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Either way Bat, here's a site for you:

http://www.schizophrenia.com/prevention/cannabis.marijuana.schizophrenia.html

Unfortunately I can't quite understand your theory. Could you please refrase it so that any moron can understand it? Perhaps I just might grasp it then.

25% of cannabis users are vulnerable to mental illness. Even a small amount of pot smoking can put a vulnerable person over the edge. It is estimated that 8 to 13 percent of schizophrenia patients are linked to the use of soft drugs. That's not a neglectible amount, Stude.

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Ahh,

Sounds like some right wing lobbyist making sure pot doesn't get legalised. The bit about LSD really tipped me off. I tripped on LSD every other day for the entire summer of 1977 and I WISH I could have a flashback!!! There was nothing to it and I have never had any problems mentally or physically due to LSD use or marijuana use. Schitzophrenia??? Come on.

What do you mean Bonny? I posted something in this thread yesterday that appears to be gone.

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The way I see it Barry, this should be a very dynamite show.

OK, Bonny, I'll do a cut/paste just as an example of how much scientists can get away with saying just by virtue of their status as scientists and the fact that all science is paid-for by institutions who make it clear just exactly what they expect the outcome of a study to be. Absolutely no institue is unaware of who is making their funding available and if they expect to stay in the business of science they know what their conclusion must be before the first minute of the study is convened and which controls are put on and which are neglected, purposefully.

"Research during the past decade has revealed that nicotine is an especially addictive substance for people with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Approximately 85% of people who have schizophrenia are also heavy cigarette smokers (and 60% to 70% of people with bipolar disorder) and they smoke two to three times as much as an average smoker. In fact it has been estimated that 44% of all cigarettes used in the US are smoked by the mentally ill. The negative effects of smoking are clear - cigarette smoking causes 30% of deaths between the ages of 35 and 70, noted the Harvard Mental Health Letter (May, 2005) and "in patients with schizophrenia, cigarette smoking is probably the single most important risk factor for developing pulmonary disease, including asthma... and lung cancer." stated Clinical Psychiatry journal (April, 2005). Experts estimate that smoking kills 200,000 mentally ill people per year.

Research now suggests that people with brain disorders smoke at a high rate partly because nicotine reduces some of the cognitive disfunction [dysfunction] that is a common symptom. In fact researchers are now working to identify and develop nicotine-like drugs they hope will provide even more relief but without the addiction and negative health impacts of cigarette smoking."

Again, what becomes clear is the logical fallacy of "correlation = causality" and no one seems to have any trouble ignoring basic violations of logic.
The percentages given are derived from scads of journals full of nothing any better than babbling speculations -- nothing any better than flights of imagination -- are bizarrely treating as they were citing empircal fact.
The last part I excerpted is a particularly worthy nugget:"Research now suggests that people with brain disorders smoke at a high rate partly because nicotine reduces some of the cognitive disfunction [dysfunction] that is a common symptom.In fact researchers are now working to identify and develop nicotine-like drugs they hope will provide even more relief but without the addiction and negative health impacts of cigarette smoking."[My emphasis.]

This is just wildly outrageous! Without a whit of any suggestion of what it might be, we have the assurance that further investigation will, once again somehow, find some quixotic molecule that will be all good and no bad! (I am now obviously, just temporarily, for the sake of argument treating this as if I believed it.) Of course it's all pseudo-science! But it's also huge sums of dollars, pounds, euros and inevitably personal gain in scientific stature.

One thing I would be ever so happy to see would be two entirely separate population sectors, one having some given amount of tobacco and marijuana use while the second having none at all and watch for a difference in cognitive function. But that's just not possible to manage in our world!
And still, we would have to look at genetic factors in both populations! Well, some neuropsychiatrists have wondered why schizophrenia still exists while seemingly having no survival value to it at all. About the only believable conjecture on this is the fact that schizophrenics tend to be far more sexually promiscuous than non-schizophrenics. That, I agree, is a very good conjecture that just has never been proved.

--Bat

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Oh! I hope you're not posting and getting thrown off by the almose blank page that says, "No further posts on this topic." and taking it seriously. That's similar to what happened after last summer's crash: your post really is there you just have to click on the "Zappa.com Forum Index" and get backl to it from the beginning. Bah! Another new pain in the ass! from the "new site".

