGuiggan, in March.

In a subsequent post, we expanded on a commenter's story of his own efforts to raise awareness of the dangers of poppy seed tea following the death of his own son. Commenter Tom's site can be viewed at Poppy Seed Tea Can Kill You (http://poppyseedtea.com).

Extracts from poppy pods can contain up to 10% morphine and 1-5% codeine together with several other benzomorphan compounds. Seeds themselves are intrinsically devoid of morphine but the drug can remain on the seeds in reasonable quantities simply from their processing. The Santa Clara County crime laboratory investigating the death of Tom's son determined that a tea made with the same seeds he used contained 259 µg/mL of morphine.

Depending on the starting material, however, the extract may also contain thebaine, a natural intermediate used for semi-synthetic opioid synthesis that causes intense nausea, vomiting, and even convulsions.

Although opioids in their pure chemical form are highly regulated drugs in most Western countries, sale of the seeds (but not other parts of the plant) is apparently legal under the US Controlled Substances Act of 1970. (I've read this on several secondary sites but am unable to find the exact wording in the frustrating and user-unfriendly primary source at the US DEA website.). A Google search reveals the ease with which one might procure poppy seeds and pods.

The obvious problem with making such a tea from these plant materials for the sake of euphoria is that one can never be sure of the starting amounts of opioids and the resulting concentration in the final product.

What breaks my heart as a father, however, is that all of the associated deaths of which I am aware are of young men who appeared otherwise intelligent, accomplished, and with bright futures ahead of them. They just seem to have made one misguided attempt at experimentation too many.

Our warmest thoughts and condolences go out to the Bohan family.

terrasig Mon, 08/31/2009 - 10:02

Tags

Botanical/Herbal Medicines

"Our warmest thoughts and condolences go out to the Bohan family."

Just out of curiosity, to whom would you send your coolest condolences?

Thanks for sharing this information. This is indeed an eye-opener. This is the 4th incident of death due to poppy seed tea in the last couple of weeks.

Heroin Hits The Heartland

terrasig — Sun, 31 May 2009 06:43:16 +0000

Heroin Hits The Heartland

When 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 better prose than 89 per cent of the novelists working today'"

And when one thinks of drug problems in place like Ohio or Iowa, clandestine synthesis of the drug in trailers is usually what I first think of.

These notions are shattered on the front page of today's Sunday New York Times in an excellent article by Randel C. Archibold with Antonio Betancourt.

Heroin is a semi-synthetic derivative of the natural product, morphine. The water-soluble hydroxyl groups on the molecule are acetylated (with acetyl chloride) to produce a molecule, sometimes called diacetylmorphine, with greater ability than morphine to cross the blood-brain barrier. When injected, heroin produces an intense euphoria that radiates throughout the body in a manner that morphine cannot. While it is difficult to quantify how "addictive" a substance can be, most of my neuroscience colleagues would rate injected heroin among the most addictive substances known.

The lynchpin of the spread of heroin across suburban populations is its surprisingly low cost today:

Investigators say that Arthur Eisel was not alone in switching from a prescription painkiller to heroin. It gives a similar, euphoric high at a fraction of the cost, $10 to $20 for a "balloon" -- one dose, usually a gram or less -- as opposed to upwards of $60 for a typical prescription pill dose on the street.

The article is more of a personal family story of the late Arthur Eisel. But it certainly opened my eyes as to how prevalent and inexpensive heroin is in the most unlikely of places.

terrasig Sun, 05/31/2009 - 02:43

Tags

I wonder how many overdoses would be prevented if heroin addicts could legally obtain heroin of defined purity and potency, and thus could properly control the dose?

I agree with Comrade PhysioProf. The majority of heroin overdose deaths would end the day they legalize heroin. Heroin should be legal. Mexico just legalized possession of small amounts of all drugs. Switzerland just legalized heroin. Portugal decriminalized all drugs in 2001 and their experience has been positive. Now if you are caught with a 10 day supply of your drug or less you face an administrative court, not a criminal court, but in practice they are just not arresting people. A group of 10,000 very serious policemen, prosecutors, attorneys and citizens have formed a group to legalize ALL drugs, Law Enforcement Against Prohibition (http://leap.cc ) They see what happened when we legalized alcohol in 1932 as a good example of how drug legalization would work. This foolish war on drugs has lasted 37 years and cost us over a TRILLION dollars and we are not an inch closer to stopping drugs. How many millions of Americans are we going to lock up in prison for decades? Mark Montgomery boboberg@nyc.rr.com

several factors contribute to overdoses. not all would be helped by legalization:

first, there's a narrow "therapeutic" range, particularly for opioid-naive users. second, there's tremendous inter-individual sensitivity to opioid effects. third, chronic users habituate and end up using larger doses, which would be fatal to new users. But most users (and in fact many doctors) don't understand that. Probably the only factor I know that legalization would alter is the highly variable purity of street-traded drugs but that's just one of many issues.

