'Legal highs' should be automatically banned, says government drugs adviser

[specialspack]

What I said above has precisely zero bearing on the Koch brothers or Greenpeace's campaign

Eh? You and MrM have been pushing this argument as definitive proof for the last page and a half. I'm guessing you've now realised you're talking bollocks right?

Or would you be really happy if the Koch brothers were funding the majority of research into global warming - after all, who funds it makes no difference in your world does it?

Let me try this one more time, as simply as possible. "Definitive proof of what?"

1.That not all research funded by vested interests necessarily produces biased results.

NOT

2. Vested interests have no bearing on results whatever, therefore we should tell Greenpeace to shut up, blah blah…

I and MrM are making point 1, not point 2, which you ascribe to us in classic straw man fallacy style. Neither of us (or Marmalde!) have said anywhere that we agree with that, although you are only to happy to put words in our mouths - "I'm just pointing out that they're running a campaign to try and alert the public to the dangers of oil billionaires funding global warming research. I can see why they're doing it. You, MrM and special somehow can't."

No, as I've already explained. The Koch brothers arn't infallible and neither is the government. That's why they appointed David Nutt. Presumably, following your logic, the fact that they ever appointed Dr Nutt is "proof positive" that the government arn't biased in who they appoint?

Swans = research funded by vested interests. Black swan = bad science. White swan = good science.
You say "all swans are black".
I say "no, some swans are white"
You say "aha, so ALL swans are white then are they? Ooh, you hate Greenpeace and want the Koch brothers to fund all the global warming research! You think the government isn't biased!"

Hello Mr Straw Man, I see a lot of you in Ismene's posts. That's because he doesn't have any other arguments, so has to resort to trying to discredit his protagonists by putting words into their mouths to make them seem unreasonable.

Come again special? Tragics just demolished your entire theory and you're saying "absolutely"? Are you now saying who funds the research does affect which research gets done?

Demolished my entire theory? Oh please… of course funding and politics can influence science, hence the whole Ricaurte scandal as we discussed. At no point have I ever said that we should uncritically look at any studies. It's not either/or - some science gets influenced by politics, some gets massaged in the other direction, some remains relatively neutral. Which is why you need to look at a wide spread of research to get an informed opinion. If we were just talking about one bit of research from Ricaurte's lab, then of course we would be suspicious.

But we're not, we're talking about dozens of experiments by labs all over the world saying that MDMA is neurotoxic. On the otherside we have one solitary study that doesn't even look at brain imaging, and relies on a snapshot of cognitive tests. Go back and read the reviews. Go on, I dare you. Expand your mind. Everyone who I've spoken to who works in MDMA research (and I have spoken to a lot of people about this personally) whatever their views on whether MDMA should be legal or not, agrees that it is neurotoxic (at high but not unusual levels).

 

[specialspack]

I'm just pointing out the errors in your thinking. I'm sorry if you don't like it, but we're here to give our opinions not agree with everything you say.

Lol. Let me summarise:
1) You refuse to look at any of the research, and dismiss anything that might say anything negative about any drug as "government propaganda"
2) You refuse to to define your criteria for what you consider to be "good studies". The only criteria for "good studies" for you are the ones you agree with.

I'll ask you again:

a) what do you think of the mephedrone papers? http://www.bluelight.ru/vb/threads/474534-Mephedrone-science/
b) what other studies can you point to that show MDMA as being non-neurotoxic apart from the Halpern one (the Halpern doesn't even do that, as you can see from their own commentary on it)?
c) what makes Halpern's study good and others bad?

"I always assumed that, when properly designed studies were carried out, we would find ecstasy does not cause brain damage," said Professor David Nutt

Perhaps the subtley of this escapes you, but notice how careful David Nutt here is to not say - "this study shows that ecstasy is safe". He's not stupid.

 

[Ismene]

Let me try this one more time, as simply as possible. "Definitive proof of what?"

1.That not all research funded by vested interests necessarily produces biased results.

