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News Briefs 09-01-2014

By red pill junkieon

Back in the saddle again…

Thanks to my mom, whose Romeritos recipe for Xmas still kicks some serious ass.

Quote of the Day:

“You don’t look out there for God, something in the sky, you look in you.”

~Alan Watts

red pill junkie
Agnostic gnostic, walking conundrum & metaphysical oxymoron (with emphasis in the 'moron' part), the mysterious RPJ leaves a double life: By day he serves as Grand Master of the International Sacred Order of Lucha Libre, but at night he pursues his life-long study of everything considered mysterious and/or 'paranormal' --a term he personally detests... When he's not exploring the web looking for his daily fix of Forteana, he can be found blogging, doodling, fooling around and offering his services as news administrator and writer at The Daily Grail. He also regularly participates in other websites and podcasts like Radio Misterioso and Where Did the Road Go? He impatiently awaits for the return of the mothership in Mexico City. absurdbydesign.com
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19 Comments

  1. Crazy Grailers
    The article mentioned is a very loose interpretation of ODD (as is possible with most DSM definitions). ODD isn’t simply freethinking and nonconformity but aggressive -almost knee-jerk- behavior that isn’t being mediated by areas of the prefrontal cortex. It’s usually co morbid with ADHD and other neurological disorders (and yes, ADHD is %100 a neurological disorder). In children it can manifest as uncontrollable outbursts in response to authority. If persistent throughout life, it is often seen in antisocial behavior. These traits are not generally indicative of our fine community of free-thinkers.

    1. re: Crazy Grailers
      I think you miss the point. Worse you buy into the nonsense that’s being foisted on people. ADHD? Neurological disorder? Please. All based on the idea that the common standard state is somehow more correct or worse – the only valid state.

      1. Please.
        70% of the people diagnosed with ADHD suffer also myalgic encephalitis caused by sleep deprivation, their brain activity is proven to be significantly lower (Zametkin et. al. 1990), due to issues in blood circulation (Adele Diamond, 2005), and a significant dopamine deficiency (Nora D. Volkow et. al. 2009 and Anna Bratt Fynd, 2009). And then there’s amnesia due to much of the aforementioned as one of the symptoms. None of that is, of course, neurological.

        But then, pov will undoubtedly provide an abundance of evidence to invalidate what I just wrote.

          1. Cause and effect
            The cause is, in my view, physiological, which then leads to various neurological symptoms. Because of the neurological symptoms, it is widely regarded (and with a good reason) as a “neurological disorder”. Due to these diverse symptoms a general practitioner does not even have the right (nor the tools or knowledge) to make the diagnosis.

            The (Finnish) National Supervisory Authority for Welfare and Health does not recommend drugs or medicine as a primary treatment for ADHD. This is aligned with the European consensus statement (Kooij et al. BMC Psychiatry 2010) where it was stated that ADHD is under-diagnosed and under- treated illness, but it cannot, and should not, be treated effectively with drugs due to very diverse, or even polymorphic, symptoms.

            Btw, I really do not understand what “big pharma” has to do with this.

          3. Johannes – Big Pharma in my
            Johannes – Big Pharma in my opinion is relevant because it is not possible to have a discussion about ADHD disorder – or any other diagnosed condition, without identifying all inputs: that is the mind body connection, the role of practitioner or researcher, the role of the pharmaceutical industry in creating drugs for all these profit centers…er disorders, the willing patients or their guardians who often choose the remedy of least resistance, etc…

            The way I’ve learned to treat my health is based on my research and personal experiences and philosophy of life. It is to treat the body as a whole organism, that disease arises from dis-ease or disharmony in the body, and therefore to attack the underlying cause, deficiency, disorder if possible (which it not always is) – the result being often the disease or symptoms will abate. This is a slow arduous process. Most people take the shortest easiest route – give me a drug for the symptom…

            I agree completely ADHD is a genuine disorder in a percentage of the diagnosed cases. But as RPJ points out, in how many cases could the degree of severity be mitigated through dietary and lifestyle changes rather than medicating the sufferer ensuring a lifetime of slavery to the drug and its side effects (often dampening creativity). And how many cases are merely misdiagnosed – all doctors are not created equal and many arrive at wrong conclusions. “Medical Opinion” is the term for their diagnoses, not “medical fact”.

