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Jon
Registered: 06/28/03
Posts: 961
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: Shroomism]
#5796064 - 06/27/06 02:55 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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What about catnip? That makes cats freak out, but it does nothing to humans.
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trendal
J♠


Registered: 04/17/01
Posts: 20,815
Loc: Ontario, Canada
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: trendal]
#5796173 - 06/27/06 03:40 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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It's kind of funny how so many people jump on news like this as being "invalid" or "false"....
If I had of posted some news about research that showed MDMA doesn't cause any damage...I doubt I would get a single response saying "this is bunk". Instead (and I know this for a fact, because I have posted "good" news about drugs before) everyone would be posting how good the news was, how they didn't have to worry as much, blah blah blah.
A lot of people need to learn how to handle things that don't agree with them - and I'll tell you the way to handle that kind of news isn't to call it bunk and ignore it
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Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero


Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: trendal]
#5798536 - 06/28/06 06:42 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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> It's kind of funny how so many people jump on news like this as being "invalid" or "false"....
You hit the nail on the head: "jump on NEWS like this". As you well know, journalism is not held to the same standards that science requires. The "news" is often misleading or outright incorrect when it comes to reporting on science. Beyond the media bias, the government has introduced a funding bias into illegal drug related research. Science, and peer review, will eventually find the truth, but the bias means that one must be very careful when accepting the results of any research involving illegal drugs, especially when the conclusions support the government's prohibition agenda. It is sad that the lack of ethics in politics has been allowed to erode the ethics of scientists.
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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trendal
J♠


Registered: 04/17/01
Posts: 20,815
Loc: Ontario, Canada
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: Seuss]
#5798981 - 06/28/06 11:08 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Please show me, in any of my posts on this "news", where I said anyone should trust the research implicitly - because I didn't (and wouldn't).
All I was trying to point out is that, if this "news" was good news...I expect many of the people in this thread who called it bunk would instead be praising the glory of scientific discovery.
Also, do you consider Scientific American to be "news"? The articles are written by the researchers themselves...
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Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.
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ChuangTzu
starvingphysicist



Registered: 09/04/02
Posts: 3,060
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: trendal]
#5799232 - 06/28/06 12:38 PM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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Scientific American is bunk. It's closer to Popular Science than any kind of journal.
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Seuss
Error: divide byzero


Registered: 04/27/01
Posts: 23,480
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: trendal]
#5802096 - 06/29/06 03:37 AM (17 years, 7 months ago) |
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> Also, do you consider Scientific American to be "news"?
Yes, I consider it to be a trade news magazine as compared to a scientific journal such as The American Journal of Physics.
From the Scientific America website: Quote:
Scientific American, the oldest continuously published magazine in the U.S., has been bringing its readers unique insights about developments in science and technology for more than 150 years.
I'm not claiming that SA is worthless, but being published in SA certainly does not carry the same prestige that being published in JAMA carries.
> Please show me, in any of my posts on this "news", where I said
I was not arguing against what you posted, but rather adding to it.
> Scientific American is bunk. It's closer to Popular Science than any kind of journal.
I wouldn't go so far as to call it bunk, but I certainl agree that it is closer to Popular Science than it is to New England Journal of Medicine. Of course, if the research had been published in NEJM, I would have been a bit more trusting about the methods used. The difference: SA is out to make money, NEJM is out to distribute medical "science".
-------------------- Just another spore in the wind.
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Catalysis
EtherealEngineer

Registered: 04/23/02
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: trendal]
#5807264 - 06/30/06 04:46 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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I was reading about this and it is an interesting finding, although I agree that the animal model used may not be the best. I would be more interested if they used primates. I will probably take it more seriously if it actually gets published.
You guys are also right about the bias in illegal drug research. Even if it gets published in a prestigious journal, it may still be incorrect. Does anyone remember the MDMA neurotoxicity paper published in Science? It was retracted because it was discovered that they were actually using massive doses of methamphetamine.
The same caution should be exercised when reading papers in any "hot" area of science such as stem cells, genetics, immunology, global warming, biomaterials and many more im sure.
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kotik
fuckingsuperhero


Registered: 06/29/04
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: Catalysis]
#5807298 - 06/30/06 05:05 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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the topic of this post says "MDMA" yet the article says "Ecstacy"
I would argue these are NOT the same things, as a pill with pure mdma, or nothing but mdma is nothing like what you would find on the street as ecstacy.
-------------------- No statements made in any post or message by myself should be construed to mean that I am now, or have ever been, participating in or considering participation in any activities in violation of any local, state, or federal laws. All posts are works of fiction.
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phi1618
old hand

Registered: 02/14/04
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: Seuss]
#5809194 - 07/01/06 09:01 AM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
I'm not claiming that SA is worthless, but being published in SA certainly does not carry the same prestige that being published in JAMA carries.
Just because something is presented in a prestigious journal like JAMA doesn't make it true. Peer reviewed journals report on research - peer review makes sure the research done makes sense and has some approximation of good design as reported - many errors and even outright frauds still slip through.
For example, [url = http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jan_Hendrik_Sch%C3%B6n#Withdrawn_journal_papers] Jan Hendrik Schon[/url] published many articles in journals such as Science, Nature, Physical Review which were later withdrawn when his research turned out to be pure fabrication.
Of course, there's the famous meth/MDMA screw up from Ricaurte's lab.
The recent stem cell incident.
NEJM found that an article about Vioxx that it published omitted important information.
That's just a few examples of outright fraud or gross negligence - minor errors and good research that is later contradicted is even more common.
Scientific American is a good quality popular science magazine - the vast majority of what's reported in its major articles is also reported in peer reviewed journals.
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ChuangTzu
starvingphysicist



