I suspect we are part of a classic case of the info-peasants getting broadband. The Gutenberg Effect.

Advocates, researchers at odds over cancer

WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 (UPI) -- The pace of advances in cancer treatments has advocates and researchers in the United States at odds over the future of the battle against the disease.
National leaders point to great progress in the fight against cancer, but many patient advocacy groups say slow progress points to a bleak future, The Boston Globe reported Sunday.

Many critics said lifestyle changes, such as quitting smoking or healthier lifestyle choices, contribute more to declining rates than medicinal advancements.

"I would have expected us to be doing a heck of a lot better based on the investment that we've made and based on the prevalence of the disease," said Kathy Giusti, founder of the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation.

Despite the row between science and advocacy, many cancer leaders point to a generally brighter future ahead.

"You can say progress is not as good as it should be, but the public needs to know there has been progress," said one pathologist in the Globe.

what BAYER has been doing since WW11?

INJECTING pregnant women with the highest level of mercury?? 35 MCG of
Mercury injected into pregnant women!!!

BayRho, Bayer Corporation [licensed 1971]

The Bayer Corporation makes a Rho (D) Immune Globulin product (BayRho)
which in the past contained thimerosal; this product has been manufactured
without preservative since 1996, so that no in-date BayRho contains
thimerosal. Regarding the previously distributed product, the volume of a
single dose of the Bayer product was approximately 0.7 ml. The thimerosal
concentration was 0.01%, so the total mercury in a single dose would have
been approximately 35 micrograms of ethyl mercury.

http://www.fda.gov/cber/blood/mercplasma.htm

I had been given a rhogam serum shot in 1980 -as I have Rh negative type 0 blood.

Scientists Test Hallucinogens for Mental IllsBy Sandra Blakeslee
March 13, 2001
The New York Times

Hallucinogenic drugs like LSD and peyote -- derided as toys of the hippie generation -- are increasingly drawing the interest of neurologists and psychiatrists who want to test the idea that they may be valuable tools in treating a range of mental disorders.
Although there are anecdotal reports that psychedelic drugs can help some people with mental illness, the idea has never been substantiated by mainstream psychiatry and remains highly controversial -- some would say outlandish.

And even the researchers involved in the new work are not suggesting that people start medicating themselves with hallucinogens.

But researchers like Dr. David E. Nichols, a professor of pharmacology and medicinal chemistry at Purdue, believe the drugs' potential should be investigated.

For example, Dr. Nichols, an expert on hallucinogenic drugs, said there were reports that symptoms of obsessive compulsive disorder, like washing one's hands dozens of times a day, subside under the influence of psilocybin, a hallucinogen derived from mushrooms.

Dying patients given LSD have reported less pain and less fear, he said. Ayahuasca (a Brazilian plant extract) and peyote (derived from cactus) have reportedly helped alcoholics stay sober.

"We now know a lot about how they work in the brain, but we have not begun to investigate their potential for treating brain disorders," he said.

Dr. Nichols is the founder of the Heffter Research Institute, begun in 1993 and named for Arthur Heffter, a 19th-century chemist who was the first person to identify a hallucinogenic molecule, mescaline, which he extracted from peyote. Backed by private donors like Laurence S. Rockefeller and Bob Wallace, a Microsoft millionaire, the institute is financing clinical trials with LSD, psilocybin and other hallucinogens to treat phobias, depression, obsessive compulsive disorders and substance abuse, said James Thornton, its executive director.

Dr. Nichols said trials were under way or planned in Switzerland, Russia and the United States. Most of the work is being done overseas, he said.

Dr. Janet Woodcock, director of the Center for Drug Evaluation and Research at the Food and Drug Administration, said that any proposal to study the medical use of a hallucinogen must meet the same rigorous medical and scientific standards used to evaluate any other unapproved drug.

Furthermore, because hallucinogens are controlled substances, the investigator will need a license from the Drug Enforcement Agency to use such a substance in a clinical trial.

The D.E.A. classifies hallucinogens as drugs with no known medical value -- purely "drugs of abuse." But if a valid medical use is found for hallucinogens, Dr. Woodcock said, the F.D.A. has safeguards to prevent the drugs from being diverted and used for unapproved purposes.

Separating a drug's beneficial effects from the harm it can cause is possible, said Dr. Alan Leshner, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse. "Morphine works for pain, but it's horrendous when used in an addictive way," he said. "The same may or may not be true for hallucinogens. It's a mistake to confuse the two issues."

Much has changed in the half-century since LSD was first used by psychiatrists and then found widespread recreational use in the 1960's and 70's. Modern psychiatry has embraced drugs that affect the same brain molecules that are tweaked by hallucinogens. Tools for studying the brain's neurochemistry and response to drugs like LSD are far more advanced than they were in the 1960's and 70's.

Moreover, many of the people who hold political and scientific power today came of age during the 1960's, and they, unlike their parents, are not as afraid of hallucinogens, Dr. Nichols said.

By definition, hallucinogens are drugs that produce bizarre sights, sounds and feelings that appear to have no basis in reality. All work by changing levels of a brain chemical called serotonin, a substance involved in the modulation of many brain states, including depression, euphoria and appetite.