I also agree with Comrade PhysioProf. One hundred years ago heroin was sold over-the-counter in the US, and problematic use was about the same as today. Note, the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906 required accurate labeling of purity and dosage, especially for products containing heroin, cocaine, etc. It's disgusting that one of the stated strategies of today's drug prohibition is to keep down the purity of street drugs.

Yes, there are many variables that contribute to an overdose, but the biggest is by far the unpredictability in purity, closely followed by users that take a break, and forget that their tolerance has decreased. Legalization, with tough restrictions set up similar to alcohol would make so many people's lives a better place. Crime rates would be nearly eliminated if drug dealers could open up a legal shop, there would be less robery, and most importaint, less death. As someone who's about to make the switch from perscription painkillers to heroin, it's just the logical choice. Cheaper, better, what more could you ask for? And I'm not surprised the switch from drugs like oxycodone to heroin hasn't happened sooner.

OD from prescription opiates (recreational use or otherwise) isn't exactly rare, what makes anyone think that known-dose heroin would be any safer?

Thank you for linking this.

I'm an Ohioan myself, and just a few years ago a close family member of mine succumbed to heroin. I've been following the drug since we learned of his addiction, and more wholeheartedly since his death, and I would really like to see some of the common misconceptions on the drug shattered with more people.

leigh@#6:

http://www.lasvegassun.com/news/2008/jul/07/rising-use-painkillers-taki…

The skyrocketing use and abuse of prescription narcotics in Las Vegas is accompanied by a similarly startling increase in the number of fatal overdoses, a Sun analysis has found.

Fatal overdoses involving prescription painkillers more than quadrupled in a decade and now exceed those involving illicit drugs, according to data compiled by the Clark County coronerâs office.

Switzerland did not fully legalise heoine, but it considers it as a prescription drug, end being addicted is considered being ill. So people who are addicted are treated like people who have a kidney illness : every morning they go to the hospital for a controlled shot, they get a talk with a trusted person etc; The systems seems to work and seems to have two benefits : less money available for organised crime, so less organised crime and the fact that you have to queue for a drug shot is so un-cool that youngsters consider addiction as something for older baldheaded people.

@DM: thanks, that definitely reinforces my point.

The skyrocketing use and abuse of prescription narcotics in Las Vegas is accompanied by a similarly startling increase in the number of fatal overdoses, a Sun analysis has found.

Fatal overdoses involving prescription painkillers more than quadrupled in a decade and now exceed those involving illicit drugs, according to data compiled by the Clark County coronerâs office.

On its own, this doesn't mean jack diddly shit, and you know it, holmes. What matters is the relative *rate* of fatal overdoses between prescription and street opiate users. Nice try, though.

Your initial comment, PP, tnds to suggest you feel that with a known content supply there wouldn't be overdose. I am addressing the percept.

I understand what you mean about rate but from a policy perspective if you take an action that will increase the number of users than raw numbers are highly relevant.

I understand what you mean about rate but from a policy perspective if you take an action that will increase the number of users than raw numbers are highly relevant.

What evidence is there concerning the likely effect of highly regulated legalized heroin on the number of users?

in 1982 a program was created in Liverpool, England that had dramatic and instant results. Heroin addicts were given free and clean needles as well as prescribed free heroin doses for their participation. The rules of the agreement were simple; you must be an addict, you must not commit any crimes and you must receive drug counseling while in the program. Breaking any of these rules would result in the immediate removal from the program and loss of access to free heroin. The researchers found: 1. Crimes such as home invasion, burglary, and muggings all decreased because addicts no longer had to steal to support their habits 2. None of the participants had contacted HIV 3. The addicts in the program had an increased rate of beating their habit and getting clean 4. Drug use in the area surrounding the clinic had gone down due to participants no longer needing to sell drugs to support their habit as well as other sellers leaving the area from loss of buyers. In 1995 the program was shut down, forcing people back on the streets, and within two years twenty-five of the former patients had died.

What some call prescribing heroin in a regulated program is "sending the wrong message", it shows that whatever it is we are currently doing in the US has never given similar positive results.

Poppy seed tea can kill you

terrasig — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 06:02:30 +0000

Poppy seed tea can kill you

A 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 contain appreciable amounts of morphine, codeine, or other opiate-related molecules. However, it appears that I am wrong.

Commenter Tom just shared with me the absolutely heartbreaking story of the death of his 17-year-old son from poppy seed tea:

Abel,

Just a note regarding your statement: "A previous report has been that the student and friends were boiling up poppy seeds, but I was suspicious as those lack significant amounts of opiates.".