--Bat

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You're not far off at all, bugler!
And, Bonny, I'm sure as all damn fucking hell sure you're no "moron" by any stretch!!! Jeez!

--Bat

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That's not how I interpret the results, the headline in that article says 1 in 4 cannabis users face a tenfold higher risk of mental illness due to their genetic profile (another article even claims 1 in 2 cannabis smokers). Even if the odds increase 10 times for these people, we're still talking about a pretty slim chance at developing a mental illness overall. Also, like Batchain pointed out, it's hard to separate cause and effect here, as it is pretty well known that schizophrenics are prone to substance abuse anyway.

However, I do agree that there are certain risks involved with excessive cannabis abuse, I don't think it is as harmless as pro-legalization lobbys tend to make you believe. There is a certain health risk involved with any mind / chemical altering substance, whether it be alcohol, prescription meds, coffee, tobacco, pot, acid or whatever.

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Well my posts disappear again:

Bat: I'm not a native English speaker. Sometimes you may use phrases that I don't understand, which you did in that case.

Furthermore, I'd like to introduce you to one particularly close relative of mine, a 56 year old lady. She used to me more anti-tobacco than I am. When she got into the insanity asylum because of the disastrous consequences of her disease (abnormal behaviour), her fellow inmates kept on pushing her to smoke.

Today she's a heavy chain smoker, who can't stay off her shag for 15 minutes. Apart from that, she also chews nicotine gum and nicotine band-aids or whatever you call them.

Her husband is manically depressed, and has similar smoking habits. You don't want to stay in their house for more than 10 minutes: your eyes irritate, you grow sleepy and your throat starts aching.

Bat, I know it's hard to believe the consequences a disease like Alzheimer or schizophrenia if you never met anyone who has it. But the smoking part, trust me, is true. All schizzies I know, all seven, have bad smoking habits.

Also, you were incorrect about saying schizzies are usually smart. Schizophrenia causes a strong diminishing of gray matter in the brain, which leads to dementia-like symptoms, unability to understand very simple things (it took my sister and me 15 minutes to explain to the 56-year-old lady the difference between delete and backspace), distortion of memory (believing things happen that did not happen) and easily forgetting things into the absurd. ("Don't you remember? I just told you!" is something I end up saying very often).

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We're talking about 8 to 13 percent of schizophrenic patients that got it because of their drug abuse, at the bottom of the same article. That, to me, is one cured family member.
Actually, on the same site: smoking tobacco between age 17 and 25 DIMINISHES the chance of developing the disease. Still, most doctors consider the dangers of smoking so hazardous they wouldn't advice it for a cure.

The particular page, Bugler, is an informative page for the one million of schizophrenes, and their relatives and close friends. The information they give, is based on whatever little information we have on the causes, symptons, medication and therapy of schizophrenia. It's as accurate as it can get, since it's such an unclear phenomenon they attempt to discuss. They're not right-wing activists.
I'm glad you're not a schizophrene. I suppose you're lucky enough not to have bad genes. You didn't go mad, but someone else might.

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Well, that whole study, or series of studiestaken as a whole, is very dubious at best. The long-standing facts on schizophrenia have clearly determined the typical age of onset and tobacco smoking doesn't seem to alter that fact at all.
I do recall a study which suggested that tobacco smoking delayed the progression of Altzheimer's Disease in Altzheimer's patients but it was noted that it might be a only a statistical "blip". No one has ever found a similar connection since and when you're working with purely statistical information the margin for error can become exceedingly wide.
Well, I have seen the ravages of schizophrenia and obviously I'm very glad I never developed it. But my comment that went like, "schizophrenics aren't stupid they're 'crazy'" wasn't intended to imply that they're unusually smart just that many cognitive functions remain intact while others just perish altogether. (It was hard for me not long ago to explain to my cousin that her son, a "textbook schizophrenic" who had developed a sad and regrettable fondness for me, find his way right to my door with no trouble after I'd moved despite having been here only once by car but had no trouble finding his way here on foot despite the fact that he was entirely unfamiliar with the area. Somehow my cousin couldn't believe that someone who was that "crazy" was able to remember a route that she couldn't remember after having only once travelled it.)
However, all that aside, the content on the web site you provided was too obviously flawed and airy just to take as objectively hard, established fact.
But one point in all this to be made clear is that it has been far too long that most people have continued to believe without a flicker of a thought to doubt that science is pure and noble and never influenced by various ideologies and not influenced by those who pay for it.