I and MrM are making point 1

Oh please. As I've said a dozen times, the Koch brothers arn't infallible. Correct. That is all your "point" says. They pumped money into a study by a known global warming sceptic and he had a bizarre conversion to being a believer. And you're trying to make some kind of point out of that? Be serious.

Politically motivated scientific funding is both real and incredibly dangerous. That's why Greenpeace are up in arms about it. End of "debate".

You think the government isn't biased!"

That's simplifying my points to idiocy tho special and I think you know it. I believe there is politically motivated funding involved in Ecstasy research. I believe there's an awful, awful lot of politically motivated funded research. That means I'm wary of it. You seem to believe that "Well, there was 237 papers so that means all the research is great". I'm not so sure. That's all I'm saying. And clearly David Nutt and this latest and biggest study ever done into Ecstasy that concluded there was no evidence for brain damage appear to agree with me.

But we're not, we're talking about dozens of experiments by labs all over the world saying that MDMA is neurotoxic.

But we had this out 4 pages ago didn't we - you can design a study to show that water is neurotoxic can't you.

On the otherside we have one solitary study that doesn't even look at brain imaging

And you think brain imaging of rats that have had their brains injected with enormous quantities of E is more accurate than looking at someone and seeing no evidence of "brain damage"?

MDMA should be legal or not, agrees that it is neurotoxic (at high but not unusual levels).

As we established 4 pages ago, I'm sure that if you inject large quantities directly into a rats brain every 3 hours for 4 days you will see some effect on certain cells. The question is whether you can then take the gigantic leap to concluding "Ecstasy causes brain damage when a bloke takes a tablet once every 3 months". All I'm saying is don't be so quick to make that leap.

You refuse to look at any of the research

Well, I've looked at quite a lot of it mate.

dismiss anything that might say anything negative about any drug as "government propaganda"

No, not everything, but I once again remind you, if monsanto were giving me research saying GM crops are safe I'd be wary. I'm aware of the concept of politically motivated funding - which you clearly wern't before I mentioned it, or at least you believe it was harmless.

Perhaps the subtley of this escapes you, but notice how careful David Nutt here is to not say - "this study shows that ecstasy is safe". He's not stupid.

No, he's not saying "ecstasy is safe", he's saying that the research done so far hasn't been worth a shit and hasn't proved Ecstasy causes brain damage. Pretty much exactly what I'm saying. He certainly isn't stupid - he's grasped the consequences that politically motivated funding can have in an area.

 

[MrM]

Oh please. As I've said a dozen times, the Koch brothers arn't infallible. Correct. That is all your "point" says. They pumped money into a study by a known global warming sceptic and he had a bizarre conversion to being a believer.

Science isn't like religion. Scientists regularly change their opinions when confronted by new evidence. The fact that a scientists started off with one opinion, did some research, and ended up with another is not at all bizarre.

Full disclosure time - i'm an amatuer scientist!

 

[tragiclemming]

The fact that a scientists started off with one opinion, did some research, and ended up with another is not at all bizarre.

In a land called Utopia maybe Indeed, that is how it should be, but history tells us otherwise.

Thomas Kuhn believed that scientists would hold to a particular paradigm/belief/theory very stubbornly, until the body of evidence became so great that a ‘paradigm shift’ became unavoidable. The point being that if data contradicts a hypothesis, the tendency is to explain this away as a discrepancy rather than as a new discovery. With this in mind, a lot of unpublished data will find the bin before it finds space in a peer reviewed journal. I would bet my left testicle that there are far more studies relating to use/misuse of drugs in the incinerator than there are in the public domain.

A good example of a scientist who dared to challenge the 'truth' is Dr. Peter Duesberg. Once the darling of cancer research, he dared to challenge the HIV/AIDS accepted hypothesis and saw his research funding disappear quicker than the proverbial rat up a drain. This is the real 'risk' that many scientists face.

The good news is that there have been maverick scientists who broke with convention. If Copernicus, Darwin or Einstein had stuck with strict scientific method, they would never have published their theories and the world may be worse of for it.

