can weed kill you?

[Imran Siddiqui]

If you say cigarettes cause cancer, you are not allowing for the reality that cigarettes don't cause cancer in many people.

Of course I am. If I say alcohol causes drunkenness, am I wrong because if you drink one glass of wine you don't get drunk? Don't be ridiculous. Saying cigarettes cause cancer means cigarettes is a catalyst and increases the probability for getting cancer.. just like saying fatty foods cause heart attacks mean that fatty foods increase the probablity for cardic arrest.

If pot really destroyed intiative, then we shouldn't see motivated pot smokers.

Why not? Do you assume everyone has the same level of motiviation in life? Then why would you think that highly motivated people who start using pot and stay somewhat motivated disproves the assertion that pot decreases initiative? Have you seen anyone become MORE motivated after taking pot.

Pot is a sedative, so saying pot decreases initiative is not entirely a statement of observed opinion. It's similar to saying that alcohol or opium decrease initiative. Of course they do, because that is their function!! When you get really relaxed you don't want to do anything.

[Q Classic]

who said that it had to be in liquid form? try injecting powdered weed. you'll die in no time.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Berzerker
When it can be proven, it'll be proven. Until then, all these obviously flawed studies are.... umm...flawed.... The fact millions have smoked pot on a fairly regular basis in this country alone without any observable, proven link to cancer or heart disease must be overcome with better science that the "study" linked in this thread. My God, those doctors cited people with enlarged hearts who died of heart attacks and that's supposed to tell us something? Then there's the problem with questionable THC levels in the blood...

The study was anecdotal. Any medical professional would understand that such studies only point the way towards further research. What the author was pointing out is that THC does increase the oxygen demand of the heart, and that that may be a problem in people with pre-existing coronary heart disease. He stated that in his conclusion. If your coronary arteries are already narrowed, then taking something that increases the demand for oxygen may push the area of the heart muscle served by ther narrowed arteries into local oxygen deprivation and then to cell death, aka a heart attack.

Strangelove -

How do they determine what is or is not a "carcinogen"? Specifically? Can you spell d-e-t-a-c-h-m-e-n-t from reality?

Yeah I can spell it, but do you know what it means? Carcinogenicity can be determined by exposing bacteria to a substance and measuring the increase in the rate of spontaneous mutations, or by exposing animals to a substance and later assaying them for tumors, or by comparing the rate of cancer in populations exposed to the substance with that in populations not exposed. The substances in tobacco considered carcinogenic meet multiple criteria of carcinogenicity, and in many cases a dose-effect relationship is fairly well established. There is no reason to beleive that being exposed to them by smoking a reefer gives rise to less risk than being exposed via smoking cigarettes.

Why do some people smoke their entire lives and never get cancer? Genetic "resistance"? And those who do get cancer? Genetic predisposition? What about people who get cancer and never smoked? Genetic predisposition again? Now, is it actually a matter of resistance and predisposition or are genes a determinant? Or is it a combination - some people will get cancer no matter what they do and some may get it upon contact with environmental causes?

The questions you're asking are quite complex. One factor is the dose exposure. With regards to cigarettes the more packs you've smoked in your life, the higher the risk. The body has a number of safeguards to prevent mutations and cancer. There are enzymes that move along our DNA strands and look for altered nucleotides, there are enzymes that cut out defective DNA, there are mechanisms that limit cell replication, and so on and so on. It's pretty clear now that in most cases in order for cancer to occur one or more of these mechanism have to be rendered inoperable. Current thought is that it usually takes multiple failures. Most carcinogens act by causing mutations in DNA. Since initiating a cancer requires damage to the mechanisms that protect the DNA code, then you don't get cancer until the carcinogen specifically mutates one or more of the genes that code for the enzymes of the protective mechanisms. Since you have perhaps one hundred thousand or more genes, of which the alteration of only a handful will result in cancer, you can see there is a matter of staistical probability. If you're lucky and never damage the critical genes you don't get the big CA. If you're unlucky, you damage enough critical genes and our cells start replicating like there's no tomorrow. Some people may be born with genes coding for defective enzymes, such people will be at higher risk for cancers.