Our son died 6 years ago from exactly the same causes as the man in this case. Except that my did in fact use only poppy seeds, in large amounts. Even though there is no Morphine in the seeds, they contain traces from the rest of the plant from the processing/harvesting. We have put up a Web site that includes the coroner's report stating that cause of death was indeed Morphine overdose from poppy seed tea. You can find our Web site at: http://www.poppyseedtea.com/

I spent some time on Tom's site, Poppy Seed Tea Can Kill You, and I just have to say that I am in awe of the effort and courage this gentleman has undertaken to keep other kids and other parents from experiencing the same tragedy.

Related specifically to Tom's comment, he has courageously posted a redacted version of the medical examiner's report from 13 Sept 2003. Therein, the toxicology analysis of tissues, blood, and the tea his son ingested are detailed. On the third page, the content of the tea was quantified as having a "high level of morphine," 259 micrograms/mL.

Calculating a lethal dose for morphine is difficult because previous use of morphine can causes significant tolerance, or resistance, to both the therapeutic and lethal effects of the drug. For example, a dose of 100-150 mg may be lethal to a person who has never taken morphine orally, but it is not unusual for cancer patients with chronic pain to take as much as 4,000 mg/day.

Therefore, Tom's son could've received a lethal dose by drinking as little as a pint of the poppy tea he had prepared.

The medical examiner himself concluded the opinion section of the report by saying:

Poppy seeds are the natural source of opioid analgesics. Although they contain extremely low levels of the drug, concentration of these compounds by brewing can result in potentially lethal levels. [emphasis mine]

Frankly, I don't know if I would have what it takes to set up such a website in my son's memory. But as Tom writes there:

Why do we have this site?
When, as parents, we realized that our son was taking poppy seed tea, we saw it as a "natural herbal tea", prepared with an ingredient sold openly in supermarkets without any restrictions, and thought that it was acceptable for him to do this. When we looked on the Internet for additional information on it, we did find several sites that talked about it, but none stated clearly that this tea contained morphine and that these levels could potentially be lethal. Even after our son's overdose accident, we were surprised to find out that even within the medical community, the fact that the morphine content in poppy seed tea can be very high is not widely known.

The purpose of this Web site is to hopefully have it show up in Internet search results for people researching the subject. Mostly for curious users experimenting with it, like our son was, but also for concerned parents looking to understand the risks that their children may be undertaking. We can only wish that we had seen the information provided on this Web site when we did our Internet search trying to understand what the risks were. Please share with others...

Yes, we will share with others.

I am deeply appreciative of Tom stopping by and raising my awareness of the dangers of poppy seed tea. Again, I am in awe of his selflessness in providing this information and establishing his website.

My hope is that our post here popularizing his message increases the dissemination of the message on the danger of using poppy seed tea.

terrasig Tue, 03/31/2009 - 02:02

Tags

drugs of abuse

Love for Terra Sig readers

I never heard about infusion from poppy seeds - it has to be greasy and icky, I think.
In my whole life, I must've eaten kilos of poppy seeds in cakes, pastries and similar products, so have many other people... I'm from an area where poppy seeds are, like, normally eaten. Now, I wonder, is there some difference between poppy seeds thrown in hot water and poppy seeds boiled in milk with sugar, thus changed into cake filling? Or is that different poppy?
I only remember reading that one may test positive for opiates after having eaten lots of poppy seeds but still, it's not overdosing oneself.

I think your underestimating the sheer amount of poppy seeds he probably used to brew the tea.

I read about a guy who failed an employment drug test due to having eaten poppy-seed cake. Apocryphal, but...

It's true that people used to fail drug tests because of eating poppy seed containing foods. But they have recently (in the past few years) increased the amount of the chemical needed to fail a drug test.

But thanks for the warning. I will not ever drink poppy seed tea.

Your reader is really a selfless man, and he has my great respect!
This sad story, though, explains the dubious reasoning of my friend's grandmother who'd, in her own words "make the kids some poppy tea when they are unruly and wild, and it instantly calms them". I did have my doubts about the 'intervention' being passionate about poppy-cakes as I am, but I got to think it works. Still, I want to know, how come that I never ever had any side effects from poppy seed cakes and cookies?

Lots of plant foods are considered safe and non-toxic when consumed in normal amounts. Lots of substances are safe and nontoxic when consumed in moderation, e.g., ethanol. Nutmeg is quite toxic, but in normal usage totally safe, so your eggnog doesn't have to be bland. Lots of over the counter medicines are safe and nontoxic in normally dosages.
I'm certain that poppy seeds contain alkaloids, poppies are loaded with them, even if no appreciable amounts of morphine are in the seeds. So consumption of lots of plant items in great quantity is not a good idea. Dosage is the key to toxic effects.

I was also puzzled about the dose questions. Poppyseed cakes often contain a very large quantity of seeds - especially some of the Hungarian strudel types. For example, I have a recipe that uses 2 cups in a strudel to serve 12. That's 1/6 cup per serve, and I'm sure eating two or three serves wouldn't kill you.