--Bat

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[quote="BatchainPartIV]Well, that whole study, or series of studiestaken as a whole, is very dubious at best. The long-standing facts on schizophrenia have clearly determined the typical age of onset and tobacco smoking doesn't seem to alter that fact at all.
I do recall a study which suggested that tobacco smoking delayed the progression of Altzheimer's Disease in Altzheimer's patients but it was noted that it might be a only a statistical "blip". No one has ever found a similar connection since and when you're working with purely statistical information the margin for error can become exceedingly wide.
Well, I have seen the ravages of schizophrenia and obviously I'm very glad I never developed it. But my comment that went like, "schizophrenics aren't stupid they're 'crazy'" wasn't intended to imply that they're unusually smart just that many cognitive functions remain intact while others just perish altogether. (It was hard for me not long ago to explain to my cousin that her son, a "textbook schizophrenic" who had developed a sad and regrettable fondness for me, find his way right to my door with no trouble after I'd moved despite having been here only once by car but had no trouble finding his way here on foot despite the fact that he was entirely unfamiliar with the area. Somehow my cousin couldn't believe that someone who was that "crazy" was able to remember a route that she couldn't remember after having only once travelled it.)
However, all that aside, the content on the web site you provided was too obviously flawed and airy just to take as objectively hard, established fact.
But one point in all this to be made clear is that it has been far too long that most people have continued to believe without a flicker of a thought to doubt that science is pure and noble and never influenced by various ideologies and not influenced by those who pay for it.

--Bat[/quote]

What I like about that web-site is that they link to the source. If you want to read the article they based it on, you can link to it. I also like the care they take in making suggestions, which I don't in my posts. I still can't really believe cigarettes diminish the risk of schizophrenia, but it wouldn't surprise me if tobacco contains something that schizzies lack, it would explain the appetite for nicotine displayed by some of my family members.

Are you sure people believe anything by science? At my high school we had a term: "american research", which we used whenever something highly unlikely was discovered, by American investigators. Hope you don't consider that overly offensive.
Science is always colored by those who pay for it, and it doesn't take much to see that. Since the recently vastly increased involvement of corporations in college in Holland, there have been major protests against that development.

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Hey Bonny, I read somwhere that manufactured cigarettes give off something relating to lithium which is used to some success with bipolar disorder. It's not really that smoking helps as such, ie the nicotine and the tar. Research often gets misrepresented when the media get hold of it.

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The way I see it Barry, this should be a very dynamite show.

...I read on the Schizz site that nicotine plasters are occasionally adviced to people who might develop mental illnesses... That I considered creepy, being in a risk group and all. So they do believe it's the nicotine, in the case of schizophrenia anyway. And it might help in Parkinson cases. There hasn't been sufficient research on the field, though, especially not in the case of manic depression.



True, true... And so sad.

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Just incidentally, the article regarding some benefit from tobacco was in relation to slowing the progression of Alzheimer's Disease -- but much further investigation was needed to conclude anything. Similarly, I recall coming across the same thing that Polydigm did regarding Parkinsonism. Well, once again, "much further investigation will be needed.....", blah, blah, blah. And when the media are handed prerared statements from the High Priests of Science they rush to get it out and widely circulated, especially if it sounds catastrophic! They only take dictation and send it on out. Who are they to question those who must know because those who must know are the only ones competent to deal with their specialty.

Well, in the past scientists in The Netherlands, France, Germany, Sweden, etc. had some independence from US science but the global corporatization of science has made such enormous fortunes in pure profit that all investments in science are international and companies based in one country or another have lost all independence from each other and want no interference from any specific nation's govenmental institution's regulation and they strongly influence all govenments through pure economic strength. And what's to stop them from getting it? Politicians have traditionally been easy enough to buy. The obnoxious phrase, "Think Globally" has worked enormously well and slightly over a year ago The Netherlands were among the deciding countries to reject a "European Constitution" whose only actual purpose was to make the laws of European countries uniform so that there would be no resistance from any one nation's laws regulation international corporations and no national borders would be legally relevant to any international corporation's interest.
Well, that will all come around again and I'm not at all ready to bet that another attempt at ratifying a European Constitution will fail a second time.
Recall the two major political figures of the 20th Century who undeniably "thought globally": Adolph Hitler and Josef Stalin. But this is a much more effective way of becoming "global" -- don't make the mistake of attacking militarily what you want, just buy it! That won't be given the resistance that war brings and it even sounds pleasing to most people.
If it seems I'm painting a grim picture it is not because I like to do it it's because it's all too evident to me.