Frankly, we don't even know what causes cancer...

Cancer is an entire family of diseases with a common pathology- the unchecked replication of cells and (usually) the metastasis of the diseased cells from their original location to other locations in the body. There are a number of instances in which we have a fairly good idea what causes a particular cancer, we're just not telling you because you're a marijuana advocate, probably smoke the stuff, will never finish medical school, and so you don't need to know.
. Just kidding.

[st_swithin]

Dude, you guys are killing my buzz.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Thanks Doc... was waiting for you to swing by .

[Bereta_Eder]

Dr. Strangelove, thanks A LOT about your insight on the DNA and defensive mechanisms against the "away from here" (cancer).

That has got to be the single useful and interesting post I've read in Poly in a very, very long time.

Thanks Doc!

[KrazyHorse]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Krazyhorse -

Why? Aren't these classes designed to educate and since you obviously think I'm uneducated, logic dictates you'd advise me to take this class, not avoid it.

Actually, I'd suggest you take a logic class first, then possibly a calculus class, a discrete math class and finally a stat mech class.

[KrazyHorse]

Man, Berzerker, some people just have weird political ideas. You've gone the whole nine yards and started spewing nonsense.

Your argument seems to be with the word "cause" which you define to only exist when a 100% certainty of B is implied by the prior presence of A, and a 0% chance of B without A...

[KrazyHorse]

And my point is that some of us here actually work a significant amount with the ideas of probability, statistics and scientific correlation. Unless I've read you wrong, you're not one of them. And your objections are based on arguments the thickness of a sheet of paper. You've either completely missed the point of an analogy as clear as a plane of class, or have deliberately chosen to ignore it and instead write an entire diatribe based on a tangent.

In our dartboard example, whether you say that increasing the size of your target "causes" you to hit it or not, the fact is that keeping other variables constant (to within well-defined experimental parameters) while increasing the size increases the likelihood of hitting the target. This is the definition of cause that is in general use. It's nice to understand the mechanism behind it, but that's not necessary for an empirical result. If a physical theory does not predict a correlation between two bits of data but the correlation remains under rigorous testing, then the theory is wrong. This is the heart of the scientific method. Your theory is that cigarette smoking does not "cause" cancer. My reply is to point to the numerous articles in peer reviewed journals which demonstrate a very significant statistical correlation (I should probably say extremely significant, because the correlation goes far beyond the requirements of significance). Your theory is consequently debunked.

[Wraith]

All this talk, talk, talk, and no one's given the real answer yet.

It depends on how big the bale is when it hits you.

Wraith
"It's hard to be an ornithologist and walk through a wood when all around you the world is shouting "Bugger off, this is my bush!" Aargh, the nest thief! Have sex with me, I can make my chest big and red!"
-- Terry Pratchett ("Monstrous Regiment")

[Berzerker]

Diss -

that is not proof.

It has already been proven people have beter genetic code than others. Their bodies just have the ability to combat the cancer causing effects of tobacco.

Of course it's proof, claiming that tobacco causes cancer when lots of people smoke for decades without getting cancer is proof that the assertion - tobacco causes cancer - is inaccurate.
And even Koop said the fertiliser is responsible for most of the tobacco related cancer. Tobacco "may" cause cancer in people susceptible to cancer would be more accurate. And that only raises the question as to why...

Kramerman -

yeah... i suppsoe its just "coincidence"

What coincidence is responsible for people who get cancer and don't smoke? What coincidence is responsible for people who smoke and don't get cancer?

Imran -

Of course I am. If I say alcohol causes drunkenness, am I wrong because if you drink one glass of wine you don't get drunk? Don't be ridiculous.