            You cannot remove pharmaceutical companies influence from the equation or discussion, since they have the money, they fund the research, they create the ads, and they profit billions or trillions off their patented drugs taken by these newly diagnosed sufferers, many of them children. Here are statistics from CDC:

            • Approximately 11% of children 4-17 years of age diagnosed with ADHD as of 2011.
            • ADHD diagnosis in children continues to increase, from 7.8% in 2003 to 9.5% in 2007 to 11.0% in 2011.
            • ADHD diagnosis rate increased an average of 3% per year from 1997 to 2006 and an average of approximately 5% per year from 2003 to 2011.
            • Boys (13.2%) were more likely than girls (5.6%) to be diagnosed with ADHD.
            • The average age of ADHD diagnosis was 7 years of age.

            Do 11% of children really have neurological ADHD – if so what a defective job evolution has done…

            Direct to consumer advertising by Parma companies is only permitted in two nations: United States and New Zealand – why not the rest? 1997 is the year the FDA enabled broadcast tv ads. Now celebrities of all kinds promote drugs laden with side effects. The New York Times writes: “When the Food and Drug Administration in the 1990s first mandated that drug makers list medicines’ side effects in order to advertise prescription drugs, there was a firestorm of protest from the industry. Now the litany of side effects that follows every promotion is so mind-numbing — drowsiness, insomnia, loss of appetite, weight gain — as to make the message meaningless.” Why protest disclosing side effects? Because it’s about profit, not about treatment.

            Another one from the NYT: Two federal lawsuits charging a prominent drug company with making fraudulent kickbacks to promote sales of its drugs raise disturbing questions about how to control fraudulent behavior in the pharmaceutical industry…” However paying doctors per prescription written is not illegal and common…This creates an incentive to doctors – remember all doctors are not created equal – they have bills, pressures and varying degrees of skill and morality. Misdiagnoses from either occur…

            Long post…but Big Pharma does have its role in the discussion.

      2. ADHD
        I think you might be missing the point. It’s very easy to admonish ADHD as a “fake” disorder. While it is certainly true that ADHD is over diagnosed (a problem the psychological/psychiatric community is aware of) The MRI and FMRI data strongly suggests otherwise. I’m not going to cite any studies because I don’t care to but when one studies statistics one quickly comes to the conclusion that any null hypothesis can be rejected if one asks the right questions. Additionally, if one has studied psychology and the brain i.e. neuroscience as well as read the literature on the subject, one would see a clearer picture of ADHD. Quite frankly, the evidence is overwhelming. We know that ADHD brains have overall brain deficits in size, as well as problems in regulating dopamine. We also see deficits in specific brain areas, particularly in the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain largely responsible for goal orientation and impulse control. Researchers at Yale have shown through FMRI imaging that when given certain tasks Defined as “boring” through psychological testing, after a brief period of time regular brains show an eventual release of dopamine. Yet in ADHD brains, such release of the primary “reward” neurotransmitter never occurs. This is why amphetamines work well with ADHD because amphetamines, whether one is bored or not, release dopamine.

        We can argue whether or not ADHD is actually an “illness” in the existential sense of the word (obviously in our culture it is labeled as such) but we cannot deny the evidence that some brains have a more active prefrontal cortex and a regularly functioning mesolimbocortical pathway.

        As for the causes of such types of brain functioning? The jury is still largely out. We do see stronger rates of heritability, however whether or not such genetic traits are the result of an epigenetic phenomenon or a pure expresession remains to be seen. There’s also a correlation between brain oxygen deprivation during birth and ADHD but again, its only correlational.

