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NEW PILL 'TACKLES SMOKING AND OBESITY'
Scientists say they have come up with a single pill that tackles both obesity and smoking. They say it could become the next pharmaceutical industry blockbuster.
The drug, rimonabanthas, doubled the number of people stopping smoking while preventing subsequent weight gain in two separate US trials.
Made by the French company Sanofi-Synthelabo, it also speeded up weight loss in overweight patients. It was discovered after researchers decided to investigate why cannabis smokers developed the "munchies" - the fierce appetite that often accompanies smoking of the drug.
Rimonabant is now involved in seven trials in more than 13,000 patients around the world. It works by blocking cannabis receptors in the brain.
Professor Martin Jarvis, an expert on smoking at University College London, says, "These are encouraging results. I know people are excited about it. For years everyone has been searching for a drug that is effective in reducing weight and doesn't have nasty side-effects."
Drugs are everywhere. Our food is full of them. But that's another subject.
If we need a drug to tackle smoking and obesity then why can't we have a pill that simply sticks in your throat long enough, to make you gag and vomit? When we reach for our fags afterwards they will be too damp to light.
I used to think that Bulimia was a country near the Ukraine until my mother died of it. I saw her to her grave weighing 4 stone. So you cannot tell me much about the dangers of obesity and smoking. Some of the very heaviest smokers I ever knew, died, weighed less then my Mum. So, it's a bit like being a 'Light' entertainer when you weigh twenty three stone, isn't it?
Obese people should practice Christianity. Then they will be 'a fat lot of good'.
Smokers that want to stay thin just need to go on state benefit. Surely, food would be less of a priority and they could literally be 'eaten out of house and home'.
Yes, alcohol and cannabis make you hungry. It fires the digestion for God's sake. That's why kebab vans were invented. But alcoholism tunes the stomach to reject food after about twenty years of abuse, and the gut will then depend solely on Woodpecker cider. So, you have to be a complete piss-head for at least twenty years to appreciate a good figure.
Lets look at the facts. You are out to lunch and away with the fairies. If your are smoking say an ounce of Moroccan Black in one sitting, and you start eating everything in your friends pantry. Soon, even the pet food looks welcoming. (Never mind what the cat wants) The solution is easy. Smother all that is edible, with Coriander. It will, not only appear less appealing, but convince your hosts your are a vegetarian. What is the result? They will instantly throw you into the street. Any hunger you feel after that can be curtailed by eating your own words. If you don't believe me, then you can eat my hat, or my shorts. If nothing else succeeds, 'eat dried apples'. (A colloquialism: As when dried fruit 'swells'??) That means you are pregnant. If your boyfriend doesn't like it, you may have to 'eat lead'.(to be 'shot a lot', at picnic blanket range) In which case you may have to 'eat your heart out.'
A side show of side effects.
Doctors are so ready to prescribe a cocktail of drugs to all of us, just so they justify the seven minutes (with a metronome still clacking) that 'window' they allow you to have with them, in their warm and cosy surgery.
I work in the mental health arena. Most GP's prescribe for my 'users' over the phone. Juggling little 'dolly mixtures' of life-threatening pills as if they were making a recipe for a home-made broth. There are drugs to counteract other drugs. If you have epilepsy, then you have to take other tablets to offset the symptoms of, maybe, Parkinson's disease!(A symptom of being a tired, baggy-eyed, stuttering, talk-show host from Yorkshire). If you take Dothiepin (I just tried my Yankee spell-checker for this word, and the closest match was, "Dithering" came up. That's close enough!) as a sedative, well, forget about having a female orgasm. (Yes, you may need a pill to fake it!) Triflouroperazine, makes you sleep all day as a mid anti psychotic preparation, and then you may be later pumped full of 'uppers' to make sure you can still park the car.
We are bombarded by drugs, like an unwelcome hailstorm in an arctic waste of indifference.
The Pharmaceutical companies are having a right 'Jolly'. Knocking them out of their chunking machines like M&M's. Never-mind, the drug culture of street kids all wanting to dress like 'Snoop' dog doing a 'tab' or 'chasing the dragon'. We have an avalanche of drugs with giant chutes and flumes sliding right into our homes, without 'doves', ecstasy, 'snow', 'Charlie', 'Skunk' or crack cocaine anywhere near you fireplace..
One in five of the population take narcotics.
What do you give to the girl who has everything? Penicillin!
The truth about penicillin
Some 50 years ago, doctors demonstrated the remarkably beneficial effect of penicillin, saving a patient seriously ill with septicaemia. Unfortunately, the history of the development of this drug is being distorted by the animal rights groups. They have continually claimed not only that animal experiments played no part in the development of penicillin, but also that reliance on animal research could have led to penicillin being discarded.
As usual, they attempt to justify these claims using questionable statements (e.g. "penicillin is toxic to guinea pigs") and being highly selective in picking passages from scientific papers.
Animal rights advocates insist that penicillin would never have been used in patients if doctors had known that it kills guinea pigs and hamsters.