Yes Imran, you are wrong. Drinking lots of alcohol in one sitting causes drunkenness.

Saying cigarettes cause cancer means cigarettes is a catalyst and increases the probability for getting cancer.. just like saying fatty foods cause heart attacks mean that fatty foods increase the probablity for cardic arrest.

Then say what you mean instead of saying what you don't mean. "Causes" cancer is not the same as increases the probablity. And for people who are genetically immune or highly resistant to cancer, does tobacco increase their probability of getting cancer from smoking enough to worry about?

Why not? Do you assume everyone has the same level of motiviation in life?

Of course not, that's the point. People are not equally motivated so how do you or the politicians know that pot reduced or destroyed someone's motivation? For example, I smoked pot in high school and I was very motivated when it came to baseball. But I've never been academically motivated. Upon leaving high school and suffering an injury, my prospects at a career in baseball were greatly diminished and I lost motivation. But it wasn't the pot, it was a consequence of my injury. Yet I'm sure I would be used as an example of the pot = lack of motivation argument.

Then why would you think that highly motivated people who start using pot and stay somewhat motivated disproves the assertion that pot decreases initiative? Have you seen anyone become MORE motivated after taking pot.

For one thing, I don't know how to measure motivation so your assertion they went from highly to somewhat motivated requires insight I don't have. This issue about measuring motivation requires mind reading abilities we just don't have...

Pot is a sedative, so saying pot decreases initiative is not entirely a statement of observed opinion.

Pot is at best a mild sedative and sedatives wear off.

It's similar to saying that alcohol or opium decrease initiative. Of course they do, because that is their function!! When you get really relaxed you don't want to do anything.

That is not the argument put forward by the "pot reduces motivation" people. Their argument is that pot reduces motivation in people even when they are not under the influence. Does sleep reduce motivation? Of course not.

Strangelove -

The study was anecdotal. Any medical professional would understand that such studies only point the way towards further research.

It was flawed too, even the ending comment acknowledged some of the problems with the study.

What the author was pointing out is that THC does increase the oxygen demand of the heart, and that that may be a problem in people with pre-existing coronary heart disease.

Exercise increases oxygen demand too, that doesn't mean we look at people with enlarged hearts who fall dead on basketball courts to claim exercise causes heart attacks.

If your coronary arteries are already narrowed, then taking something that increases the demand for oxygen may push the area of the heart muscle served by ther narrowed arteries into local oxygen deprivation and then to cell death, aka a heart attack.

Then the authors should offer their study within those parameters instead of making a broader claim about pot use. Pot (and exercise) can, in rare cases, induce cardiac arrest in people who already suffer from heart disease.

Yeah I can spell it, but do you know what it means?

My question was not for you, it was for the people who decide what is or is not a carcinogen.

Carcinogenicity can be determined by exposing bacteria to a substance and measuring the increase in the rate of spontaneous mutations, or by exposing animals to a substance and later assaying them for tumors, or by comparing the rate of cancer in populations exposed to the substance with that in populations not exposed.

Yes, and the way they do this is by breeding mice/rats to increase susceptibility to tumors and then subject them to massive amounts of the chemical in question. Well, if you take mice that are already prone to cancer and breed them to get offspring that are even more prone to cancer, that makes their information effectively useless for people who don't share these lab animals susceptibility to cancer or the amounts of the chemical deemed carcinogenic.

The substances in tobacco considered carcinogenic meet multiple criteria of carcinogenicity, and in many cases a dose-effect relationship is fairly well established. There is no reason to beleive that being exposed to them by smoking a reefer gives rise to less risk than being exposed via smoking cigarettes.

Read the links I posted, it seems that even tobacco's connection to cancer is more a result of the fertilisers being used. And that's just one reason why tobacco = pot wrt cancer is a bogus proposition...

The questions you're asking are quite complex.

I know.

