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West Nile virus may have met its match: tobacco
The Verge ^ | March 27, 2014 | Arielle Duhaime-Ross

Posted on 03/28/2014 4:57:00 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry

Some people think of tobacco as a drug, whereas others think of it as a therapy — or both. But for the most part, it's hard to find people who think of the tobacco plant in terms of its medical applications. Qiang Chen, an infectious disease researcher at Arizona State University, is one such person. His team of scientists conducted an experiment, published today in PLOS ONE, that demonstrates how a drug produced in tobacco plants can be used to prevent death in mice infected with a lethal dose of West Nile virus. The study represents an important first step in the development of a treatment for the mosquito-borne disease that has killed 400 people in the US within the last two years.

(Excerpt) Read more at theverge.com ...


TOPICS: Agriculture; Health/Medicine; Science
KEYWORDS: smokingiscool
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To: RegulatorCountry

I believe it has nothing to do with health, public safety, or any of the other reasons stated.

It has to do with power, control, and money.


41 posted on 03/28/2014 6:20:47 PM PDT by RandallFlagg ("I said I never had much use for one. Never said I didn't know how to use it." --Quigley)
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To: JoeProBono; RegulatorCountry
All For Me Grog ...all gone for beer and tobacco
42 posted on 03/28/2014 6:32:05 PM PDT by BlueDragon (You can observe a lot just by watching. Yogi Berra)
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To: RegulatorCountry

I got west nile a couple of years ago. Now I know why I survived.


43 posted on 03/28/2014 7:00:04 PM PDT by Rusty0604
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To: dagogo redux

“For those who might someday need to know . . . if you’re ever really dangerously whacked out on psychedelics, tobacco will bring you back. Just saying.”

Three hog callings and a county fair and I aint never heard that one. Heck I was of a certain age for the 60s. Are you talking about the newer spice, bath salt, generation of synthetics?

Ear smoking, yeah my bride of thirty plus years requested that from me before we ever married.Hot smoke is efficatious for ear aches.

I keep an empty tallboy half full of water for an ashtray. Pour contents on fireant mounds. Repeat as needed.

Running out of ammo for the ants and using a vaporizer for my nicotine fix lately. I’m going to have to start buying commercial fire ant products. I use DE powder in the pastures, doesn’t do much more than annoy a horse, kills ants. Slow kill on a big mound or super colony. Diatomaceous Earth. I havn’t any idea if I have the correct spelling on that mouthful. Pool filter powder.

I vaguely remember seeing something relating the use of nicotinic pesticides to the diminishing population of honeybees.

\hijack


44 posted on 03/28/2014 7:02:12 PM PDT by theneanderthal
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To: Rusty0604

Did you have any of the lingering neurological effects that people talk about, numbness, temporary partial paralysis, mental fog or confusion? It sounds like a real trial, even after the initial infection passes.


45 posted on 03/28/2014 7:05:18 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: theneanderthal

No experience with some of the weirder new stuff, but all the native folks in the New World knew the role of tobacco in modulating peyote (mescaline), psilocybin mushrooms, and ayahuasca (harmaline + DMT).

Some of the really strong native tobaccos by themselves contain at least a useful amount of DMT, BTW - but even without that, tobacco alone was/is often used ritualistically as the truly great medicine for the direct link to the Great Spirit in prayer.


46 posted on 03/28/2014 7:13:08 PM PDT by dagogo redux
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To: RegulatorCountry

I have numbness anyway because of neck problems, but I haven’t noticed it to be any worse. It certainly was painful for 3-4 days.


47 posted on 03/28/2014 7:17:03 PM PDT by Rusty0604
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To: Rusty0604

So yours was relatively asymptomatic other than achy, flu-like symptoms? It can be a lot worse with some apparently having permanent neurological damage.


48 posted on 03/28/2014 7:18:23 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: dagogo redux

That dovetails with widespread anecdotal tales of mood modulation, if you’re tired it helps keep you alert, upset it helps calm you down, etc.


49 posted on 03/28/2014 7:23:28 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: RushIsMyTeddyBear

My quarter-Cherokee grandmother used fatback for drawing out infection, raw potato for drawing out foreign objects. She was a heck of a fisherman too, she’d spit snuff into the water, reach her big toe down off the dock and swirl it around, then the fish practically jumped on the line. She claimed it hypnotized them, lol. She made medicines from old-fashioned candy and corn liquor too. Horehound, lemon drops. Pretty strong stuff, hard to tell if you felt better from anything medicinal or because you were mildly drunk. Of course, many of the modern over the counter cough medicines are pretty much the same.


50 posted on 03/28/2014 7:39:47 PM PDT by RegulatorCountry
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To: RegulatorCountry

Exactly. A nicotine patch, BTW, is a great, but controversial, treatment for ADD. Certainly tweaks the dopamine system.

Also, recall the “kindness” of giving the condemned man a last cigarette before the firing squad, and such.

As with many substances - and many other things that can affect us as well - tobacco can be medicine or poison, depending on dose and such.


51 posted on 03/28/2014 7:42:32 PM PDT by dagogo redux
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To: doc1019

Me neither! Maybe it’s in our genes.


52 posted on 03/28/2014 7:42:52 PM PDT by JouleZ (You are the company you keep.)
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To: dagogo redux

“No experience with some of the weirder new stuff,”

Don’t go there. My recolection is the first products to appear were from Pakistan, later from India.

Had a bud take a shotgun to his wife and best friend, in bed together. He was not a violent guy.

Maybe that was rational.

Had a relative relate his encounter with a demonic entity

I read of a couple of instances of, uh, assailants eating the face off of victims.


53 posted on 03/28/2014 8:50:44 PM PDT by theneanderthal
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To: RegulatorCountry

I got hit with this last year. Fortunately for me I have an industrial strength immune system, so it only knocked me down solid for 2 days. It came on me over about a 2 hour period. I went from being perfectly fine to being completely immobile in bed. Woulda killed my wife. Chemo just about killed her immunity to anything. gGod thing is, I’m safe from it now. Can’t get it again once you’ve had it from what I understand.


54 posted on 03/28/2014 11:27:51 PM PDT by zeugma (Is it evil of me to teach my bird to say "here kitty, kitty"?)
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To: US_MilitaryRules

I would hope so, the other type would be kind of hard to get into a pot to boil down. Plus the folks you got them from would probably scream bloody murder and call the sheriff.


55 posted on 03/29/2014 12:38:07 AM PDT by 5th MEB (Progressives in the open; --- FIRE FOR EFFECT!!)
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To: RegulatorCountry

These days, everything known by human beings for centuries is considered bad; everything new is ipso facto excellent.

A society built along such lines cannot last long. Either the old beliefs and undertandings will return, or the society will fall.

Personally, I wouldn’t lay any odds either way.


56 posted on 03/29/2014 12:28:15 PM PDT by Jack Hammer
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