Doesn't this ball still look pumped up?
With all the talk of declining home run numbers of this “post steroids” era of baseball, it still can’t be said that the game has cleaned up all that much. After all, Major League Baseball doesn’t even test for what is said to be one of the most popular performance enhancing drugs among players: Human Growth Hormone. The league says its wants to, but is stymied by the players’ union position against blood testing. MLB, however, is going to sidestep that hurdle the best it can.
The league announced last week it’s going to test minor leaguers for HGH, given that players not on a 40-man major league roster aren’t subject to union rules.
It’s about time MLB made this move and it’s about time the players’ union gives up its fight in favor of the ability to cheat. These PEDs allow unscrupulous and undeserving players to break honest records. They allow players to steal a finite number of jobs from those who are more deserving. The union’s argument that blood tests are too intrusive is childishly weak. Surely players can trade a needle poke for the privilege of getting rich while playing a game. MLB and all its players should be clamoring for the chance to clean their images, and to cleanse the game of cheaters who are stealing from players of the past, present and future. Test for everything and test everyone.
Technorati Tags: baseball, drugs, hgh, mlb, steroids
Nanostuff
With a little nano-scopic help, researchers will soon be able to develop disease targeting drugs up to 10,000 times faster, according to a recent study.
The technology, wherein nano beads with tiny pins match drugs to disease markers, was developed by Wake Forest University. This new research confirms its effectiveness. Called the “lab-on-bead” method, it can simultaneously test a nearly infinite number of drug compounds for a given disease at once. When a match is made, you have your treatment.
The term “nano” refers to a size scale so small, it can’t even be seen with a microscope. A billion nanometers make one meter and about 80,000 nanometers would have about the same width as a human hair.
This research was recently accepted by the Journal of Molecular Recognition. It is expected take years off the normal drug development process. That will likely dramatically cut drug companies’ overhead (an possibly scientists’ jobs), and increase their profit margin, while it may also cut costs to patients in need.
According to a press release from Wake Forest University, the professor who co-created the lab-on-bead method will assist Nanomedia Inc., to further develop how drug companies might use it to boost their efficacy.
Technorati Tags: beads, drugs, lab-on-bead, Nano
Seal of approval?
When I first heard about this, I thought, “Oh man. Here comes a tidal wave of tasteless jokes,” and that’s probably true, but it’s an issue worth thinking about, anyway. The head of California’s NAACP chapter has come out solidly in favor of the state’s latest citizen marijuana legalization effort, Proposition 19. I’ll give you a paragraph break here to quickly run through the possible jokes you might hear on late-night talk shows soon.
Okay. Alice Huffman, head of the NAACP’s California State Conference, says there is such a racial component to this issue that she can’t stay out of it. I will admit, I probably wouldn’t have thought of this angle if she hadn’t spoken up. But it’s true, and the numbers bear it out. In several California counties, black people get cited for pot more than whites at anywhere from twice to four times the rate. Given the ubiquity of pot use in general, I’d say she’s got a point that can’t be ignored.
There could be myriad reasons for this numbers gap. I don’t know what they all would be, but we could start with the possibility that marijuana use is more open or public within the black community. It may or may not be, but it’s a possible contributor. In any case, it’s definitely an angle worth throwing into the discussion.
Technorati Tags: california, legalization, naacp, pot, proposition 19
Does not protect against VD
Humping leads to several things, but let’s set aside psychological and emotional damage, along with alternating bouts of joy and guilt. Let’s focus on the more concrete results: babies and STDs. With little pills making more sex possible, it would stand to reason those two things would increase. A new study in the Annals of Internal Medicine just backed up that reasoning with regard to STDs.
Turns out, men who take erectile dysfunction drugs have two to three times the rate of STD infection of those who don’t. It gets grosser the more we think it through.
Studies like this go easy on making leaps as to why their results are the way they are, but that doesn’t mean we have to. So let’s.
First, people who couldn’t hump now can, so more people are exposed to STDs. Duh. But what about this: the manic, irresponsible or even malicious humpers out there never get as much humping done as they want. They’re limited by things like biology. But now when their penises demand a rest, they can overrule it with a pill and force it into overtime like an underpaid child in a third world sweatshop, blisters be damned.
And to freak us out even more, the study says the most-seen disease in these people is HIV/AIDS.
Technorati Tags: drugs, dysfunction, erectile, sex, STDs
Marijuana sensibilities
Washington state’s latest marijuana legalization initiative is in jeopardy of not making the November ballot and the effort’s leader is blaming Democrats and other ordinarily pot-friendly organizations such as the ACLU.
To make the ballot, I-1068 supporters need to turn in nearly 242,000 valid signatures by June 30, but so far they have nowhere near that many. In a June 7 press release, a clearly upset I-1068 campaign director Philip Dawdy charges weak-kneed “armchair liberals” with not following through with financial support for the signature collection effort. Dawdy says people and organizations that should be pro pot legalization are keeping their distance in order to limit their political exposure.
The ACLU earlier this year issued a statement that it supports decriminalization of marijuana, but does not support I-1068. The initiative would make pot legal, but provides no real regulation of the drug, the ACLU says, and it would be unrealistic to regulate pot less than tobacco or alcohol. Marijuana, the rights group says, should be taxed and controlled like these other substances.
Initiative 1068 isn’t completely dead yet, although the signature deadline is mere days away. Sensible Washington, the group pushing the initiative, earlier this week paid to have petitions inserted into 80,000 copies of one of Seattle’s alternative weeklies, The Stranger. And Dawdy said in his press release that thousands of petitions still haven’t been returned. Maybe the signature gatherers have enough names but, aided by a bit of their cause, have procrastinated in turning in their homework.