--Batchain

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This is just not true. Scientific findings are published and they are accessable by anyone who wants to look. And even prepared statements can get misquoted or embellished. I've come across cases when this has happened in the past, where the media was claiming one thing and later when the actual scientist was interviewed you found out different.

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The way I see it Barry, this should be a very dynamite show.

From my understanding, the European Constitution was overall an attempt to put all the results of the Euro-meetings and all legislation from it, onto a big pile, a summary. S if you want to base your argument on some European rule, you don't have to base yourself on the Rome convention or the Maastricht convention.
The main reasons why it was turned down in Holland can be found in the lack of information the Dutch government has given about Europe to the Dutch people, a lot of Dutchmen have no idea of what is going on, thinking Europe moves too fast, eg the introduction of a unified coin. Also, the Dutch government had an impopularity crisis, which they still have.
Combined with the more direct consequences (inflation that's considered euro-related, the ridiculous pro-Europe campaign), it was bound to go wrong.
I don't think that's much to do with globalization. Though I think the fear of losing the Dutchness played a part, but that can be seen as lack of information from the government to the people.
You may want to bet a second time of Europe legislation will get a no in Holland, but I doubt the odds will be high enough for you to make a decent profit.

You also seem to have a flat view on science. I practise science, musicology. There's not really a corporation wanting to pay for musicology. The same goes for minor language groups and history. Most of these subjects are suffering major budget cuts at my college, some even have to dissappear.

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Well, it's not best interests international corporations to have to be compliant with different legal conventions in Europe so it was a blow to global corporations to lose that uniform convention (European Constitution). The Dutch were smart enough to vote down a totalitarian legal proposition cloaked as a "free market" strategy for Europe. And I don't think you wonder why corporations detest those very unprofitable college courses. Where's the return on any of that?

(Oh, and how they'd love to see Prez Hugo Chavez get knocked out of oil-rich country like Venezuela and right off the face of the earth!)

--Bat

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What do you consider totalitarian about the legal proposition? There was nothing new in it whatsoever, it was basically a summary of earlier statements.
You consider it "smart" of Dutchmen, but trust me, nobody gives a rats ass about globalisation. I see it more as a vote against the Dutch government party, who at the time of the vote made a highly unpopular decision meaning the "freezing" of salary: no worker could get a higher salary. At the same time, the salaries of the secretaries of state had to be made higher, so it would be in accordance to the salaries of business-managers.
Also, the early-retirement regulation changed in order to make it impopular. The health-insurance system began changing, paying more money for less insured medicines and operations.
The Dutch government started the campaigning for "yes" on the vote, about a month before the actual vote. The slogan: "Europe, kinda important". * It consisted of releasing the text of the constitution, which was incomprehensible, and making a brochure about the constitution which contained no useful information whatsoever.



* The Dutch government seems to use the same advertising agency. Other monstrosities, all started after the Europe catastrophe, include:
-I love verkeersregels, return to the eighties "I Love" fashion, apparently we all love traffic rules, like driving on the right and stopping for zebra crossings
-Alcohol onder de 16, nog even niet (Alcohol under 16, not just yet). Their web-site: http://www.alcoholonderde16nogevenniet.nl/

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Because the promise was so different from the subsequent legal realities that the unpopular moves made by the Dutch government would have been uniform across the Continent and no legal challenges to international exception would be possible. You'd have essentially what we have in the US: total, complete corporate rule and uniform de-regulatory law and without the right of any individual nation's laws to challenge any of its amendments. If you read the 18 stated goals for Europe's future it smells of all sweetness and light which ought to let you know right away that that's only the packaging and not the contents nor the subsequent legalities resulting from it would hold legal force uniformly, far beyond those of The Netherlands.

