Cocaine and Ecstasy Cause DNA Mutation -Italy Study

[moroni]

Fri Dec 5, 3:49 PM ET
ROME (Reuters) - Cocaine and ecstasy not only cause addiction and raise the risk of cancer but also provoke genetic mutations, Italian scientists said Friday.

"Cocaine and ecstasy have proved to be more dangerous than we had imagined," said Giorgio Bronzetti, chief scientist at the National Center for Research's (CNR) biotechnology department.

"These drugs, on top of their toxicological effects, attack DNA provoking mutations and altering the hereditary material. This is very worrying for the effects it could have on future generations," he said.

<snip>

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20031205/sc_nm/health_cocaine_dna_dc_4

[The Zanti Regent]

1. Look at the Trash Twins!

They sure are evidence of mutation!

[economic justice]

4. Poor taste

The daughters should be left out of our attacks on Bush. The "Trash Twins"??

[alittlelark]

33. It is in poor taste....

but compare both of them put together to Chelsea - the daughter of that worthless despot and his power-mad wife.

[MojoKrunch]

2. I think the key here is... "if used properly".

But will it give you *mutant super-powers*?

Now *that* is a study I'd like to see.

Mojo

[Rex]

24. Exactly! That is why the government doesn't want us to do drugs!

We would form into a super mutant army and sqwash em!

Looks like Nancy Reagan was right all along, "when it comes to drug, just say 'no thank you I don't need super mutant powers'".

[Name removed]

3. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[economic justice]

5. You might want to delete that one yourself

Talk about OFFENSIVE! Replace your rant with "black".....nuff said.

[Name removed]

12. Deleted message

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[ima_sinnic]

8. does that sound ignorant or what?

who gives a flying f*** what titles people in another country give their citizens? why don't you slam the British?--after all, they call people Lords who didn't do anything except get born into a particular family.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[economic justice]

6. Not surprising

I figured I should post something positive as the far left cultural anarchists are already here to blast anything that dares to slam cocaine and ecstacy. I'm old-fashioned: drugs aren't cool.

[ima_sinnic]

9. "far left cultural anarchists"?

whatever . . . :eyes:

[xchrom]

11. what on earth are you talking about?!?!

far left cultural anarchists? you mean the same culture that brought us the election theft 2000, agent orange, and the glories of day-time television?
get a grip.

[BuddhaGirl]

15. *yawn*

n/t

[Terwilliger]

23. as long as you're criticing all drugs, no problem

If cocaine and ecstasy are a problem but tobacco, alcohol, prozac, oxycontin, etc., etc., etc. are not, then your position is hypocrisy

[0007]

7. I heard that the biggest buyers are from Utah...

now I know why Brigham Young turned his ass to the holy temple and his hand to the bank. Even Brigham confessed on his death bed that he had lied.

[chasqui]

13. Something like that will not stop a group of morons

FOLLOW THE SANDAL AND WORSHIP THE GOURD!

[TeeYiYi]

26. Where did you hear that? . . .

It's true. I'm just wondering where you heard or read it. The problem drug in Utah right now is Methamphetamine. There are entire towns going down behind that shit. In addition to the meth, there is the usual lineup of coke, heroin, x, . . . and plenty of it. Also, Utah has a huge problem with housewives and Lortabs. Women pulling their own teeth or "falling down the stairs" for a refill. :eyes:

TYY

[Ashcroft Kutcher]

14. thanks for ruining my buzz

you buzzkill!

[Tom Yossarian Joad]

16. So can coffee

But you have to drink 60-70 gallons a day for an extended period of time.

I remember when they were saying the same about acid and pot in the early 70's.

[akitamata]

17. I would prefer

to read the actual findings in a reputable scientific journal. I have grave doubts about the accuracy of the findings considering the samples used in another recent study were found to be methamphetamine and NOT MDMA("Extasy"). Furthermore, I have doubts about the extent to which science is being politicized in Italy under Berlusconi.

I would also like to add that the use of any drug remains a matter of personal choice and should be left upto the individuals who choose them/or not. The philosopher Thomas Kuhn made a very salient ethical argument regarding our ability to choose what is in the supposed best interests of other people. Ethics remain a private matter and I am hesitant to allow further legislation of what is essentially a matter of lifestyle choice and taste. Science provides information. Individuals need to be informed, not dictated to about how they should use the information provided, ergo, politicized/moralized findings are dangerous in our epistemology.

[LifeDuringWartime]

22. lets see here:

MDMA: C11H15NO2 (methylenedioxy-n-methylamphetamine)

methamphetamine: C10H15N ((S)-N,a-Dimethylbenzene-ethanamine)

that extra carbon and dioxide make a big difference. they are very different chemicals.

if they really used methamphetamine and called it ecstasy, then the validity of the results of the whole study are in question.

[underpants]

18. File this in the NS file

NoS**t

When X first came on the scene in the early to mid 80's I remember reading in a friends High Times that this stuff had serious effect on the spine. It might be one of the things from the height of the War on Drugs that was actually true.

That was when X (never tried it thanks) was actually X now (as seen in a Discovery channel documentary) Doctors who have admittees to the ER say that they have no idea what is actually in the patient or how to treat them until the toxicology report comes back. Scary.

[markses]

19. Maybe it was as "scientific" as the study that "switched" MDMA for

methamphetamine:

http://www.maps.org/mdma/nyt120203.html

In September, the journal Science issued a startling retraction.

A primate study it published in 2002, with heavy publicity, warned that the amount of the drug Ecstasy that a typical user consumes in a single night might cause permanent brain damage.