I wondered if there is something about the boiling and brewing process that alters the chemistry? Mind you, the site says he was making his tea with 3.5 pounds of the stuff! So it could indeed be just dosage.

Without trying to diminish the impact of this incident, frankly, if you're drinking tea with enough opioids to kill you, you are certainly drinking enough to make you high.

If you're deliberately making tea using hundreds of grams of poppy seeds, its not unreasonable to think that getting high was probably the primary goal of the exercise.

Despite the opening of this story, its hardly a secret that you can make a pharmaceutically active tea from poppy seeds. ABC news story on this phenomenon here:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/PainManagement/story?id=4132469&page=1

sobe wrote:

I read about a guy who failed an employment drug test due to having eaten poppy-seed cake. Apocryphal, but...

Something similar happened to me about 15 years ago. I was very poor and and donating plasma twice a week for food money. They gave regular drug tests and I failed one after living on pretty much nothing but lemon poppyseed cake for about 3 days.

Embarrassing. Nothing so good for the ego as trying to convince skeptical strangers that you are not a heroin addict. I can't imagine how horrible that would have been for an employment test.

Te Salutamus...

According to http://tinyurl.com/cjcdbu there is a 2 order of magnitude difference in residual opiate levels in poppy seeds from different sources, which explains a lot of the differing anecdotal reports.

snoey, indeed, this variation in opiate content is one of the major dangers of poppy seed tea ingestion. In fact, that is a common issue with all herbal medicines: growing conditions and processing methods dramatically affect the concentration of pharmacologically-active compounds.

For morphine and other opioids, this is the very reason that the German chemist, Friedrich Sertürner, first isolated morphine from the poppy so that the compound could be standardized and given in reproducible doses.

Thanks, Tom and Abel. Something I was not aware of. My sympathy to Tom on the loss of his son.

Most people who make PST (poppy seed tea) use between 100-300 grams, although some people use pounds at a time. Usually the seeds are "cooked" in hot water. Though inexperienced users may powderize the seeds in a coffee grinder; this is dangerous. The sheer amount of different alkaloids in the seeds is dangerous in its self, some are known toxins. Also if pulverized you get more molrphine extracted as well.

Some people report using pounds of seeds at a time to get high, if he tried to emulate this he could be in trouble.

A much better method is using dried poppy PODS; where does is more regulated and much cleaner. Also, its a better high.

Anyways I would suspect that he had taken some other form of a CNS depressant in concurrence with the tea. Rarely do people die from pure opiate overdose. But simply mixing benadryl with an otherwise non-lethal dose of Opiates, may potentiate the respiratory depression to lethal levels.

In response to Joe is smarter the autopsy report did say he had therapeutic levels of Xanax in his system which is a CNS depressant. He also took Buproprian aka Welbutrin and THC. So it seems to me that it is possible that at least the Xanax may have contributed to his death. The coroner did not mention the Xanax as related to the cause of death but I would think it may have increased the possibility..

Ok, let me start off by saying that poppy seeds themselves do not contain Morphine, just a very slight "coat" of the substance surrounds the out side of the seeds from being in contact with the "pods". When you make the seed tea, you are simply washing of this thin layer. Now the reason you test positive on drug test from consuming poppy seed cakes and what not but do not get "high" or experience any of the side affects is because the opiate alkaliods break down at a relatively low temp. So baking the seeds in the cake mix pretty much destroys the opiates.

I tried the tea back in 1999 by soaking the seeds in lemon juice. I drank one full coffee cup, then sat on a couch and stared at my shoelaces for 4 hours until I nodded out. I would definitely describe the experience as strange.

I also made the tea again in 2005 using the powdered/coffee grinder method. 2 batches using two big Poppy Seed "spice" bottles from a grocery store (not the 3.5 pound method).

I obviously didn't die from ingesting it. There had to be something else going on to cause that kids fatality because the active levels of opiates that are left coating the processed seeds are *nowhere near* the levels you would find in heroin, that would cause an OD.

Poppy seed tea,is a potent addictive substance.The effects are like a rough H high,similar to raw opium.Withdrawals are a nasty and prolonged affair.Some seed,dusty dark blue types,have very high opiate levels.I used 200gm shook up in a plastic bottle,with lemonade,that had me slumped over the stearing wheel, for 2hours with-in 20 minutes of comsumption.Milder seed gives you plenty of energy,the dose required rises rapidly,and becomes a deep addiction.I think there's a lot more PST user's struggling to get off,this legal product,who like me need serious help.I've gone thru H and methadone detox [jumped off at 80 ml after 4years] and PST W/Ds are in my opinion,worse and longer.Time stands still,every cell in your body is screaming,the uncontrollable urge to thrash about is relentless and your hormomes and emotions become a mess.There is no chance of sleep for at least 10 days.Life can get pretty hard if PST grabs a hold on you,BEWARE!