**Edit. The speedy neutrinos are an interesting and very public example of how this system will play out.
Joke - We don't serve neutrinos here. A neutrino walks into a bar.

 

[MrM]

A good example of a scientist who dared to challenge the 'truth' is Dr. Peter Duesberg. Once the darling of cancer research, he dared to challenge the HIV/AIDS accepted hypothesis and saw his research funding disappear quicker than the proverbial rat up a drain. This is the real 'risk' that many scientists face.

Surely this means the bias is from those funding the research rather than the scientists themselves?

Joke - We don't serve neutrinos here. A neutrino walks into a bar.

Nice one :D

 

[knock]

Just as a side issue, when people say "neurotoxic" it sounds a bit like they mean "stirs your brain with a fork" but I reckon it means something more like "twats your brain with a wooden spoon" i.e. it's possible to recover from neurotoxicity. Is this right oh lords of the thread? I know I know it depends on the specific neurotoxicity doesn't it?

 

[MrM]

Wikipedia link on neurotoxicity

Crappy free medical dictionary definition of Neurotoxicity

 

[knock]

Ah! I was thinking wrong! It's the sodding fork!

 

[MrM]

I think it can actually be either as;

Neurotoxicity occurs when the exposure to natural or artificial toxic substances, which are called neurotoxins, alters the normal activity of the nervous system in such a way as to cause damage to nervous tissue

The brain can actually repair itself to an extent. It used to be thought that you were born with a certain number of brain cells and they never grow back but this is now thought to be wrong. So depending on the severity of damage it could either be the equivalent of being bashed by a spoon (to use your metaphor - as in recoverable) or stirred with a fork (as in fucked for life).

If there is anyone with better medical knowledge than myself who wants to weigh in here I'd be interested to hear it.

Good question though.

 

[Hardcoreprawn]

Im a research scientist.

I can honestly say variation is a killer. Its hard to say molecule A definitely has effect B in everyone all the time. The problem of natural variation comes into play. So we do tests. Lots of tests. You cant base opinion on a small number of tests. Quantity increases certainty but even this isnt infallible. Science just gives you a good idea of what happened under certain conditions.

That said, my personal opinion is that drug laws completely ignore the good evidence we have for relative risk or certain drugs compared to others. My feeling is that "we" (generalised society) find the idea of being "high" a huge taboo.

Therefore, if something gets you high, it will be frowned upon, regardless of its safety profile. This is true for clinical drugs too. Period.

This is not a science issue but a societal taboo issue.

 

[knock]

Im a research scientist.

I can honestly say variation is a killer. Its hard to say molecule A definitely has effect B in everyone all the time. The problem of natural variation comes into play. So we do tests. Lots of tests. You cant base opinion on a small number of tests. Quantity increases certainty but even this isnt infallible. Science just gives you a good idea of what happened under certain conditions.

That said, my personal opinion is that drug laws completely ignore the good evidence we have for relative risk or certain drugs compared to others. My feeling is that "we" (generalised society) find the idea of being "high" a huge taboo.

Therefore, if something gets you high, it will be frowned upon, regardless of its safety profile. This is true for clinical drugs too. Period.

This is not a science issue but a societal taboo issue.

Absolutely. If it was acceptable to slob about drug fucked then we'd never get the Christmas shopping done and where would the poor high-street retailers be then, eh?

 

[specialspack]

Oh please. As I've said a dozen times, the Koch brothers arn't infallible. Correct. That is all your "point" says. They pumped money into a study by a known global warming sceptic and he had a bizarre conversion to being a believer. And you're trying to make some kind of point out of that? Be serious.

Politically motivated scientific funding is both real and incredibly dangerous. That's why Greenpeace are up in arms about it. End of "debate".

It proves that science can be funded by vested interests and return results contrary those interests, contrary to your initial position. Which you have now softened, to saying "some of the time", rather than "all of the time".

That's simplifying my points to idiocy tho special and I think you know it.