It turned out that the $1.3 million study, led by Dr. George A. Ricaurte of Johns Hopkins University, had not used Ecstasy at all. His 10 squirrel monkeys and baboons had instead been injected with overdoses of methamphetamine, and two of them had died. The labels on two vials he bought in 2000, he said, were somehow switched.
:eyes:
---snip---

Or the old bit about LSD and "broken chromosomes":
:eyes:
http://www.erowid.org/chemicals/lsd/lsd_writings3.shtml

The saga of LSD and chromosomes is a case in point, for much of the evidence
was of this retrospective sort. The initial hypothesis, first reported in
1967, was based on the observation that LSD users seemed to have a higher
frequency of broken chromosomes in certain white blood cells (lymphocytes)
than "normal" persons (1). The _New England Journal of Medicine_ gave this
observation great prominence in an editorial titled, "Radiomimetic Effects
of LSD," suggesting that the drug mimicked radiation in its damaging effects
on genetic material. Evidence that was more circumstantial then appeared:
LSD was shown to affect chromosomes of cells growing in test tubes; a few
mothers who had used LSD gave birth to deformed babies. The scientific and
lay press gave all these findings front-page attention. The National
Institute of Mental Health eagerly seized upon and disseminated the new
information in a propaganda campaign against LSD. And, for a few months,
use of the drug appeared to decline.

But throughout this campaign, a number of facts were overlooked. First was
the total absence of any prospective studies supporting the hypothesis. No
one had tested the hypothesis in a legitimate way -- by looking at
chromosomes before exposure to the drug, giving the drug in a controlled
fashion, and then keeping watch on chromosomes. Second was the known fact
that many things affect chromosomal integrity, among them such common drugs
as aspirin and chlorpromazine (Thorazine) and recent viral infections. No
effort was made to control for these other factors in the clinical cases.
Third was the general problem of tissue-culture studies: cells growing in
test tubes do not behave the way cells do in the body. In addition, the
doses of LSD that caused visible changes in chromosomes of tissue-culture
cells were far higher than the doses living cells get when a person takes
an acid trip. Fourth, chromosomal breaks are seen in cells of all people;
the arguments turned on a statistical difference in frequency, not an
all-or-nothing difference, and the frequency of chromosomal breaks in
lymphocytes seems to correlate more directly with laboratory technique than
with other variables. (The technique of preparing lymphocytes to make
chromosomes visible is complicated and likely to produce factitious
changes.) Fifth, the lymphocyte is one of the only cells in which human
chromosomes can ever be seen under the microscope. Even if the changes were
real, they said nothing about the state of chromosomes in other cells (such
as reproductive cells). In fact, through the whole controversy no one
showed _why_ it was bad to have broken chromosomes in your lymphocytes. It
sounds bad, certainly, but one cannot say that it is bad without making a
number of shaky assumptions.

[durutti]

20. Maybe

But they should still be decriminalized.

[alittlelark]

34. It should all be decriminalized

and regulated. You can get your 'fixes' for the week, but you must watch a vid or talk to someone who got off of it. Rehab should be offered at any time. Drugs are not the problem. Our society is the problem.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

21. I remember similar "studies" that came out in the 1960s and 1970s...

...about the alleged physical/neurological damage caused by pot and other drugs used at the time. In fact, the wording of this "report" is almost identical to the wording of those reports from 30-40 years ago.

[Barrett808]

25. Particularly LSD -- exactly the same claims

Of course, if turned out that aspirin more aggressively broke up chromosomes than LSD in vitro, but the "researchers" in the '60s and '70s wouldn't let that get in the way of a good story.

[Cheswick2.0]

27. it is amazing to me how many people will post to defend drug use

Just ask a few addicts about the effects of these drugs. Look at the faces of the people using them. They'll tell you what is what. Even grass is not benign, ask me, I have lived for 35 years with this shit all around me....friends, parents, siblings, spouse.....

[markses]

28. It's amazing to me that people would still promote the failed and absurd

prohibition mantra, which has done more damage - not only by ruining lives with tyrannical punishment, but also by inducing the very drug use it proposes to prevent, and doing so in the most uneducated way possible - than 10,000 years of drug use by humans. Almost every human culture known to us has used some substance to modify consciousness. You're gonna tell the indigenous people of the Amazon basin that their use of ayahuasca is "wrong"? Hell, many animal cultures do the same (see Giorgio Samorini, "Animals and Psychedelics"). The problem is OUR (and, as a result of globalism, the current world's) culture of drug use, which insists on an insane and obviously failed prohibition model rather than seeking sane strategies for harm-reduction.

The strategy you propose here IS THE PROBLEM. It is the strategy that produces the worst effects of drug abuse.

[gate of the sun]

31. It may not even be the way our society uses drugs

but the way our society makes people want to use drugs that should be under scrutiny.....People lament drug addicts but forget to look at why people get this way....maybe our society is not giving a paradigm that creates really happy people.......Studies show that the US even though having more "goods" and luxury items doesn't produce the "happiest" of people.

[gate of the sun]

30. I'm sure that must be hard but

not everyone who "uses" a drug is an addict.....

[gate of the sun]

29. frankly I don't believe it

they used to say the same about LSD which I believe is false.....I remember thinking about it when I was 14 but took it just the same.....I've never regretted it...I think this is propaganda

[DrWeird]

32. Neither do I.

Especially since cocaine's been around for 100+ years and has never been shown to be carcinogenic before. Or it's closely related derivative- novocaine.

[General Discontent]

35. Shit!

Well, there go my plans tonight.


D Wolfman