This is BS, while a narcotic tea can be made from the raw seeds/pods it will not kill you. How do i know this for sure??? Well i have used the pods in huge amounts 10+ pods with the main pourpose to erase myself and it did not work it did not even send me to the hospital. These individuals must have been mixing it with other crap or had prexisting medical conditions.

Amber, this is far from BS. If one were to measure the opioid content of your tea, I predict that it would only be modestly potent in comparison with the deadly concentrates made here. The issue here is that you have no way of telling, outside of HPLC analysis, the potency of whatever tea you make.

Amber,arsnic will definately erase you,but as far giving opinions on opiates,no offence but, you ain't been around.
No matter how it comes morphine will kill you,if the dose is more than you can handle.

I am disgusted by how so many people believe a non-scientific website to be gospel.

pharmboy, you need to stop smoking pot before you type anything.

@ednonymous - what exactly is your issue with the post?

Ain't it obvious Abel? You said a recreational drug may be something other than perfectly safe! Clearly you are high as a kite.

University of Colorado student died of opium tea overdose

terrasig — Sat, 21 Mar 2009 07:55:20 +0000

University of Colorado student died of opium tea overdose

After 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 legally over the Internet -- and were boiling pods to make intoxicating tea.

Police believe McGuiggan knew that the tea he was drinking was made of opiates, Huntley said.

"What he may not have been as aware of was the dangers of what he was ingesting," she said.

The Boulder County Drug Task Force is investigating other people who may have been involved in "the procurement of the tea, and the making of the tea," Huntley said. Those people could face charges, she said.

A previous report has been that the student and friends were boiling up poppy seeds, but I was suspicious as those lack significant amounts of opiates. Instead, as Ryan Morgan of The Boulder Daily Camera reports accurately, the students appear to have obtained seeds for Papaver somniferum, and grown plants, and extracted the latex from mature pods. Opium is an alcoholic tincture of the pod latex and is comprised of approximately 10% morphine, 0.5% codeine, and other lesser naturally-occurring opioids (the plant synthesizes these opiates of the "benzomorphan" class in a biosythetic pathway beginning with the amino acid, L-tyrosine.).

The sad fact is that we've known for over 200 years that this is a bad idea: based upon growing conditions, harvest time, and extraction method, the resulting concoction can provide an extremely variable dose of these compounds. Used medicinally as one of the strongest analgesics ("painkillers") we know, in higher doses the opiates can impart a warming sense of euphoria but, at even higher doses, suppresses the respiratory control center of the brain stem, resulting in death.

This is an illustration of the German chemist/pharmacist, Friedrich Wilhelm Sertürner, from a fabulous 1965 book entitled, "Great Moments in the History of Pharmacy." The then-Parke-Davis drug company commissioned artist Robert Thom to draft this one of 16 illustrations telling the ancient and recent history of drugs and is, in fact, the source of my blog name, Terra Sigillata.

Sertürner's place in pharmaceutical history comes from his realization that while opium extract was a superb analgesic, the dose could not be controlled well. He then experimented with extraction techniques in the search for the pure chemical compounds made by the plant that confer the painkilling, euphoric, and sedating activities. As a result, he first isolated morphine from opium in 1806, deriving the name from the Greek god of sleep, Morpheus, and the suffix, -ine, to indicate the alkaloid quality of the compound.

Hence, Sertürner created the first standardized drug from a plant extract.

Today, one can still purchase various plant materials and chemical extracts as herbal medicines at the local grocery, pharmacy, or health food store. But these remedies fails to acknowledge the principles of pharmaceutical chemistry that Sertürner taught us 200 years ago. However, most herbal medicines have a wide margin of safety and the wide range of potency of these concoctions is rarely a real problem.

However, morphine and other opiates have what is called a narrow therapeutic index - that is, a very small range between their therapeutic effects and toxic effects. Yes, my friends, natural medicines can be toxic.

Sadly, Alexander McGuiggan and his college buds were playing with fire when making opium extract teas. Not that I condone any kinds of illegal use of scheduled, controlled substances, but it would have been safer to procure a pharmaceutical product on the streets of Boulder or Denver since these diverted pills would at least have had a known quantity of compound that could then be looked up in any online or print prescription drug reference source.

I don't mean to make light of this tragedy but I am reminded of the quote from the late Isaac Hayes' character, Chef, from South Park - a show set in a town based on Fairplay, Colorado (known as during the Gold Rush days as South Park City), about 100 miles from Boulder:

''There's a time and a place for everything, and it's called college.''

Young adults in college are going to experiment with the increments of knowledge they gain and experiment with recreational drugs.

This case is not a time for prosecution - it is a time for education.