One factor is the dose exposure. With regards to cigarettes the more packs you've smoked in your life, the higher the risk.

But is that true for people who have an immunity to cancer?And lets say you aren't immune but highly resistant to cancer. If this resistance affords a .00001% chance of getting cancer and tobacco use quadruples that chance, so what? Is .00004% chance really something to worry about? So often the media will tell us this or that doubles or triples (or whatever multiple) the chance of getting cancer without giving us the actual numbers.

The body has a number of safeguards to prevent mutations and cancer. There are enzymes that move along our DNA strands and look for altered nucleotides, there are enzymes that cut out defective DNA, there are mechanisms that limit cell replication, and so on and so on. It's pretty clear now that in most cases in order for cancer to occur one or more of these mechanism have to be rendered inoperable. Current thought is that it usually takes multiple failures. Most carcinogens act by causing mutations in DNA. Since initiating a cancer requires damage to the mechanisms that protect the DNA code, then you don't get cancer until the carcinogen specifically mutates one or more of the genes that code for the enzymes of the protective mechanisms. Since you have perhaps one hundred thousand or more genes, of which the alteration of only a handful will result in cancer, you can see there is a matter of staistical probability. If you're lucky and never damage the critical genes you don't get the big CA. If you're unlucky, you damage enough critical genes and our cells start replicating like there's no tomorrow. Some people may be born with genes coding for defective enzymes, such people will be at higher risk for cancers.

Yes, some people don't get cancer because of their genes and some people get cancer no matter what precautions they take.
Throw in the fact alot of the tobacco available to consumers is fertilised with radioactive materials and we get more cancer, but to ignore that cancer rates appear to have risen as the use of radioactive fertilisers has increased misses the point. What would cancer rates be if non or low radioactive fertilisers were used? I mean, this is like saying milk causes cancer if cows are fed radioactive grain...

Cancer is an entire family of diseases with a common pathology- the unchecked replication of cells and (usually) the metastasis of the diseased cells from their original location to other locations in the body.

NOVA did a documentary on cancer and metastasis showing that the "mother" tumor sends out a chemical message to other cancerous deposits inhibiting their growth. Removing the mother tumor removes the message and other tumors start to grow. Very interesting stuff that might offer clues to curing or slowing cancer once it begins.

There are a number of instances in which we have a fairly good idea what causes a particular cancer, we're just not telling you because you're a marijuana advocate, probably smoke the stuff, will never finish medical school, and so you don't need to know.

I'm glad your kidding because i'm not a marijuana "advocate" nor do I smoke it and since I've never started medical school I wont be finishing what I never started. But most people who finish medical school don't need to know what causes cancer either.

If you're lucky and never damage the critical genes you don't get the big CA. If you're unlucky, you damage enough critical genes and our cells start replicating like there's no tomorrow

Is "luck" a medical term for "we don't know"?

[Dr Strangelove]

Oh My God! The NORML for lunch bunch is quoting C. Everett Koop! That is soooooo wrong on so many levels.

First of all the quote attributed to Dr. Koop was actually in referrence to cancers related to second hand smoke.
Second, C. Everett Koop was hardly a world class expert on the carcinogenicity of tobacco. Before becoming Surgeon General he was a community hospital based General Surgeon with some serious political connections.
Third most American tobacco products aren't even American anymore. In the 1970s American tobacco companies began shafting American farmers by buying foreign tobacco, Chinese, Indian, Egyptian, Turkish, and etc. Farmers in these parts of the world are more likely to use "natural" fertilizers.
Forth, it's common knowledge in the medical community that most of the carcinogenicity of tobacco comes from chemical carcinogens. If you want to debate that fact with me go find some quotes from reputable medical sources, like the American Cancer Society, not from doper websites.
Finally, since most of our food is being grown on the same fertilizers used on (American) tobacco, why is it that gastric cancer has actually greatly decreased in the past fifty years?