And many do give a big, fat rat's ass about "globalization" because it does narrow down the number of decision-makers for larger and larger areas of the world and without regard to the specifics only those intimately familiar with their own specific regions can accurately assess, not alleged "experts" or appointed "experts" to evaluate.

--Bat

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The unpopular moves by the Dutch government have led to a slower economic recovery, a towering unemployment among the higher-educated and the not-so-young-but-below-50s, increase of age and racial discrimination, decrease of foreign students coming to The Netherlands, the death of refugees being sent to their "safe" home country, horrific "throwing out" of refugees that have lived here for more than 5 years, radical changes in college education leading to an organisatory madness, the changes in public health-care leading to much higher contributions, the privatisation of energy companies leading to unnecessarily high gas/electricity/water bills...
The only reason the inflation isn't huge in Holland is the "War of the Supermarkets", which started when the biggest supermarket chain decided to radically lower prices, causing others to follow, and causing many mini-markets to disappear. It also resulted in small stocks: there's no buying romanesco, kiwi jelly or English mustard now.
What could the European constitution do that's possibly worse?

I've said the following twice now, and I'll do it a third time since you didn't seem to have read it:

The European Constitution is essentially A SUMMARY OF EARLIER DECISIONS. There's nothing in it that wasn't already regulated before.

Legal uniformity would be as impossible as it is in the States. I don't know much about the US and laws, but I do know that some things are illegal in some states, but not in others.
There's a big difference in the legislation between, say, Netherlands and Belgium. For instance, Belgium has a jury system, NL hasn't. There's absolutely no unifying the two systems, they're way too different. How wuld you unify 35 of these? Besides, a uniform legislation was never the goal of Europe, it would mean the demise of gay marriage, the euthanasia laws in NL and Belgium, possibly the abortion laws, the Dutch soft drug legalisation etc.

And what do you mean by "globalisation"? You're quite business-oriented in your argumentation, a bit melancholical even. It seems to me you consider it a disastrous scenario, rather than something that's happening and causing the world to be a little bit smaller every day. Thanks to globalisation, I'm able to talk to you. If it weren't for the Internet, which is a bigger gateway to a unified culture than any legislation, I wouldn't be talking to any of the wonderful people on this site. Europe is currently a long way from the USA when it comes to corporate control, and I don't think the Constitution would have taken the EU any step closer to the disastrous environment you're telling us about.

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That sounds just like what has been happening in France for a few years now.

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Is that why the French voted "No"?

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Mostly it was a reaction to our prime minister (Jean Pierre Raffarin)'s policy. We elected president Chirac during the last election in order to avoid having fascist candidate Lepen elected. Chirac was elected with 82% of the votes, but later he forgot half those votes came from people who were left wing citizens and appointed a prime minister who applied a right wing policy, augmented minister's and deputies's salary, etc, etc... (What you explained in your post). Then we had Municipal elections where the left wing was the winner, but nothing changed. So the referendum was kind of a reaction to that and also to globalization the European constitution seemed to facilitate.

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Well, not quite: Carbon Monoxide has a particularity that is when it binds itself to haemoglobins (the molecules that makes our blood looks red and that is responsoble to carry Oxygen/Carbon Dioxyde to/from our cells) it dosen't come out and makes that site unavailable to a O2 or CO2 molecule... SO it is just like you have less blood to oxygenate your body, and that is bad... You accumulate free radicals and your body ages more quickly... SO it kills you slowly. Only when new red cells are formed you have more available haemoglobin to do its job...

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The most beautiful thing we can experience is the mysterious. It is the source of all true Art and Science. - Albert Einstein

Schizophrenia is a multifactorial (a syndrome, many factors interacting) condition and being a mental one, it is highly influenced by the cognitive "machine" of the person. Thus all psychoactive drugs should interact and maybe trigger schizoprenia or other mental conditions in predisposed persons... That goes for alcool too...

I think it is a very sensitive issue, but I don't see why should alcohool be legal and canabis not... I think people should be informed and educated and have choice. I mean, isn't tobacco smoking dropping. Drugs are there for people to use it, legal or illegal. Legally at least govts can collect taxes and use it in health/prevention/education...

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