        Now, the reason I originally stated the article as carrying a loose interpretation regarding ODD is because again, we’ve seen through psychological testing and FMRI imaging ODD brains show similar deficits in the prefrontal cortex. The Vast majority of violent inmates show similar deficits. We see the relation to brain abnormality and ODD (abnormality simply meaning, ‘not the same as the general population) but we don’t have nearly as much evidence. Where this relationship hasn’t been shown, is in the ‘normal’ population that also label themselves as ‘free thinkers’ with an aversion to authority. Why would this be the case? Well for the simple reason that most of us haven’t committed violent crimes, giving researchers little reason to study the normal population or label all ‘free-thinkers’ as having ODD. by definition of this article, the hippies of the ’60’s counterculture movement would be labeled ODD and I’ll just go out on a limb and say by definition (which is ultimately what were dealing with) hippies aren’t violent.

        1. Cause & effect
          Here’s the thing I (think) I’m trying to argue: the current neuroscientific viewpoint of cause & effect.

          You tell me that people with ADHD have a certain sets of characteristics in the brain. I’d then go & point out the other link I provided in the News Briefs: the fact that religious/spiritual people have thicker brains. There’s also plenty of evidence that a regular meditation practice will cause a physiological change in the practitioner’s brain.

          So that’s why we here in the Grail keep contesting the materialistic dictum that brain=mind. I think that the mind is pretty capable of healing the brain if you take the ‘holistic’ approach Greg H. pointed out in a previous comment.

          Mind you, I’m not trying to demonize prescription drugs here. What I’m trying to say is that Greg H. is right: we in the West need to focus less in the symptoms & more in the cause, otherwise the drugs will only serve as a palliative at best –not to mention all the other nasty side effects they might bring.

          More Plato less Prozac –although my favorite version is More Bob Ross less Valium 😉

          1. cause and effect 2
            I agree with you but when someone tries to tell me that ADHD doesn’t exist but is merely the fabrication of a culture to explain ‘lazy’ people in the hopes of big pharma profit, I have to laugh. What were learning now through the current dramatic shift of consciousness is that their is no one-single cause or effect. It’s obvious that our current issues regarding self and cultural image are becoming greater and greater but the hard truth is that ultimately not a single person on this planet has a clue as to what’s really going on. You say that we in the west need to focus less on symptoms and more on cause and while this may be true, we certainly cannot neglect symptoms. We see much higher rates of psychiatric illness in countries that stand to address cause more than effect, i.e. symptom. The bottom line is: we’re still learning. And while I lean more towards a holistic/spiritual/universal mind approach, to deny the “hard” evidence science has found is anathema to any search for truth. You say ‘more plato less prozac’ but tell that to the paranoid schizophrenics who, without medication, smear feces on the walls or cut off their genitalia with a pen knife because God told them to do so. We treat symptoms because we’re still figuring out causes; it’s the best we have at this point. Can we learn from eastern cultures? Of course, but that doesn’t mean we haven’t learned anything ourselves.

          2. Schyzophrenics

            You say ‘more plato less prozac’ but tell that to the paranoid schizophrenics who, without medication, smear feces on the walls or cut off their genitalia with a pen knife because God told them to do so.

            It’s funny you mention that, because I also have deep issues with the way modern Western medicine treats those people. In other cultures there was the role of the shaman, the person who would get the messages from ‘the other side’ & would have a contact with a deeper spectrum of reality the rest of the village couldn’t perceive.

            They were revered & sought for knowledge. Here… they’d get an electroshock therapy.

            That doesn’t mean all people who hear voices are a potential source for wisdom. There were tribes in Africa who had the capacity to distinguish between those who were channeling information, and those who –for lack of a better word– were considered ‘crazy.’

            Or maybe the craziness emerges from the fact that these people haven’t found a way to ‘turn off’ the channel, and eventually their minds get flooded with too much information? Who knows.

    2. ADHD
      I think I need to concur with POV on this one. When I was young, children weren’t just diagnosed as ADHD; they were just perceived as children: roudy, noisy & with a lot of energy. I guess it’s easier to send them off to the school psychiatrist & give them a pill than actually try to get them to pay attention…

      This current trend of lowering the threshold of so-called mental disorders will eventually turn us ALL into mentally ill.

      It feels as if physicians would conclude everyone is terminally ill, on account that everyone is going to die 😉

      I wonder what someone like John Lennon would have said of ODD. Oh wait, he actually did!