In the US, prior to WW1, most tobacco was consumed as cigars or chewing tobacco. Cigarettes were considered to somewhat degenerate. Doughboys picked up the cigarette habit in Europe and brought it home with them. The rise in Lung Ca after WW1 follows the rise in the popularity of cigarettes in the US.

[Dr Strangelove]

Exercise increases oxygen demand too, that doesn't mean we look at people with enlarged hearts who fall dead on basketball courts to claim exercise causes heart attacks.

Ah! But people with enlaged hearts should only attempt to exercise under a doctor's guidance because, yes, they are prone to fall over dead if not properly treated.

[Berzerker]

Krazyhorse -

Actually, I'd suggest you take a logic class first, then possibly a calculus class, a discrete math class and finally a stat mech class.

So you've gone from telling me not to take a class to advising I take other classes first? I'm glad you found my logic more appealing than your own.

Man, Berzerker, some people just have weird political ideas. You've gone the whole nine yards and started spewing nonsense.

I've been "spewing" political ideas? I thought your complaint was my alleged ignorance of probability and statistics.

Your argument seems to be with the word "cause" which you define to only exist when a 100% certainty of B is implied by the prior presence of A, and a 0% chance of B without A...

Yes, if I say "A" causes "B" then it is logical to conclude "A" causes "B", not that "A" may cause "B" sometimes, under certain conditions, especially on Tuesdays at lunch hour.

And my point is that some of us here actually work a significant amount with the ideas of probability, statistics and scientific correlation. Unless I've read you wrong, you're not one of them.

Well, at least this time you've allowed for the statistical possibility you've read me wrong.

And your objections are based on arguments the thickness of a sheet of paper. You've either completely missed the point of an analogy as clear as a plane of class, or have deliberately chosen to ignore it and instead write an entire diatribe based on a tangent.

Talk about tangential diatribes.

In our dartboard example, whether you say that increasing the size of your target "causes" you to hit it or not, the fact is that keeping other variables constant (to within well-defined experimental parameters) while increasing the size increases the likelihood of hitting the target.

The dartboard was your example, don't try to include me in on that "analogy". The parameters aren't well-defined or constant, that's one reason why it is illogical to claim tobacco causes cancer.

This is the definition of cause that is in general use.

So driving a car causes death, generally?

Your theory is that cigarette smoking does not "cause" cancer.

Is that your answer to my question: what is my attitude? I've never said smoking does not cause cancer. I've questioned the claim that smoking causes cancer and I've shown why that is an inaccurate assertion. If cigarette smoking caused cancer, everyone who smokes would get cancer.

My reply is to point to the numerous articles in peer reviewed journals which demonstrate a very significant statistical correlation (I should probably say extremely significant, because the correlation goes far beyond the requirements of significance). Your theory is consequently debunked.

And these journals claim tobacco causes cancer? I'd bet they only claim tobacco can cause cancer and that a segment of the population is at a higher risk. Perhaps you'll find some of these journals claiming that tobacco grown with radioactive fertilisers increases the chance of getting cancer much more than the tobacco itself and that this is relevant for at risk populations, not people who are immune or highly resistant to cancer.

[Dr Strangelove]

Originally posted by Berzerker


NOVA did a documentary on cancer and metastasis showing that the "mother" tumor sends out a chemical message to other cancerous deposits inhibiting their growth. Removing the mother tumor removes the message and other tumors start to grow. Very interesting stuff that might offer clues to curing or slowing cancer once it begins.

It's been tried, with dissapointing results. The thing is that there are actually multiple mechanisms safeguarding DNA, regulating cell proliferation, and preventing metastases. In order for cancer to occur it is not necessary for all of these mechanisms to fail, just enough of them. The substance produced by the "mother" tumor is actually a normally occuring substance, to which normal cells actually respond better than cancer cells. The metastses occur because though the metastatic cells do respond somewhat, they do not respond sufficiently to keep them in complete check.