#drug experiments

[afriblaq]

Did you know...

[unwelcome-ozian]

A widespread ethical problem, although one that has not yet received much attention, is raised by the development of new pharmaceuticals. All new drugs are tested on human volunteers. There is, of course, no way subjects can be fully apprised of the risks in advance, as that is what the tests purport to determine. This situation is generally considered acceptable, provided volunteers give “informed” consent. Many of the drugs under development today, however, offer little clinical benefit beyond those available from existing treatments. Many are developed simply to create a patentable variation on an existing drug. It is easy to justify asking informed, consenting individuals to risk limited harm in order to develop new drug therapies for a condition from which they are suffering or for which existing treatments are inadequate. The same may not apply when the drug being tested offers no new benefits to the subjects because they are healthy volunteers, or when the drug offers no significant benefits to anyone because it is essentially a copy of an existing drug.

Manufacturers, of course, hope that animal tests will give an indication of how a given drug will affect humans. However, a full 70 to 75 percent of drugs approved by the Food and Drug Administration for clinical trials based on promising results in animal tests, ultimately prove unsafe or ineffective for humans.2 Even limited clinical trials cannot reveal the full range of drug risks. A U.S. General Accounting Office (GAO) study reports that of the 198 new drugs which entered the market between 1976 and 1985, 102 (52 percent) caused adverse reactions that premarket tests failed to predict.3 Even in the brief period between January and August 1997, at least 53 drugs currently on the market were relabeled due to unexpected adverse effects.

[ritualvirtuality]

its insane how i can take like 2.5-3g of gabapentin and still be bouncing my leg like fuck

[med-przemek]

Imperial Lates

Upon experiencing my first Imperial late event, here are a few things that I learnt: 

- My first lecture focused on precision polymer particles by Professor Rachel O’riley. Although typically such nanoparticles are governed by the ratio of hydrophobic and hydrophilic components for self assembly, here; the focus was on crystallisation driven self assembly (CDSA) which overrides this mechanism. DMA seeds are used as the original seeds on which the polymer begins to form through a process known as living polymerisation growth for greater control that leads to platelet like structures. Studying the complexity of assembly was important on exploring how polymer length, composition and chemistry can be altered to rationally tune nanoparticle shape and in turn it’s properties. Novel applications include directing biological interactions, such as cellular uptake, intracellular trafficking and immune response or the ability to modulate hydrogel mechanical and adhesion properties when used as fillers for antimicrobial and tissue engineering purposes. 

- The second talk event was lead by Dr Catherine Kibirige on treating HIV in rural African communities. HIV is particularly difficult to treat and has to be rather suppressed because of it’s elusion from the immune system. Using a continually shifting shield of glycans, it prevent antibodies from detecting and attacking. It also replicates rapidly using reverse transcriptase to develop a pool of diverse HIV strains - called quasi-species - whilst attacking helper T-cells that orchestrate the immune system’s cell signalling. Finally it has a long incubation period and is slow to reveal (typically 5-10 years), where by that point it may have shredded the victims immune system. There are campaigns that have been developed, notably the ongoing UN led campaign of 95-95-95; where 95% people with HIV know their status, then 95% are receiving their treatment and 95% have suppressed their viral load by 2030. Suppression is the best we have at the current moment with no vaccine, with the Undetectable= Untransmittable campaign (U=U), sexual transmissions of HIV can be stopped by lowering the viral load in blood whilst on effective treatment. Dr Kibirige has been a part of the HIVQuant project that is a HIV-1 kit (working on portable solar or battery driven cyclers) that provides a treatment monitoring solution for resource-constrained settings, especially in Africa to minimise monthly hourly trips to district hospitals to meet the 2030 95-95-95 UN target. 

- Vera. AI was the final project that grasped my attention as AI is largely underrepresented in the field of healthcare. Being a hyper-personalised digital platform that focuses on gynaecological, hormonal health management and patient education, this AI tools aims to break women’s health taboos in communicating their medical needs. Focusing on improving patient’s ability to understand and learn, Vera.AI improves patient-doctor communication. This is a project still in it’s early stages but with incorporating ChatGPT in the future, it has colossal potential to democratise women’s health medical data.  

[swelleganza]

1950s Housewife Tries LSD

[junglistizzy-blog]

[theboldtable]

It appears that the fine folks at NASA have nothing better to do with U.S. tax dollars than test the side effects of various drugs on the web designing techniques of spiders.  Badspiderbites.com provides an interactive video so you can see for yourself what a spider's web would look like on Mescaline, Hash, LSD, and even caffeine. 

I see Charlotte's Web in a whole new light now.

[imaginepublicity]

LSD Redux

Timothy Leary, visionary or acid demon?

Amplify’d from www.dennismcdougal.com

LSD Redux

So no less a sober voice than that of The Economist joined the LSD bandwagon last month, summarizing the five-hour history of healthy uses of hallucinogens as related in The Acid Chronicles. The occasion for this latest reassessment of demon acid is the New York Public Library’s purchase of the Timothy Leary archives, which have been housed in an Oakland warehouse since the good doctor’s death in 1996.

Leary may or may not get his eventual due as a visionary, but one of his favorite phrases, on or off acid, is worth repeating during this long, hot summer when useless politicians dither and the country drops from the first ring of hell down, down, down toward an economic and ecological abyss.

No. Not “Turn on, tune in, drop out.” I’m thinking more along the lines of “Question Authority.” Or, as Bob might have put it, you don’t need a congressman to tell which way the wind blows….

Read more at www.dennismcdougal.com

 See this Amp at http://amplify.com/u/a16p9j