      1. I concur RPJ and POV. The
        I concur RPJ and POV. The current trend of labeling every personality trait a disorder originates with big pharma’s push to sell drugs. They pay and bonus doctors on number of prescriptions written. And it really began in earnest when legislation was passed allowing tv and magazine ads for their drugs. It is pure profit and greed at the expense of the naïve person and their unfortunate children.

        ADHD may be a genuine disorder in a small percentage of children, but a great majority of the skyrocketing diagnoses today stem from undesirable behavior normal to children – especially boys who are more aggressive due to their male hormones, and poor diet i.e. too much sugar and food additives due to our highly processed food diet, and lack of physical activity due to our technology craze that ties children to tvs and computers, when they used to be outside playing and running wild all day – which also is curtailed by changing times in which we don’t let our children out of our site outside unsupervised for fear of their safety… When I was a child at 6 or 7, 40 years ago, the only rule was, be home by dark, and that was rarely enforced. As a father today, that is unthinkable. Times change. And Big Pharma profits…

        1. It’s a complex problem for sure
          Take depression, for example. I know people who claim to have been diagnosed with clinical depression & were prescribed anti-depressants, and swear by the benefit they received from them.

          On the other hand, I also think there’s a worrying tendency to jump too quickly to a chemical solution, rather than look for a more nuanced environmental or behavioral cause for the problem.

          If you’re really stuck in a shitty job, is taking Prozac really going to be of much help? Likewise with kids who are being held in a completely un-stimulating classroom filled with too many children for the teacher to handle, & are ordered to sit down straight & pay attention?

          I wonder what would have happened to someone like Einstein, who was literally kicked out of school & told he was a hopeless case, if prescription drugs would have been available when he was a student.

          1. It’s the difference between
            It’s the difference between western approach to reductionist medicine – treating the symptom, versus eastern approach of holistically treating the cause – the organism as a whole in order to alleviate the symptoms.

            It boils down to a philosophical difference. And as with politics, religion, etc… the positions become more polarized, especially with today’s social media where pithy vitriol is the norm, while thoughtful debates are rare.

            Western medicine has its role, as does the eastern approach – one is shock and awe which is sometimes needed, while the other is more akin to negotiations, sanctions, and diplomacy. The problem lies with the zealous support of either approach and combative dialogue that follows…

  2. Hawaii GMO Ban
    Where to even begin… GMOs could have a place, so long as there were years long studies proving their efficacy and safety in humans and animals – honey bees included, PRIOR to their introduction into nature, since once introduced they will never be eradicated. Though the genie is out of the bottle, further damage can still be mitigated. As the article correctly points out – the scientist promoting the safety of GMO’s do have their credibility in question much of the time, due to their need to conform or face retribution in the forms of defunding and career suicide, and of course there is the greed problem where the heads of the FDA who favorably approve the GMO’s have high paying corporate positions awaiting them at Monsonato and elsewhere.

    Most of the studies purporting the safety of GMO’s are short term and sponsored or performed by Monsanto and the GMO maker themselves. There is no conflict of interest there… The alleged problems with GMO’s are usually not sudden and instant death (except for the 37 deaths from GMO tryptophan in the 80’s) as would be revealed in a short term study, but rather the long-term exposure and effect on bodies and on developing reproductive systems – such as lab rodents that are sterile by the 3rd generation after being fed a diet of GMOs.

    Something is causing the honey bees to die off, the skyrocketing occurrence of intestinal problems – Crohn’s, Irritable Bowell, Ulcerative Colitis, Leaky Gut – all explainable from exposure to BT Toxins found in GMO Corn and Soy that kill insects by destroying their intestines, and breast cancer rates are rising in younger women not normally at risk. There is further obfuscation by GMO proponents by equating hybridizing plants using natural means to the explosive, imprecise technique of shooting alien genes into a plant’s sequence with the effect of setting off small explosives that not only cause collateral damage to the sequence but have the domino effect of switching on and off gene expressions far down the line in a cascading domino effect, far from the region believed to offer the desired trait. This is anything but precision engineering, and the long term effects of exposure to these new and novel gene expressions in nature from insects, to animals to humans has NOT been studied, rather it is an uncontrolled experiment in progress and all of us are the guinea pigs.