… which is exactly what you've been doing for pages to my arguments. Annoying, isn't it?

But we had this out 4 pages ago didn't we - you can design a study to show that water is neurotoxic can't you…

...And you think brain imaging of rats that have had their brains injected with enormous quantities of E is more accurate than looking at someone and seeing no evidence of "brain damage"?..

…As we established 4 pages ago, I'm sure that if you inject large quantities directly into a rats brain every 3 hours for 4 days you will see some effect on certain cells. The question is whether you can then take the gigantic leap to concluding "Ecstasy causes brain damage when a bloke takes a tablet once every 3 months". All I'm saying is don't be so quick to make that leap…

...Well, I've looked at quite a lot of it mate.

All of the papers & reviews I linked with are quite clearly about studies in humans, taking oral doses, not in rats being injected into their brains. So you haven't looked at them too closely, eh?

I refer you back to the recent Kish study, again - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20483717

dismiss anything that might say anything negative about any drug as "government propaganda"

No, not everything, but I once again remind you, if monsanto were giving me research saying GM crops are safe I'd be wary. I'm aware of the concept of politically motivated funding - which you clearly wern't before I mentioned it, or at least you believe it was harmless.

Yes I was well aware of it, thanks. 8( Perhaps my references to Henry Collins / sociology of scientific knowledge might have given you some clue as to my background in this area…

Fair enough then, if you're prepated to admit that not all the negative research is bad... What papers on MDMA do you think are government propaganda and what are not? What about the mephedrone pharmacology paper (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21615721)? This thread after all is about the "legal highs" and mephedrone was the thing in question.

 

[specialspack]

Science isn't like religion. Scientists regularly change their opinions when confronted by new evidence. The fact that a scientists started off with one opinion, did some research, and ended up with another is not at all bizarre.

In a land called Utopia maybe Indeed, that is how it should be, but history tells us otherwise.

Thomas Kuhn believed that scientists would hold to a particular paradigm/belief/theory very stubbornly, until the body of evidence became so great that a ‘paradigm shift’ became unavoidable.

Indeed... if you're interested in this, I suggest Collin's book as a good introduction to SSK (sociology of scientific knowledge), the discipline Kuhn effectively created. If you want to go into more detail, the Kuhn vs Popper debate is the place to start looking - although the book, "Kuhn Vs Popper" by Steve Fuller is apparently not very good, so don't read that!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sociology_of_Scientific_Knowledge

 

[specialspack]

That said, my personal opinion is that drug laws completely ignore the good evidence we have for relative risk or certain drugs compared to others. My feeling is that "we" (generalised society) find the idea of being "high" a huge taboo.

Very important point here - the relative risk factors involved in MDMA use are minimal compared to other potentially dangerous activities.

It is quite clear that MDMA is a neurotoxin - what is important is:
1) Just how neurotoxic, at what dosage levels and what frequency of dosage?
2) What does that mean in behavioural terms? (If a certain %age of my 5-HT neurons die from MDMA use, will that make a big or small difference to my memory later in life, will it increase the likely hood of neurodegenerative diseases?)
3) Can the brain recover..?

At the moment we don't know, but we have a good idea that occasional doses without repeat redosing are fairly safe. A lot of the focus of research by MAPS etc is towards legitimising MDMA as a prescription medicine for depression, for adjunct to therapy, etc. To do this they want to show that MDMA has an acceptable risk. From the data, it seems abundantly clear that we've already reached this point.

Yet you have the current absurd position of certain scientists (eg Andy Parrott) arguing that MDMA should not be used in therapy. His own research indicates that risk of cognitive impairment is clearly linked to high dose users, yet he still thinks that it shouldn't be used in low dose therapy. We already have lots of potentially dangerous drugs available on prescription (eg amphetamine), so there is no logical reason why MDMA couldn't join them right now. It's become too much of a political issue, due to its history as a "dance drug" and the resulting negative propaganda.

Therefore, if something gets you high, it will be frowned upon, regardless of its safety profile. This is true for clinical drugs too. Period.

