Ow! The irony! It hurts!

With research increasingly suggesting a strong genetic basis for anorexia, the NYT mag offers a harrowing first-person account of one mother's quest to bring her anorexic daughter up to a normal weight.

Scientists have discovered that just before childbirth, a mother's anandamide level skyrockets. She delivers an enormous dose of anandamide to her newborn before it is pushed out of the womb.

This is believed to initiate hunger in the newborn.

It has been observed that rodents deprived of this anandamide injection before birth refuse to suckle after being born and soon wither away and die.

Anandamide is the brain chemical that your body makes that is a close analog of the active ingredients in marijuana.

If one listed the possible problems might one see in human beings with some abnormality in their own ability to produce anandamide, then an inability or lack of desire to nourish oneself would be on that list.

Pot gives you the munchies.

I am disturbed by your statement that highlighting women geeks is a bad thing. Yes, the article said "girls". I am not a fan of that, but saying that listing some accomplished women in a top ten list is bad is a detriment to the women who work in "geeky" male dominated fields. There is hardly any public acknowledgement of women in those fields. Women have been struggling to be taken seriously in computer science, engineering and mathematics for years. (The list has many faults, such as listing Paris Hilton as a geek simply because she uses technology. If she's geeky, then people like Grace Murray Hopper are uber-geeks.)

Women are a very small number of the workforce in "geeky" fields. As a geek, I feel that I must stand up to this. In college, I was fortunate enough to have a female computer science professor and great female role models in my field of study. Many girls and young women, however, do not have that luxury. Computers and all things involving math, science and technology are still viewed as things that boys do.

Women have been struggling to be taken seriously as geeks for a long time. For the first time in my career as an IT security analyst, I work with another woman. One woman. I previously worked at a company with thousands of employees, all in my field, and not ONCE did I work with another woman. The disparity of women in the field is phenomenal. Despite CNET's less than stellar write up, at least they are bringing attention to women in the field, and that is a good thing.

I clicked over to the NYT anorexia article and the banner ad on top was for Lane Bryant, the women's plus-size store.

Geek culture is built on the worship of the young male genius. It's a Peter Pan culture.

I can see how they would automatically try to include women as girls, because for the most part male geeks dress and act like boys until they're eighty years old.

I'm not saying this in some negative judgmental way by the way.

It's just a fact. You have to love them for who they are, not for who you wish they were.

The human brain is genetically programmed to make its own version of marijuana.

It could be possible that anorexia happens when someone's brain does not make ENOUGH of its own marijuana.

The person's natural sense of "munchies" might then be too weak to override the cultural encouragements that appear to reward self-starvation.

It's a possibility that should be looked into.

It's rather interesting that PTSD seems to affect some people more than others. Researchers debate on this but it seems, for example, that out of all the people who experience armed combat, only between 8% to 15% of them end up with a case of PTSD.

Science has shown that rodents who lack the ability to process their own anandamide will get a whopping chronic case of PTSD from a tiny electric shock that normal rodents would easily forget about within minutes. These rodents are known in the lingo as "CB1 knockouts," meaning that the genes that provide the code for the CB1 endocannabinoid receptors in the central nervous system have been rendered inactive.

Now what percentage of Americans use marijuana? That number is around the same size as the percentage of compat participants who develop PTSD. Maybe that's a coincidence. But maybe there's more to it.

Suppose there is some genetic subgroup of humans that suffers from some spectrum of natural deficiencies in their ability to produce or process their own anandamide.

They would suffer from a variety of disorders. Excessive short term memory -- being unable to forget the slightest upsetting information. Overly sensitive to pain. Easily upset stomach.

More easily traumatized than others. More likely to get certain types of cancer.

And they'd probably be more susceptible to eating disorders.

Such people might become enthustiastic devotees of any external source of the chemicals their own brain can't make enough of.

If that were true, then one might see marijuana prohibition as an accidental, politically-inspired form of genetic discrimination. Bordering on genocide -- because many of the illnesses that could be caused by such a genetic deficiency are potentially fatal.

Cancer is deadly. PTSD can cause suicide and we all know that eating disorders can kill.

This is a question that can be answered by science. I think someone ought to try and answer it, because a lot of lives could be a stake.