President Benson: if you or members of your office are reading, I know of a CU President's Teaching Scholar who'd love to come back and give a few lectures on recreational drug use and risks.

terrasig Sat, 03/21/2009 - 03:55

sorry for a small correction: opium is the dried latex that contains about 10% of morphine among lots of other stuff; and its only partially soluble. The alcohol tincture is properly called laudanum. But what these dudes were doing was a tea from poppy straw - the empty pods. The poppy straw is quite rich source of opiates (unlike the poppy seeds) and in fact the emty pods are the main commercial source for pharma morphine and codeine. (Collecting real opium is too labor intensive for Western companies)

The main problem with eating/drinking opium preparations is that the effects of intoxication are delayed; when smoking opium pipe the effects are nearly instant so the user can judge somewhat how high he has got already and stop (or in the worst case, pass out).

It is clear that these kids were wannabes. Experienced users try to adjust the dose carefully because they know from experience that smaller doses (compensated for the drug tolerance) provides a better euphoria and dreamy states with less sleepiness and skin itching than the high doses.

Abel,

I don't know the circumstances of finding this guy, but I assume appropriate treatment would have been naloxone? I also assume that it would have been effective. Do you think that the ER doc's just didn't know what the person had taken, and thus couldn't administer the antagonist?

This comment has been removed by the administrator.

The main problem with eating/drinking opium preparations is that the effects of intoxication are delayed; when smoking opium pipe the effects are nearly instant so the user can judge somewhat how high he has got already and stop (or in the worst case, pass out).

This holds for marijuana as well. One time I ate a bunch of pot brownies without knowing how much weed was in the brownies and how potent it was. I ended up so fucking high I literally could not get up off the floor for about three hours. Fortunately, my pals kept me supplied with beer as a lied there giggling and mumbling.

CPP, that's a general principle of pharmacology! onset and offest of effect is generally pretty rapid via inhalation for a nice lipophilic drug, which is why smoking allows the user to titrate the dose to desired levels and then stop. onset and offset are delayed orally, but the peak drug levels, when comparing the same dose, are also lower. so you had a massive dose of thc via those brownies, and this unfortunate student had enough opium to halt his respiration. you just had to ride out the psychoactive effects. the only solution for this student would have been to realize what was going on and get himself to the ER for a dose of naloxone.

working class, don't be such a heartless ass. Check out the kid's Legacy.com obit and guestbook and tell me that you'd say that to his suffering family. You should be ashamed of yourself.

milkshake, your comments illustrate why my career has gone a lot better since I took up company with a couple of superb medicinal and synthetic organic chemists. Thanks so much for the insights and corrections.

Doctor Jake and others, I have been trying to find out what exactly happened at the time of the OD. I don't have the reports but my fear is that Alex's compatriots might not have divulged exactly what they were doing and the fact that an antidote might have been administered may be the reasons behind threatening their prosecution.

Perhaps the safety of smoking vs. imbibing a drug would seem counterintuitive to a layperson.

Opium extracted in this way can also contain thebaine, a nasty compound with a propensity to cause seizures and even cardiac arrest.

Here in Tasmania, which is one of a small number of places licenced for growing opium poppies for manufacture of medical opiates, we have to be very aware of the risks of DIY opiate abuse.

And yes, 'working class' is an oxygen thief.

Tassie Devil, that's a great point about thebaine. I knew that it was used as a starting material for the semi-synthesis of other opiates but I had not appreciated fully its unusual neurostimulant effects. Very interesting to also know that down your way is licensed for medicinal poppy growth.

Keep it coming, folks - I'm learning as much as you are.

Yeah, 'working class' has been making similarly offensive and inane comments on my blog...he's millimeters away from being confined to my dungeon.

OMG let's ban the sale of all psychoactive plants because there's a potential someone could do something stupid.

vs.

No culture has every successfully protected people from their own ignorance.

Fight!!

/Life sucks, get a helmet.

One of my teenage friends also died from home-prepared laudanum (as far as I know it was basically vodka soaked with poppy heads).

Please don't do this - as the initial article explains, it is very difficult to get a safe dosage. One of my best teenage friends died very young playing around with this. It was a complete waste

I knew Alex and he was a wonderful kid. I don't have many responses. But to Jake, his roommates found him dead the next morning. It was too late to administer anything to counteract the teas. Thank you to those who stood up for the fact that this was a young student who died and is missed deeply on a daily basis. I have heard of people making this tea before, but never quite grasped it all until now.

Abel,

Just a note regarding your statement: "A previous report has been that the student and friends were boiling up poppy seeds, but I was suspicious as those lack significant amounts of opiates.".

Our son died 6 years ago from exactly the same causes as the man in this case. Except that my did in fact use only poppy seeds, in large amounts. Eventhough there is no Morphine in the seeds, they contain traces from the rest of the plant from the processing/harvesting. We have put up a Web site that includes the coroner's report stating that cause of death was indeed Morphine overdose from poppy seed tea. You can find our Web site at: http://www.poppyseedtea.com/

PharmBoy -
I worked with the DEA and a USA opium processor, testing some new-fangled equipment to measure the yield from raw opium gum.