While antidepressants like Prozac work by making the neurotransmitter serotonin linger in the gaps between brain cells, hallucinogens have a different mechanism of action. They are what are called serotonin agonists -- molecules that are very similar to the body's natural serotonin and, when taken in large doses, push the serotonin system into overdrive, making many brain systems more sensitive, Dr. Nichols said. "It's like turning up the volume on your radio. Suddenly you can hear very weak stations."

Thus, for example, hallucinogens amplify signals in the visual system to produce distortions of form and size. Instead of seeing one object, a person sees many copies of that object, he said. Perceived motion is similarly distorted. People begin to "hear" colors and "see" sounds or have out-of-body experiences. Some are so disoriented they experience a terrifying "bad trip."

But very little is known about how hallucinogens can be used therapeutically, Dr. Nichols said. "The first thing we want to know is, Are they safe?"

Dr. John H. Halpern, a psychiatrist at McLeans Hospital in Boston, is looking at this question in a study financed by the Heffter Research Institute and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The study will involve members the Native American Church who, as part of their religious rituals, take peyote in a group setting but use no other drugs, not even alcohol.

Using a battery of tests for mental and social health, three groups of Native Americans -- 70 church members, 70 alcoholics and 70 people from local communities in the Southwest -- are being followed and compared for two to three years. The goal is to see whether peyote users are healthier or less healthy than the others.

Similar studies in Brazil showed that violent alcoholics who took hallucinogens in a ritualistic context often stopped drinking and had higher blood levels of serotonin, said Dr. Dennis McKenna, Heffter's director of ethnopharmacology.

Those changes may reflect an increase in their brain levels of serotonin, added Dr. McKenna, who is also a lecturer at the University of Minnesota Center for Spirituality and Healing, which seeks to integrate cultural and spiritual aspects of care with the biomedical aspects.

Dr. Francisco Moreno, a psychiatrist at the University of Arizona, and his colleagues there have permission from their hospital review board and expect final approval from the F.D.A. soon to carry out a study on obsessive compulsive disorder and psilocybin.

"We want to know if psilocybin can reduce symptoms, and if so, how much do you need to take?" Dr. Moreno said. Subjects will be closely supervised while under the influence of the drug and kept in the hospital overnight as a precaution.

At the University of Zurich in Switzerland, Dr. Franz Vollenweider has permission from his government to explore hallucinogens in treating depression and schizophrenia. "We are interested in the nature of the human experience, of the subjective me-ness or self that guides our behavior," Dr. Vollenweider said.
He wonders whether a medically facilitated experience in which the self temporarily "dissolves" might reduce the symptoms of a clinical depression.

With money from the Heffter Institute, Dr. Vollenweider and his colleagues are conducting a three-year study of 64 depressed patients treated with psilocybin.

In related research, Dr. Vollenweider plans to continue brain imaging studies of healthy volunteers who have taken psilocybin and LSD.

"We can tease out specific brain regions responsible for hallucinations and ego boundaries," he said in a telephone interview.

At Harvard, Dr. Harrison Pope, a professor of psychiatry, is planning to carry out a study to see whether LSD can alleviate fear and anxiety in dying patients. Studies in the 1960's suggested that the drug reduced pain and improved mood, he said, but they were not done under rigorous standards.

Eighty patients would be given an "active placebo," a drug that has physiological effects but is not hallucinogenic, or LSD under close supervision of a psychiatrist or trained mental health worker, Dr. Pope said.
And in St. Petersburg, Russia, Dr. Evgeny Krupitsky, chief of the research laboratory at the Leningrad Regional Center of Addictions, is administering ketamine, an anesthetic with strong hallucinogenic properties, to alcoholics and heroin addicts, as they are treated with talk therapy.

One day, advocates of this research say, their results will be valuable.

"If hallucinogens ever find their way into mainstream medicine -- and I am convinced they will -- they will never be handed out like Prozac," said Dr. George Greer, Heffter's medical director and a psychiatrist in private practice in Santa Fe, N.M. "People will need guidance. These are not drugs you administer every day."

_________________

Ken Kesey - who wrote one flew over the cuckoo's nest. was an avid LSD
user...

The Manchurian Candidate- was found in FBI files before written as a book.

this is fact / not fiction...
quote -

"The answer is never the answer. What's really interesting is the mystery. If you seek the mystery instead of the answer, you'll always be seeking. I've never seen anybody really find the answer-- they think they have, so they stop thinking. But the job is to seek mystery, evoke mystery, plant a garden in which strange plants grow and mysteries bloom. The need for mystery is greater than the need for an answer."

-- Ken Kesey

...will the use of hallucinogens be allowed in our society. It would destroy the control THEY have on us so totally that it just won't happen. Even pot is such a threat that they have fits at the barest suggestion. Not only would the alcohol fortunes be wiped out, Joe (formerly) Six-Pack wouldn't punch the time clock when he could stay home and help his kid with the new coloring book.

The more destructive ones, particularly cocaine, aren't for other reasons, namely that our rulers control it already and aren't about to give up the $500 billion a year it generates. It is amazing that I cannot cash a ten dollar check without leaving a paper trail, yet an amount of cash greater than most national incomes disappears into the banking system without so much as a ripple.