Posted on 08/21/2005 4:23:52 PM PDT by satchmodog9
Americans can thank the legacy of Leon Trotsky for some of the most influential research on the addictive qualities of food.
It was Trotsky's great-granddaughter who helped make obesity a top priority of the federal government's National Institute on Drug Abuse. When Nora Volkow became director of the institute in 2003, it was far better known as the home of research on drug addicts, not junk food.
But Volkow's restless interests expanded in recent years from cocaine abuse to include the puzzle of why people overeat.
Intellectual upheaval is the birthright of Volkow, an intense, fast-talking scholar with weaknesses for decaffeinated Frappuccinos and long-distance running.
She was born and grew up in the house in Mexico City where her great-grandfather, the exiled Russian revolutionary, had been assassinated in 1940 with an ice pick. Volkow, 48, said her family's history helped shape her ambitions.
"It's a sense of doing something that can improve the quality of life for people," Volkow said. "Of course I admire [Trotsky], I think he was an incredibly visionary individual."
Volkow built her career using brain-imaging technology to study schizophrenics and later drug addicts at Brookhaven National Laboratory in New York.
She helped cement the idea that drug addiction is a brain disease, and some people become addicts because their brains are vulnerable to the effects of drugs.
(Excerpt) Read more at chicagotribune.com ...
Pass me another beer.
Translation:An hysteric with histrionic overlay.
I read her study and it told me what I already knew. I abuse pizza as a way to raise my Dopamine levels.
She sounds weight-obsessed and food-phobic. She probably thinks anyone who eats food, period, is obese...
Actually, Trotsky was further to the right than people like Hillary Clinton, Harry Reid, Ted Kennedy and Mother Teresa.
I'm sick of these people who think everyone has a problem but themselves.
He was still a communist and a revolutionary one at that.
Trotsky simply wasn't a risk to the US, and his great granddaughter is not much of a risk either.
Sometimes I wonder if the conspiracy kooks are right and everything is connected.
Well here's what the fast-talking intense hystrionic hysteric looks like.
Interesting sidenote: This photo was taken from a website called Girls Can!.org, which proudly trumpets that it is funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation (i.e., your taxpayer dollars).
Her picture makes me want to devote my life to the study of physiognomy. There is a whiff of degeneracy there!
"assassinated in 1940 with an ice pick"
Ice AX not ice pick.
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