You block a rodent's cannabinoid receptors, they get instant PTSD. It's a fact.

It's a fact fact fact fact fact. Meaning it's a fact that has been reproduced in more than one lab.

PTSD is most likely caused by damage to the cannabinoid receptor system in the brain. It is likely that people born with some deficiency in their cannabinoid systems will get PTSD much more easily than people who are CB1-normal.

My father was a severely traumatized WWII veteran. Now I know what made him so troubled and miserable and crazy and frightening.

His PTSD destroyed my childhood. Fact.

I wish people cared more about HOW this awful disease manages to take over a person's whole brain like that.

But I guess they don't really care. I don't understand WHy they don't care, but it's pretty obvious from looking at all the PTSD coverage in this country, including what's in Salon, that Americans don't really care what causes this illness.

By the way, since cannabinoids appear to be involved, it would seem to me that measuring someone's blood concentration of endocannabinoids might provide a more objective way of determining who was disabled by PTSD and needs to get disability payments.

Right now it's all subjective, based on interviews. But not all soldiers suffering from PTSD are willing to expose themselves as vulnerable people with a serious illness in coversations with a complete stranger.

If they had an objective way to measure whose brain was seriously damaged by PTSD, I think there would be a lot more veterans eligible for disability.

And that would take a lot of strain off of the families. IT's hard to support a family when you have PTSD. I witnessed that fact up close with my father.

See, the science does matter.

You can't just ignore it because you hate potheads.

If those rodent experiments extend to humans, then it's probable that the reason why some soldiers get PTSD and others don't is due to some deficiency in the gene that expresses the protein that makes up the CB1 receptor.

So the military could cut down on PTSD drastically by giving all soldiers a test for that gene. If they don't have a normal gene for expressing the CB1 receptor, then they could be considered at high risk for PTSD and kept out of combat positions.

That wouldn't solve the PTSD problem for the poor civilians in the war zone, but it would cut down on the numbers of military children who have to cope with a severely mentally damaged parent.

You could save the lives of children from parental PTSD. All you have to give up is your ignorance.

I don't why that's so hard for people to give up, given what they could gain in return.

Throw in some free cocktails every time some declares that "Malthus was right" and you could be living large for the rest of your natural-born life. (Thanks to Mark Thoma for the link.)

Every time some what declares that "Malthus was right"?

Walrus? Christian? Anonymous Salon poster?

No more drinking without an editor.

Besides, since when did alcoholism become "living large"?

I think you probably meant "enlarged liver."

Editor!!!

There isn't nearly enough hatred or intolerance in the world. Thank God we have the vegans to show us how to create more!!!

But to make a big deal about having sex with a hamburger eater -- not because of the difference in values but because his sausage might contain some, well, sausage -- is just to give fodder to people who already think of veganism as a joke.

I don't ever take hate as a joke. Do you?

When you judge someone, it's a way of dominating them.

Honestly, stories like this make me think of vegans as people with a certain lust for domination simmering beneath their supposedly peace-loving exteriors.