What?
Are you saying that humans evolved because they smoked weed?
I’m gonna need some evidence to back up a claim like that. It’s amazing if true.
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I am not sure what kind of uproar that would create. The proof (any proof) that Homo Sapiens is actually Homo Stoner and has been until greed, religion and power politics created the prohibition in the 20th century. Maybe we could ask Prof. Bruce Lipton, the ‘Epi-Geneticist’ about that? He seems to be down to Earth enough to give it some serious contemplation.
I mean, lots of animals besides humans use intoxicating drugs by choice. I don’t see what makes that special?
Birds will choose fermented elderberries over seeds every time. Reindeer eat amanita Muscaria mushrooms intentionally, and I’ve seen squirrels and raccoons go after fermented windfalls.
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Yes, the idea is never far off. Terence McKenna would say it was the shrooms that did us in. However, there has never a study been done as to why Homo Stoner has docking spots for THC. You don’t need those special synapses to get wasted on fermented fruits and such. Like the monkeys in the Okavango Delta that devour berries turned booze. But that would make alcohol the gateway drug number one. Also interesting are the stereotypes about Cannabis consumers and their booze guzzling
peers.
We have an endogenous cannabanoid system. As I understand it, it helps with the regulation of pain responses.
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Well hell I didn’t even need weed for that, and if it does I am all for more people toking up!
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Does the writer of this article have any science background at all? The results are certainly not anything anyone should worry about at this point, since the study was so small and poorly run. It would be surprising if a large and well run study found the same results. And as ArcLighter pointed out, the changes in gene expression that were found could be good changes, if they are real. There’s no basis for assuming they are bad changes.
Also, the headline claims the study found mutations - the researchers saw no mutations.
This, even with it’s half-hearted qualifications at the end of the article, is just bad journalism.
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do weed stuff now
Like make a sculpture out of one popsicle stick or build the x dimension of a new building, instead of a series of paintings?
Can I have a Dalek animgif that screams RE-NUCLEIDOMETHYLATE! and throws THC stuff?
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Because the entire biochemistry wing of biomedical science is set up to work with rats (and mice, mostly mice but also rats). Rodents are the default, go-to, nobody ever got fired for suggesting we try this on them, lab, er, animal. A whole industry exists to provide genetically pure strains with minimal variation between individual specimens and with whatever mutations with known and predictable effects inserted that you want to have. Likewise an entire industry devoted to providing standardized cages and standard food and standard care regimens and so on - everything from the animals themselves to the environment you will keep them in established to be as uniform and unvarying as possible, so that so that you can treat a bunch of living things as extensions of your inanimate lab equipment.
The fact that rat/mouse physiology is extremely unlike human physiology, such that most of your research results are not going to actually be applicable in any significant way to people, is the elephant skeleton in the lounge of the bio medical research field as a whole.
ETA: mice are used more often than rats, but just about everything I said can be applied to both.
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The pharmaceutical company I last worked for used mice.
Granted they were chimeric and producing antibodies that were later linked to a cage thingie that held a traditional cancer drug inside. But yeah, mice.
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You’re new here, aren’t you? On the Venn diagram of nerd enthusiasms and the most irresponsible kind of clickbait journalism, the intersection of the two is labelled “Boing Boing.”
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Isn’t there a Shakespeare line about “it gives the desire, but takes away the ability”? He was talking about alcohol IIRC, but that works here too.
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All of this sounds agreeable to me.
But it was definitely just video game. Time quantity unknown.
right. so is tobacco, booze, medication, “natural” drugs in general, ectera ectera…
tell me about it.
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another thesis states it was actually magic shrooms.
https://www.google.com/search?q=sapiens+evolved+because+of+magic+mushrooms
As I understand it, the argument isn’t all that absolute, more like if you do smoke weed, you’ll only drink one beer instead of two, or five a week instead of six, that sort of reduction. Which is still enough to scare brewery conglomerates who were hoping to increase consumption.
It’s a trap I myself keep falling into, thinking in black and white. Even the article and the title tend to reinforce it, with the claim of sperm changes: it makes even minor changes seem world-shattering. My brain’s bias, I mean. Though now it is swinging the other way, to treat headlines like this as to mean that a chance of something happening is moved just barely more than statistical error.
I think that’s the thing, it’s the conglomerates playing a two-pronged attack: trying to get their own investments in place, while harassing the existing production and supply networks. Treating the entire market like a game of Monopoly where the biggest heavy hitters are already hoping to quash and assimilate the little guys already on the board. Or if you want a really, really bad analogy, it’s like two dictators secretly planning to invade a small nation between them before attacking each other.
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Did I say or suggest that those other things didn’t have studies done?
DO NOT insert arguments I did not make.
I’ve no doubt your personal anecdotes with regards to cannabis are honest and true. I simply have a problem with calling these kinds of studies “actual science”. But perhaps I’m too harsh. If the poster board presentations children give in grade school are considered science, then I suppose this can be too.
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Well. They are scientists at a university. So comparing children’s poster boards to them is a bit insulting to them is it not?
If you were an artist and I told you the painting you did was no better than the finger painting a toddler did you be a bit bullshit no?
It’s a study. It’s small and perhaps has its flaws. But it is more scientific than say my stoner pal who claims MJ is not additive and has no negative side effects. But he can’t stop himself from getting high every day and is using his anecdotal evidence to make swathing claims as to the efficacy of MJ.
Whereas I am simply saying that I DO NOT want to go near it as it DOES have severe negative impacts on ME.
You can use it. He can use it. I really do not care what it does or doesn’t do for you. I only stated what it does to me and why I will not partake. As well as my total shock that something that is inhaled or ingested can have potential negative side effects…as far as I can tell pretty much all things can be bad for you in varying quantities and levels of consumption. So I don’t think I’m wrong in my slight snark about that one.
Lots of comments and no one pointing out that these expressions may be beneficial to fighting cancer and/or healthy organ growth? The study itself only identifies changes to gene expressions, not what the actual effects might me.
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