Registered: 09/04/02
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: phi1618]
#5809245 - 07/01/06 09:51 AM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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This thread is pretty much dead so I'm going to leap off on a tangent:
Up until a few years ago, I would have considered Scientific American a "good quality popular science magazine". However, they changed their format to put them in exactly the same class as magazines like Popular Science, which will publish articles on about 6 topics cyclically and in a manner designed solely to inflame emotions and thereby increase ratings. Scientific American is to print media as the Discovery Channel is to television. It's no matter that the researchers themselves write the articles since they're obviously subject to a massive amount of editorial oversight. Pick up a recent copy--I have 2 right here since I used to be a subscriber--and you'll see what I mean.
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razorbladeshoes
Friend

Registered: 05/17/06
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: Seuss]
#5813394 - 07/02/06 07:49 PM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
Seuss said:Also, a rat is not a person, typically... drugs often effect a rat differently than a person.
Rats and humans have different biology, but there's a large number of similarities. Whether or not a study can be applied to humans depends on whether the effects (in rats) are based on biological mechanisms that humans have too.
In this case, the blood-brain barrier is pretty similar between rats and humans. Does this study definitively proove 100% that humans experience similar effects? No. Does it mean that humans likely have the same effects? If you're a betting man, the answer is yes.
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Asante
Mage


Registered: 02/06/02
Posts: 86,795
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: trendal]
#5819432 - 07/04/06 10:39 AM (17 years, 6 months ago) |
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Like I wrote in the Mod forum, high on MDMA:
---------------------------------------------------------------------
Wow, it's "different" to be reading how the very MDMA I'm high on right now might be turning my BBB into a colander 
Do you have access to the details of said research?
It would be vastly important to know how big the doses were. Somehow I don't think they're giving rats 750 mcg apiece, as metabolic issues have to be overcome. Also important is how the doses are administered. Anything other than pipetting the dose into the stomach would not reflect practical usage in humans. Theres a huge difference between injecting and oral administration as you well know.
Also, MDMA is not the same drug in humans as it is in rats. If you apply the same timescale multiplications then a single dose of MDMA would be a burn of a full 130 hours vs our human 5 hours.
Does the actual amount of receptor binding correspond with that in humans? And how would we know? If you think a spinal tap sucks.. 
We do not know if the hightened permeatability, if it occurs in humans at all, in fact DOES scale up to the longer timeframe. Humans have 28x the number of wake/sleep cycles, which is tied into regeneration of the serotonin system and tissues in general.
This research is important to get to the bottom of, so it should be taken to other animals. (preferably pigs for a number of reasons) Like the teacher said: If you assume you make an ass out of u and me.
If actual hightened permeatability of the BBB does occur in humans, then you can test this by comparing the measurable responses to an array of psychopharmaca between MDMA users and controls.
Quote:
The implications are dire - even if MDMA itself isn't toxic (or only mildly so) it could be opening the door to a whole slew of far more toxic compounds in the days, weeks, and even years after using MDMA.
MDMA does have a good track record though, with many users having imbided periodically for twenty years.
But this is definitely something we should look into for the sake of our members' wellbeing and our own.
Somehow I think it won't be nearly as bad as seen in rats, but then again I'm on 1.75mg/kg as we speak, so I know my faculties are quite impaired.
Hey, time for some introspection before my brain leaks into my bloodstream. Let's look into this some more!
-------------------- Omnicyclion.org higher knowledge starts here
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AmistadCubensis
Stranger
Registered: 02/05/21
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: trendal]
#27190725 - 02/06/21 11:24 PM (2 years, 11 months ago) |
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There has been long a lot of research to indicate that abusing any substance just isn't a great idea. I know that I've messed with my head by smoking tons of pot in the past. I'm happy that eventually low strength marijuana (typically known as CBD) became legal so that I could experiment with that. It doesn't really seem to help me that much, and yes smoking it did reproduce some of the effects I didn't like about marijuana.
Watch out for anything that you put in to your digestive system! We're all sensitive! Curiosity can kill you!
A low dosage of MDMA for "typical adults" is around 50mg, the therapists who studied the drug in a controlled setting usually keep it around 125mg. I've discovered through watching documentaries that dealers typically sell ecstasy pills with a strength of around 240mg, so maybe you should break it up and test it if you go that route.
The brain is very mysterious, and it does get worse if you:
-don't get enough exercise
-don't get enough sleep
-if you live a miserable life
-if you are aging
Any nuero-scientist will tell you that the brain is fairly mysterious. Will it stop being mysterious? Probably not. Nobody knows everything.
MDMA clearly has strong effects on the serotonergic system, as can anti-depressants. Nuero-transmitters are not just located in the brain. However, some of the studies that have indicated that MDMA does a number on cognitive abilities usually recruited people who regularly attend raves, so the results were scewed by some of their other troubling behaviors (namely the tendency to think that sleep is equivalent to death).
Edit: It seems like the conversations on here were discussing MCG instead of MG...to do a conversion, divide any microgram by a thousand and you will get the equivalent dosage concerning what I was saying about human adults.
Large rats weigh one pound...i hope this sheds some light on the discussion.
Edited by AmistadCubensis (02/06/21 11:51 PM)
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thirtygoats

Registered: 12/29/11
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Re: MDMA may damage the brain's defenses [Re: trendal]
#27194930 - 02/09/21 07:28 AM (2 years, 11 months ago) |
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Well, no wonder I never enjoyed Mdma/ecstasy any time I used it. It always made me feel very depressed and I always felt like there was just something not right about Mdma. Now I have scientific evidence to back up those feelings.
-------------------- No one knows who I am. Therefore, I am not anyone.
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