Although if you have enough money/lobbying power you can get around this - e.g. Adderall

 

[Ismene]

It proves that science can be funded by vested interests and return results contrary those interests, contrary to your initial position.

Not contrary to my initial position at all, I said if they return results that arn't approved by their funding, that funding will stop. How much funding have the Koch brothers given Richard Muller since this? Think about it.

Which you have now softened, to saying "some of the time", rather than "all of the time".

No, my position has always been that if a group knows it's funding will cease unless it returns certain results, it will return certain results. You will get the odd discrepancy but over time they will die out through lack of funding.

According to you the Koch brothers funding global warming research is of no consequence because every so often (incredibly rarely - they've spent 55 million on research and only 150,000 on Richard Muller remember) a result will not be to their liking. Do you really think that's a viable method of science funding?


All of the papers & reviews I linked with are quite clearly about studies in humans, taking oral doses, not in rats being injected into their brains.

Are these the ones Halpern looked at and found they were making over-reaching conclusions from insufficient data?

Why do you think there were so many useless research papers?

What about the mephedrone pharmacology paper (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21615721)

What about it? This is in rats again I see isn't it. I thought all the studies you read were oral doses in humans? (Didn't human beings return the results they wanted?)

It starts: The designer drug 1-(4-methylphenyl)-2-methylaminopropan-1-one (4-methylmethcathinone, mephedrone) is reported to possess psychostimulant, entactogenic and hallucinogenic effects

Mephedrone hallucinogenic? Not on this planet it isn't but never mind, special thinks you're great so lets read on shall we...

It concludes: The neurochemical and functional properties of mephedrone resemble those of MDMA

So they "resemble" it in rats do they. I see. Thanks for that vital information mate. Was this directly injecting into the rats brain again? Presumably if they administer it orally once a month it doesn't show any brain damage so they stick to injections in the brain every 3 hours right?

 

[tragiclemming]

For Ismene: Koch brothers pull out $billions from MF Global on eve of collapse, as alleged on the Keiser Report
Also described here
That was an amazing bit of luck

 

[Ismene]

For Ismene: Koch brothers pull out $billions from MF Global on eve of collapse, as alleged on the Keiser Report
Also described here
That was an amazing bit of luck

But just think tragic - all those extra millions they'll now have to pump into fair-minded global warming research :D

Respect the Koch!

 

[Ismene]

What about the mephedrone pharmacology paper (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21615721)?

So is this the kind of thing you spend your time reading of an evening special? Research papers into that well-known "hallucinogen" mephedrone? I can just picture you, kicking off your sandals, sparking up your foot-long briar pipe and reading thrilling remarks like "Mephedrone (3 mg·kg(-1) s.c.) and (+)-amphetamine (1 mg·kg(-1) s.c.) caused rapid increases in extracellular DA levels of 496% and 412%, respectively, whereas MDMA (3 mg·kg(-1) s.c.) showed only a moderate effect (235% .

Presumably you'd be stroking your goatee like a James Bond villain and chuckling "I'm going to hoist Ismene by his own petard.."

 

[Ismene]

It is quite clear that MDMA is a neurotoxin - what is important is:
1) Just how neurotoxic, at what dosage levels and what frequency of dosage?
2) What does that mean in behavioural terms? (If a certain %age of my 5-HT neurons die from MDMA use, will that make a big or small difference to my memory later in life, will it increase the likely hood of neurodegenerative diseases?)
3) Can the brain recover..?

At the moment we don't know

Well, we know that it's been 20-30 years since Ecstasy use was widespread and so far the hospitals arn't filling up with people with brain damage from Ecstasy.

You can go in any hospital in any country and find people so brain-damaged from alcohol they can't tell you their name.

So where's all the ecstasy cases?

Now, unless they all turn up suddenly in 10 years time, there's something fishy going on isn't there. Perhaps you have to live to be 300 years old before Ecstasy has any real effect on your brain or behaviour.