A review article published in 1966 is usually quoted as the source of this claim.
In fact, the alleged sensitivity of hamsters to penicillin is an illusion. In 1956, experiments were carried out in which hamsters were given extremely high doses of penicillin, which did indeed kill them. The doses were equivalent to giving 70 million units to an adult patient (70-100 times the normal dose) and this hardly merits the statement that penicillin is "fatal even in tiny amounts".
The reaction of the guinea-pig to penicillin was first described in a scientific paper in 1943.5 High daily doses of very impure penicillin killed 95% of guinea-pigs within 3-4 days. When the purity was increased tenfold, 60% died. We now know that even these preparations were only 60% pure. This it is quite likely, and is actually suggested in the 1943 paper, that the impurities in the early samples of penicillin were responsible for some of the toxicity. The paper also went to great pains to emphasise that the toxicity of penicillin for guinea-pigs did not mean that penicillin was toxic for people.
"When treated with the same dose of penicillin per kilogram as the given to man guinea pigs did not die and, in fact, failed to show nay signs of toxicity."
Later testing of pure penicillin provided more reliable estimates of its toxicity to the guinea-pig. Daily doses of about 6 times the amounts used in the 1943 tests killed about 70% of animals in 3 days. This dose is equivalent to very many times the normal human dose and the results mean that penicillin is considerably less toxic to guinea pigs than some other medicines in clinical use.
The reason that the toxicity of penicillin for guinea-pigs has been exaggerated must be its staggering lack of toxicity in other species. Its unique effect in the guinea-pig is due to an indirect effect. This is the conclusion of a study which showed that bacteria normally present in the guinea-pig intestine are sensitive to penicillin. Thus, after penicillin, all these bacteria disappear and are replaced by far greater numbers of other types of bacteria. Thus infection leads to absorption of toxins and death from blood poisoning. This it appears that the guinea pig, far from being strikingly different from humans, is in fact similar to the many patients who develop inflammation of the colon (colitis) when they take penicillin.
A story which is sometimes told by the animal rights sympathisers is that of the patient and the cat. One day in 1940, both were given penicillin by injection into the spine, and the following day the patient recovered and the cat had died. The patient, who was dying from meningitis, was extremely lucky. Penicillin is toxic to the brain and spinal cord and is never administered by this route today. Its toxicity was thus demonstrated by the unfortunate cat.
Authors note: Ok! enough said. Rodents will die of a penicillin overdoses. But does that mean they didn't already sleep with five women and have to piss gravel? Research continues.
Footnote: The author would like to make the point that all animal activists are tw*ts. A simple email, Cowardly letter-bomb, or answers on postcard please.
Drugs have side effects.
Most drugs have side effects.
For example Aspirin will cause intestinal irritation and bleeding in about 10% of the population. If Aspirin was "discovered" today, it most likely would not get approval because of this. However those who suffer intestinal bleeding from Aspirin learn not to take it and to use Paracetamol instead.
Some people can not have Penicillin because it brings about allergic reactions in them. On the other hand the majority do not show these side effects.
When drugs are given their clinical trials they are only tested on a few hundred people. Later when the drug is marketed it may be used by millions of people and some of these will show side effects of the drug. The manufacturer will then give a list of these side effects along with the drug. It can be confusing since some of these effects can be contradictory such as; can cause diarrhoea ; can cause constipation; this for the same drug !
The side effects can be interesting.
One drug's side effect was that it tended to lower blood sugar concentrations. Development of this side effect into drugs where it was the major effect, led to tablets which could be swallowed by Type II diabetics to lower their blood sugar. This was a great advance instead of them having to inject insulin to reduce blood sugar concentrations.
In searching for a drug that would lower blood pressure, Pfizer decided that a new drug was not giving satisfactory clinical results and asked for the trial to be stopped and the drugs returned. Most of the tablets were returned but one nurse noticed that although the women returned the drug, the men did not. Furthermore men on this drug tended to lay on their sides in bed instead of on their backs.
This was reported to Pfizer who decided to develop the side effect and reduce the blood pressure effect. They then marketed the new drug, Viagra.
A successful drug will be given to millions of people who will be genetically different and one or two of these people may be harmed by the side effects.
Should this drug be banned or should people be warned of the side effects ?
Some people say that there should be no side effects on any marketed drug or example Aspirin will cause intestinal irritation and bleeding in about 10% of the population. If Aspirin was "discovered" today, it most likely would not get approval because of this. However those who suffer intestinal bleeding from Aspirin learn not to take it and to use Paracetamol instead.
Some people can not take Penicillin as it brings about allergic reactions. On the other hand the majority do not show these side effects.
When drugs are given their clinical trials they are only tested on a few hundred people. Later when the drug is marketed it may be used by millions of people and some of these will show side effects of the drug. The manufacturer will then give a list of these side effects along with the drug. It can be confusing since some of these effects can be contradictory such as; can cause diarrhoea ; can cause constipation; this for the same drug !
Forget about drugs ..don't be dumb .. and don't stand around
with your finger up your bum.
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