    And lastly there is the benevolent motives of Monsanto and others, who sue into bankruptcy any farmer not willing to purchase their seeds, when their crops become cross contaminated thereby unwittingly growing their patented corn without permission. Monsanto’s expressed goal is the complete control of the world’s food supply. And greedy complicit policitians rather than stopping them in their tracks take their campaign contributions and pave the way in gold for them. IMHO.

    1. GMOs
      I found this video’s info reasonable enough:

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eFDyTz9K9i8#t=180

      My (current) personal opinion on GMOs is that they’re not malignant per se. We either come up with creative ways to increase our food supply, or we’ll have to accept some very nasty adjustments to our lifestyles*.

      There’s also the fact that NO technological innovation humanity has come up with can be 100% guaranteed to not having unexpected side effects –hence the term innovation. Anything that is new is by definition untested.

      But I do think we should try to approach the next Green Revolution with the spirit of the 1st back in the 60’s, when Norman Borlaug was sharing his knowledge & expertise with countries like Mexico & India.

      Borlaug is Linus Torvald. Monsanto is Microsoft. We would’ve never had a free internet if it ran on Windows.

      (*)We probably should consider making some adjustments to our lifestyles anyway. Like decreasing our weekly consumption of red meat, and try to consume vegetables that are grown locally & are seasonal. Thing is we’re all demanding to have burgers & orange juice all year long :-/

      1. I have to respectfully
        I have to respectfully disagree that I believe GMO’s are dangerous until proven otherwise. I believe they are partly responsible for the ills I described in my first post. I enjoyed the video. It is correct in that it indebts Farmers to Monsanto – that is why Monsanto targets and sues out of existence Farmers unwilling to purchase their seed. Previously Farmers were able to save seeds and replant them the next season. They were also able to purchase surplus seeds from their local granary, but Monsanto sued to stop that because their GMO was mixed with non-gmo and they claimed violated their patent. That is their goal, to have a monopoly on food with the Farmers permanently in debt to them buying their seed every season. That is not about feeding people, that is about greed and power.

        The video talks about Roundup – the residue now contaminating the corn and soy we eat, and that is in virtually every processed food consumed. And I already addressed the BT Toxin. What is Monsanto’s record on environmental pollutants? PCBS were 99% manufactured by Monsanto according to that infallible source Wikipedia 🙂 Point is, Monsanto cannot be trusted to police itself, and yet that is virtually what is happening.

        I’m not specifically against biotechnology aka GMO’s. I am against the lack of long term studies, throwing them into the enrvironment prior to proper due diligence, Monsanto’s motives and tactics that ultimately will affect us all, making us slaves to their whims for our food supply. Certain commodities should not be subject to patents, or at least with strict limits on them…in my opinion.

        1. Monsanto
          I share your sentiments toward Monsanto. I also think we need to add something I came across last year when making the Red Pills of the Week:

          The inconvenient truth about GM
          Genetic modification has so far mainly been confined to developing crops that tolerate herbicides and resist pests. It has done little to increase yields

          [Excerpt]“Genetic modification, by contrast, has so far mainly been confined to developing crops that tolerate herbicides (often manufactured by the same company, thus encouraging their use) and resist pests. They have done little to increase yields per se – though they have helped by controlling weeds and insects – while varieties designed to withstand drought and floods, and improve nutrition, are only now beginning to emerge.

          GM may be able to do jobs that more conventional techniques cannot manage: conferring heat resistance to cope with global warming is one candidate. But the impression often given by its proponents that it is the main source of new crops, and thus essential to feed the world, could hardly be further from the truth.

          Nor is biotechnology all GM. The Nerica rices, for example, owe their existence to cell tissue culture. Scuba rice was produced through the technique of marker-assisted selection, which identifies and enables the use of a whole sequence of genes.”

          Based on this, I feel I need to rephrase my previous post: I’m not against the use of Biotechnology in order to obtain more resistant crops & higher yields. Genetic modification could be part of our Biotechnological arsenal, but only as a last resort –the cruise missile metaphor used in the previous video– and ONLY if it’s copyright-free technology not intended to enslave the farmers of the world to a particular brand.

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