Having the DEA keeping an eagle eye on me* (they thought I would lick the spatulas?) was not nearly as bad as the splitting headache from the fumes, the smell of the raw opium gum, and trying to deal with the road-tar texture of the stuff. If I had to do it again, I'd insist on HAZMAT gear.

* They collected EVERYTHING we used, including the lab wipes we cleaned the spatulas with, and took it away in black garbage bags.

Even more fun was the testing of various illegal drugs ... we had lots of bags of cocaine, heroin, etc. sitting around waiting to be tested, and a couple SWAT squads surrounding the building. There was a lot of $$$ if it had hit the street. The DEA vacuumed the lab before they left to get all the spillage, with the vacuum cleaner they brought.

Tom, I'm so sorry about your son. Your website will save lives.

someone please tell me there is a way to ban Workingclass.
most inconsiderate person I've ever had to encounter, even on the internet. Is it impossible to consider that some people here might have known Alex, maybe were his friends?

Workingclass, you're pathetic.

Some people report using pounds of seeds at a time to get high, if he tried to emulate this he could be in trouble.

A much better method is using dried poppy PODS; where does is more regulated and much cleaner. Also, its a better high.

Fucking prudes. Don't want to do drugs?? then don't.

But leave everyone else ALONE, including those ostensilbly profiting from your loving pity.

Capice??

would it have been better to evaporate off the liquid like you would do to Ketamine? When you prepare K to be snorted, you double boil it on a pyrex above a boiling pot of water and remove the liquid. Would this have been a better method of dosage control? This way you could do small snorted "bumps" until you got the right amount?

Opium tea just killed a 26 year old in west wales .

Almost 30 years ago I ordered some papaver somniferum seeds from the UK. I was so paranoid, but I had to try it. I grew about 40 square feet of opium poppies, ones that had been bred for ornamentals (they were beautiful), so they weren't super potent. After the petals fell off I waited a week or so, and slit and scraped the pods the old fashioned way to collect opium. I got enough to fill two normal sized gelatin capsules. I took them and got one sweet buzz! But it was a lot of time and work to get high once.

I've never done that again. However, I always heard that for opium tea, you DO NOT want to use the seeds for grinding or brewing! This lore is decades old, and goes back to at least the early 70s. What you want to do is to break up the dried pods, remove the seeds, then grind the pods and brew that, approximately 5-10 pods per cup of tea.

I've not actually done it, so I cannot comment on the technique, but it may be that using the seeds in the grind adds some undesirable things to the brew that is the cause of death in the tragic cases mentioned here. I do know that consuming opium tea (without the seeds) is a practice that's been around for centuries.

Maybe they should just sell the stuff in proper professional doses OTC for pain. Sort of like the old coke/morphine headache,ibs,pms, nasty root canal, hemorrhoid from hell, holy crap the circular saw just took my finger and IT HURTS come hither you sexy bullet you kind of thing.

You know when booze was made illegal I'm sure a large number of novices made,sold, and used awful toxic,dangerous booze too. The same thing is happening here. When there is a demand for something (be it legitimate pain or young foolishness) and you restrict it people who have little to no training or experience with what they are working with will screw up with complex and simple things like...was it 40 grams or mg's? lets go with g's...........beep.........

FLATLINED

So umm yeah how bout you save more lives by making it with accurate machines, smart chemists, and easy to read directions (also en espanol) on a box or bottle instead of having peeps trusting random internet instructions like

Chew up the castor beans really well so the ricin will kill you. Just before you notice an incurable hellish stomach pain begin masturbating to really get off and out.

(please don't do that- 3 days to die is not sounding fun and the hospital people can do nothing to help you on that poison)

You have a lot of facts wrong. Aside from the fact that all drug laws are sumptuary laws, compelling people to abstain from vice, which is a sin, not a CRIME et al... These kids did NOT sit around and grow the poppies and then harvest the opium latex. They got dried poppy heads off the Internet and made the tea. This dude was obviously opiate naive and his system couldn't handle it. Thebaine actually is a stimulant and keeps tea drinkers awake where Heroin users tend to nod off. Poppy tea usually lasts for up to 24 hours against Heroin's 12 hours. Morphine is morphine is morphine. Sweet, sweet morphine...

This is a sad result of an ill informed public. Our film "Poppies: Odyssey of an Opium Eater" is an independent film based the true life of Eric Detzer. We cover his addiction to opium poppies and how he'd acquire them. Opium tea can be deathly powerful! It is apparent that this young man was only experimenting and had absolutely no idea how risky this concoction was. At every Q & A after our film is screened, I always warn the public how dangerous these pods are.

