Funny but True Facts About Big Pharma, Bill Maher

"If you believe you need to take all the pills the pharmaceutical industry says you do, then you're already on drugs."

"We won't stop being sick if we don't stop making ourselves sick."

"The government isn't your nanny. They're your dealer and they subsidize illness in America. They have to. There's too much money in it. You see, there's no money in healthy people and there's no money in dead people. The money is in the middle, people who are alive (sort of) but with one or more chronic conditions that puts them in need of Celebrex, Nasalnex, Valtrex, or Lunesta."

"50 years ago children didn't even get Type 2 Diabetes. It's now an emerging epidemic as are a long list of ailments which used to be rare but have been 'mainstreamed.' Things like Asthma, autism, acid relfex, arthritis, allergies, adult acne, attention deficit disorder. And that's just the A's."

"In Hillary Clinton's health care plan, the words NUTRITION and EXERCISE appear just once. The word 'drugs' appear 14 times, just as the pharmaceutical companies wanted. You know, they're advertising weasels...

Love to say ' when diet and exercise fail'. Well, DIET and EXERCISE don't fail. A FACT brought home last week by a Duke University study that showed exercise, yes EXERCISE, is just as effective as a cure for depression as Paxil and Zoloft. So ASK YOUR DOCTOR if getting off your ass is right for you!"

"The answer just isn't another pill."

Treating Mental Illness with Psychedelics

When we started studying LSD and mescaline, our long-term goal was to increase our understanding of schizophrenia and what it does. We first examined the psychotomimetic properties of LSD on normal subjects. We never knowingly gave it to schizophrenic patients or to their first-order relatives. Our personal experience and seeing its effect on many normal subjects gave us a good deal of information of what it is like to be psychotic, but in a controlled setting and knowing that it would pass. Continue Reading >>

"Smart Drugs" & the Aging Brain

by Ben Best
A life-extensionist is concerned with survival -- of the body, of the self -- and, in particular, of the brain. But beyond resisting the destruction & degeneration of the brain there looms also the possibility of regeneration & perhaps even augmentation. The "Smart Drug Movement" implies that this is possible -- and possible now.

I have several personal problems with "Smart Drug" people. Many of these individuals are the same people with whom I was arguing 20 years ago over the value of LSD, marijuana and other "recreational drugs" for enhanced creativity. I have seen several individuals devolve into intellectual dysfunction from brain-dissolving neurochemical pleasures. Even alcohol can promote a sense of one's own capabilities which is unrelated to reality. People who attempt to take a substance and try to judge it's effects must be aware that the substance may not only be influencing the experienced effects, but the very judgement of those experienced effects.

Here I review the subject of "Smart Drugs", referring to the most popular (to my knowledge) books on the subject: MIND FOOD & SMART PILLS by Ross Pelton (1989), SMART DRUGS & NUTRIENTS by Ward Dean & John Morgenthaler (1990) and SMART DRUGS II by Dean, Morgenthaler and Fowkes (1993) -- all paperback editions. What is presented here is mostly based on my remembered information and what is in these books, so readers should take what I say with a "grain of salt". I may write a more scientific analysis once I know more about neurochemistry. Continue Reading >>

Wonder drugs may treat many conditions

At the 2008 Congress of European Pharmacological Societies (EPHAR), held July 13-17, 2008 in Manchester, England, Professor Marc Feldmann of the Imperial College London predicted that drugs he helped develop to treat rheumatoid arthritis may prove to be effective for many more medical conditions, including atheriosclerosis.

The drugs, which block a cytokine known as tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha), include infliximab, etanercept and adalimumab, which have shown a dramatic protective effect in patients afflicted with rheumatoid arthritis, an autoimmune disease. These agents have also shown to be of benefit for other autoimmune and inflammatory conditions, including Crohn's disease, psoriasis, psoriatic arthritis, ankylosing spondylitis and ulcerative colitis. Additionally, they have shown promise in the treatment of acute alcoholic hepatitis, a potentially fatal condition.

Cytokines such as TNF-alpha are molecules released by immune cells to alert the immune system that the body is under attack and to initiate a response against the infection. "In autoimmune diseases, such as arthritis, we discovered that cytokines are over-produced causing the immune system to fight itself, resulting in inflammation and tissue destruction," Dr Feldmann explained. "We further found that by blocking just one cytokine – tumor necrosis factor alpha – we were able to block all the cytokines involved in the inflammation, with remarkable clinical results." Continue Reading