Letters to the Editor
Silenced
Published Letters: 1358 Editor's Choice: 75
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Here's another embarassment for the hippie dippie haters - pot might cure Mad Cow disease
[Read the article: How secure are you? ]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Life as a medical marijuana activist has its absurdly comical moments, like when this piece of science came down the line Thursday, indicating that cannabis could be a remedy for Mad Cow disease, making us all wonder what's next -- cannabis can cure the bubonic plague?
Valbonne, France: The administration of the nonpsychoactive cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) inhibits prion accumulation in the brain and protects neurons against prion toxicity, according to preclinical data published in the September 5th edition of the Journal of Neuroscience.
Prion accumulation (the accumulation of abnormal, protein-based infectious particles in the brain) is the cause of various transmissible, fatal neurodegenerative diseases in both humans and animals – including bovine spongiform encephalopathy (commonly known as ‘Mad Cow’ disease) and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease. No therapeutic treatments for prion-diseases are currently available.
Just for the record, CBD is not really non-psychoactive. It's the cannabinoid that makes the difference between indica and sativa, the one that gives cannabis indica its anxiety-quelling power. Pot that is high in CBD will make you feel sleepy instead of inspired.
Usually when it comes to medicinal effects, anything CBD can do, THC can do just as well. Except when it comes to killing breast cancer cells. It turns out that CBD kills breast cancer cells even faster and more thoroughly than THC can.
Alzheimer's, Mad Cow disease -- people make jokes about these illnesses but they're extremely devastating.
If cannabis turns out to fulfill the promise that these scientific studies are showing, then Camille can play "8 Miles High" with pride and she won't have to be so defensive about the cannabis content of the song and work so hard to make sure she doesn't get labeled a filthy lousy dirty freaking pothead just because she likes the song.
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By the way -- what exactly are your editorial standards for information here, Joan?
[Read the article: The Fred and Rudy show]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Are there any actual standards at Salon for vetting information and deciding whether or not it is credible?
If something is merely published in someone's blog or in some tabloid, does that automatically make it credible information according to the editorial standards at Salon?
That Demi Moore full body makeover story just gets under my skin like crazy because it seems that a story like that should not satisfy anyone's editorial standards for vetting information that has been published elsewhere.
What exactly are the editorial standards Salon uses to discern reliable information from unreliable information?
They must amount to more than: Does this validate our politics? or Does this help the Democrats in 2008?
So what are they?
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So Mr. Instists On Having Facts is going to be the new boss of the DEA eh?
[Read the article: Michael Mukasey's role in the Jose Padilla case]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]One would think that his insistence on paying attention to actual facts in the Padilla case would disqualify him from the part of the AG job description that involves overseeing the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Well this is going to be interesting. The Journal of Neuroscience is publishing science right now claiming that the active ingredients in marijuana can stop prions from wreaking their havoc upon the brain. Right now there is no treatment for prion infection. This is really major.
If AG Mukasey decides that peer-reviewed, scientific publication constitutes a "fact" then the DEA is in really big trouble!!!
Maybe the days of categorizing marijuana as officially medically useless are coming to an end?
But never underestimate the power of politics to destroy information.
It's not very likely that any facts about marijuana established by science are ever going to be the driving force in American marijuana policy.
I don't really have any hope for a Democratic administration on that score either.
I think we can judge the way medical marijuana science is going to be treated by a Democratic Attorney General by looking at the way medical marijuana science is being covered by Salon.
In other words, it's hopeless. It's just hopeless. The DEA has too much political power for any political process to ever interrupt.
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This is what I want from an Attorney General
[Read the article: Michael Mukasey's role in the Jose Padilla case]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I want him to call Karen Tandy into his office and tell her a couple of things:
1. If the DEA is so sure that high potency marijuana is far too dangerous for medicinal use, then you should let scientists doing medical marijuana research have all the high potency pot they ask for. If the DEA's position is correct, then the science will prove it and all your critics will have to shut up. But if the science proves you're wrong, then the DEA has to shut up.
2. The DEA is supposed to spy on and target for arrest people who deal in illegal drugs. The head of the DEA has no absolutely business promising groups of conservative donors that she's going to bring an end to the marijuana reform movement itself. The activists in the marijuana reform movement are not an acceptable target for DEA surveillance. It is illegal for the DEA to spy on Americans just because they want the marijuana laws changed.
If only Mukasey were Santa Claus and it were Christmas. HAH!
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They shouldn't have cut her off but what she said was naive and not consistent with what is known about human history
[Read the article: Fox muzzles Sally Field]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Stalin idealized mothers. Putin is idealizing mothers right now.
I don't believe that if the mothers ruled the world, there'd be no wars. What evidence does anyone have for that?
I've read about archeological evidence for extremely warlike cultures in Iran, Central Asia and the Ukraine that appear to have been ruled by women on horseback who fought relentless wars.
Those were the same people who made Ovid's life such hell after he was sent into exile. He complained that all they do is shoot arrows at one another all day. Isn't that what Ovid said about the Sarmatians?
And there's all the accidental experience I acquired in the personality traits of mother bears as a young Yosemite camper.
If mother bears had guns, every camper in Yosemite would be dead and their food would all be eaten by baby bears.
I don't mean to sound like I'm on Fox's side or anything. But I think Sally Field is being naive. That kind of naivete doesn't really serve the aniwar movement IMO.