A few things:

** while this may sound scary, as if this article just exposes the "tip of the iceberg," opium tea use is relatively rare, even amongst opiate abusers.

in fact, the majority of opium tea users are former heroin or oxycontin addicts who use the tea as a "maintenance" drug to either maintain or slowly ease off their tolerance.

a quick google search shows that the majority of people asking questions about opium tea are doing so on sites that focus on opiates or drugs in general.

such users are more likely to understand concepts of safety and dosage, even though they abuse potentially dangerous drugs.

college kids overdose all the time. some die, many dont. for every kid dead of an opium tea overdose, there are probably 10 times as many dead of a heroin overdose.

now that I have said that, there are a few facts I wanted to add:

1) legal varieties of p. somniferum, which are essentially the only ones available online in the US, have ridiculously small morphine content (relative). typically less than 0.5% dry weight of straw.

admittedly, this just means it would be hard to manufacture heroin on a large scale using such varieties. this is the likely reason that they are legal at all... because law enforcement believe that they offer little threat.

it would still be easy to grind up 20 pods in a coffee grinder, steep 3x in lemon water, filter through coffee filters, combine filtrates, ingest, and die.

2) illegal varieties of poppy (in the US) can have staggeringly high morphine content (wt% of the dry plant material, no seeds):

most range between 12 and 18% morphine by dry weight (these are typically asian varieties which have been selectively bread by botanists or farmers who produce opium and sell it to drug cartels)

one of thousands of refs to prove the value I gave:
http://www.actahort.org/books/132/132_21.htm (11.84-14.74% morphine by dry weight)

staggering. Consider the following:

a field of 1000 poppy plants. each plant can contain more than one pod. lets imagine each plant has (on average) 2 pods. Each pod weighs 4 grams dry (this is pretty average)

(note plants can have 10+ pods)

1000 plants x 2pods/plant x 4 grams/pod x 10% dry weight morphine

800 grams of PURE morphine (with proper extraction/purification)

if properly farmed, such plants should have ~30 cm around them, so lets assume 0.09 m^2 per plant x 1000 plants = 90 m^2 to produce around 800 grams of pure morphine

now you can see why these strains are illegal.

someone could grow these in the middle of a farm somewhere on a 30x30 meter plot and produce nearly a kilogram of pure morphine every season.

1 kilogram of pure morphine, if properly utilized can be worth as much as $300,000 on the street.

"Maybe they should just sell the stuff in proper professional doses OTC for pain"

they do in australia (i think) and the UK. its called Neurofen plus.

~12 mg codeine sulfate + ibuprofen otc

both countries have large problems with addiction to these medications (as is expected with opiates). most of the addicts began using the drugs for completely legitimate purposes (old people trying to sleep, people with injuries, etc), but now are addicted so badly that they would go into horrific withdrawals if they quit cold turkey

interestingly enough, they have realized that putting tylenol (acetaminophen) into these medications is a bad idea.

apparently they have not yet figured this same thing out in the US.

they still put ridiculous amounts of acetaminophen into the vicodin and related hydrocodone medications in the US

10 mg of hydrocodone and, oh I dont know, how about 1000 FUCKING mg OF TYLENOL!?!?!

the smallest amount is 325 mg of acetaminophen, most use 500 or 750 mg of tylenol.

only a few manufacturers make hydrocodone meds with ibuprofen.

The people selling the pods on the internet should put a warning on these, as there is a warning on most substances.I have been a user of heroin for 20 years,done alot of time for it to.I am now on a drug prescribed by a doctor it is called buprenorphine,it works great for opiate addiction. You cannot abuse it, it goes against common sense but if one takes more than 2 pills,nothing happens,I have taken 6 just to see and I wasted my medication,this is a great drug for addicts.Is it not amazing that a person can carry a loaded 357 most any where and not be a criminal,yet get caught with a gram of dope and go to prison,which has the most potential for harm the gun or the gram? A person should be allowed to use any substance they desire,if one just uses common sense and a little knowledge,the use of so called dangerous substances becomes not so dangerous. I know of a woman that drank to much water in a contest and died. What do you all think of that? An over dose form water!Its true,it has happened more than once. Ther are no dangerous drugs,there is the ignorant use of drugs,and thats where the problem is,a lack of knowledge period.Just google drug laws in portugal,you will see a country that has come to its senses 10 years ago, the people say they never want to go back to the old way,puting addicts in prison which by the way ruins thier lives for ever by giving them a felony back ground as I have,just try and get a good job with that.End this futile war on drugs,the drugs have won. Barry.

The Buzz: Music as Morphine?

amillikan — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 10:26:18 +0000

The Buzz: Music as Morphine?

It'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.

amillikan Tue, 01/13/2009 - 05:26

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looking forward for some news about music pain therapy in cancer...

please post asap
tia
marcin