Technorati Tags: I-1068, legalization, marijuana, pot, washington
To some, marijuana is dope, to others, it is medicine. And of course, to many, medicine can be pretty good dope. Whatever the case, the Oregon Board of Pharmacy recently voted 4 -1 to re-categorized marijuana from a straight up recreational drug to one with pharmaceutical value.
Thirteen other states have made this reclassification, but none in years, according to a June 16 press release from Americans for Safe Access. Most states defer to the federal designation, ASA says, which ranks marijuana as a Schedule I substance — in other words, dope. While Oregon is already a medical marijuana state, the ASA says these kinds of official classification changes help push the federal government to come into the 21st Century with regard to its view of pot.
The Obama Administration has already directed federal law enforcement to relax on its rousting of medical marijuana practitioners, but the ASA is campaigning for more meaningful and permanent changes from the President. The California State Assembly Committee on Health recently passed a resolution urging Obama to do just that. The measure appeals to the feds to create a medical marijuana policy that not only reflects the growing view of pot as medicine, but ensures patients’ ability to get it safely if they would “benefit from it.”
Technorati Tags: marijuana, medical, Oregon Board of Pharmacy
Too hippie?
Cannabis Science, Inc., a biotech company focused on creating marijuana based medicinal products, is pretty pleased with current events in California, even after the city of Los Angeles announced it will be closing about 400 medical dope dispensaries. That’s because polls are showing 49 percent of the populace there supports full pot legalization, with just 41 percent against it. And those same citizens will likely be voting on that very question come November.
What’s more, the ranks of those in favor of full legalization, Cannabis Science believes, is bound to increase as outraged patients react to Los Angeles’ curious move.
If pot is fully legalized, it will make moot most of the challenges that medical marijuana businesses currently face — at least in the state of California. Cannabis Science, in particular, is trying to develop marijuana based pharmaceuticals for approval by the Federal Drug Administration. In a June 8 press release touting the poll numbers, company CFO Richard Cowan said the only way to protect patients is to fully legalize marijuana. It looks like the people of California agree.
The November ballot measure would legalize growing and consuming pot. The poll was conducted by the Los Angeles Times and University of Southern California. The sample size was 1,500 and the margin of error is 2.6 percent.
Technorati Tags: Cannabis Science, marijuana, medical, poll, pot
Is that my hand or am I hallucinating?
At first glance, the findings of a new study from Nova Southeastern University in Florida make it sound as though the thing should soon be published in “The Journal Duh.” The trumpeted conclusion: Poker players use drugs to enhance performance.
You mean people that make money from one vice partake in another? Noooo. You mean people ingest something to stay awake and focused while competing in a 30-hour tournament? You don’ say.
But the specifics of the findings are genuinely kooky. Reading them, I still say “No way,” but with incredulity rather than sarcasm.
According to a press release from Nova Southeastern, researchers found that about 80 percent of poker players around the world use drugs to improve their game. That’s where the “duh” for the most part stops. The “whaaa?” part commences with a list of the drugs they use. Some of them include valium, marijuana, hydrocodone and alcohol.
The reasons for stimulants are obvious, needing to stay awake for many, many hours of high stakes concentration — of course, I’m not sure all people on cocaine are that good at quietly focusing on a single task of the mind. Apparently, the downers and light psychoactive drugs are used to increase the players’ concentration. Whaaaat? Who’s concentration improves while stoned?
My hunch is that these players think they’re being helped, but are sorely mistaken and just too stoned to realize it. I’ve known people who’ve claimed heightened concentration while high, but since I was speaking with them, I know for a fact, they were dead wrong.
Technorati Tags: drugs, performance, poker
Suspected drug and gun trafficker Christopher “Dudus” Coke was at the center of at least 50 deaths in Kingston, Jamaica, as of May 26; but his involvement doesn’t include drug overdoses or illegal arms. The deaths are the result of battles between Jamaican citizens trying to protect him and government officials trying to capture and extradite him to the United States.
The U.S. says Coke is a cocaine and gun kingpin responsible for untold numbers of drug and gun deaths. Coke’s Kingston neighbors say he’s a benefactor to impoverished people.
The people trying to stop Coke’s extradition to New York know him as a kind man who tirelessly supports and assists a largely destitute population. To many in Kingston, he is a savior in a place where nobody else seems to care. Of course, families of cocaine addicts, gunshot casualties and overdose victims in the U.S. have a starkly different view.
In the U.S., people are angry at the devastation by which Coke is alleged to have built a fortune. In Kingston, people are incensed that someone is trying to kidnap and imprison the only one that is willing to spend a fortune to help them.
Well, guess I can cross Jamaica off the places that would still welcome an American tourist on vacation. Geez, this list is getting short.
Technorati Tags: coke, drug, dudus, gun, jamaica, trafficking
Milk
A new study is bound to produce a worldwide echo: “Is that why Dad got a hearing aid?” There will then be one second of silence, then another echo: “Ewwww.”
Apparently, using Viagra doubles the chances of hearing loss in men over 40, according to the results of a study recently published in the journal Archives of Otolaryngology. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a warning of this possible side effect from erectile dysfunction drugs in 2007 and this study bolsters that theory. The sample size was relatively small and no hearing loss correlation could be established with other, less popular drugs. It also included only self-reported hearing loss, which makes validity less stable than it could be. However, researchers have already established a relationship between erectile dysfunction drugs and hearing loss in mice.
Cookies
If further studies bear out these findings, men in need of assistance may be facing a hard decision. Of course, some won’t consider it a tough call at all … one way or the other.
Maybe the significant others should remind their men, the next time the kids come home for the holidays, to turn the hearing aid off. I hear those things can have trouble with the cacophony of a collective “eww!,” which will happen the next time they all walk into a living room and see their dad has a little machine in his ear.
Technorati Tags: dysfunction, erectile, hearing, loss, viagra
