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A Chinese Restaurant Operator is in big trouble after he laced his noodles with Opium drugs in an attempt to keep customers coming back. Chinese Guangxi Province-based restaurant intended to get patrons addicted and increase the chances of them coming back for more. The restaurateur’s dirty trick was uncovered by mistake, after someone who ate at his local in Sanjiang Dong Autonomous County tested positive for morphine, the active component in opium, during a police inspection. The shocked man insisted that he had not willingly taken drugs, and told investigators that the only thing he had ingested that he couldn’t...

Officials in San Diego County have issued an alert after three people have suffered documented fatal overdoses from a new form of the drug fentanyl know as carfentanil. It would only take 2 mg of the drug to cause a deadly overdose meanwhile it would only take .02 mg of carfentanil to have the same fatal results, CBS Sacramento reported. Langdon Fielding is an emergency veterinarian at Loomis Basin Equine. He said he uses fentanyl on horses for pain relief. "Basically it's super strong morphine-like a really strong drug to control pain," said Fielding. Carfentanil is similar to fentanyl but...

PYATIGORSK, November 17. /TASS/. Pharmacologists from southern Russia are launching clinical tests for a new painkiller that outperforms morphine in effectiveness but does not cause addiction. Department head of the Volgograd State Medical University, and RAS Member Alexander Spasov told TASS about this innovative medical breakthrough on Friday in Pyatigorsk. READ ALSO Russia may legalize cultivation of narcotic plants for medical purposes "Together with our colleagues from the South Federal University, we created a drug which still has no specific name but is only referred to as RU-1205. Based on its effect, it outperforms such well-known painkillers as morphine and...

Fans of homebrewed beer and backyard distilleries already know how to employ yeast to convert sugar into alcohol. But a research team led by bioengineers at the University of California, Berkeley, has gone much further by completing key steps needed to turn sugar-fed yeast into a microbial factory for producing morphine and potentially other drugs, including antibiotics and anti-cancer therapeutics. Over the past decade, a handful of synthetic-biology labs have been working on replicating in microbes a complex, 15-step chemical pathway in the poppy plant to enable production of therapeutic drugs. Research teams have independently recreated different sections of the...

Researchers have figured out how to get yeast to produce morphine, codeine and other similar drugs and have immediately urged regulators to control these drug-brewing yeasts before people start trying to make them at home. They genetically engineered simple brewer's yeast, Saccharomyces cerevisiae, and came up with a strain that can make very complicated plant compounds that include opioid drugs such as morphine, as well as some antibiotics and muscle relaxants. It's an important technical step, because now these drugs have to be synthesized directly from plants—an inefficient process. The yeast process isn't that efficient yet, either, but once it's...

Brasília (AFP) - Brazilian scientists have discovered a protein in coffee that has effects similar to pain reliever morphine, researchers at the state University of Brasilia (UnB) and state-owned Brazilian Agricultural Research Corporation Embrapa said Saturday. Embrapa said its genetics and biotech division, teaming up with UnB scientists, had discovered "previously unknown protein fragments" with morphine-like effects in that they possess "analgesic and mildly tranquilizing" qualities. The company added tests on laboratory mice showed that the opioid peptides, which are naturally occurring biological molecules, appeared to have a longer-lasting effect on the mice than morphine itself....

NATURE TO THE RESCUE - AGAINThe deadly sea snail venom that will take away your pain By Nigel Hawkes, Health Editor Times Online A NEW painkiller based on the venom of a sea snail will be available in Britain from today. Prialt, or ziconotide, is the result of more than 20 years’ research by a scientist born in the Philippines, Baldomera Olivera, who is a professor at the University of Utah. It is 1,000 times more potent than morphine but, unlike that drug, is not addictive. It is aimed at people suffering from severe, chronic pain who would normally...

Despite all the advances of modern medicine, the main drugs used to fight pain today are essentially the same as those used in ancient times. Hippocrates wrote about the pain-soothing effects of willow bark and leaves as early as 400 B.C. Opium was cultivated long before that. Aspirin and morphine, based on the active ingredients in these traditional remedies, were isolated in the 1800's and helped form the foundation of the modern pharmaceutical industry. But scientists are now trying to find new ways of fighting pain. The effort has been given new impetus by the recent withdrawal of Vioxx and...

One is not racing clean. A champion racehorse owned by Britain's Queen Elizabeth II has tested positive for morphine, a banned substance on race days in the United Kingdom. The British Horseracing Authority announced last week that tests on five horses under the care of various trainers showed the presence of morphine in their 'A' samples. Late Tuesday, Buckingham Palace said that one of the horses was the monarch's 5-year-old mare Estimate The Daily Telegraph reports that the horse will likely forfeit its second-place finish in the Gold Cup at Ascot this past June, as well as the prize money...

Scientists have created powerful painkillers from the venom of snails, it has been revealed. The substances, based on a tiny protein found in cone snails’ venom, could be more effective than morphine. They may one day lead to the development of a drug to treat severe and chronic nerve pain. …

Oh, oh, oreo. Ever feel like you could eat the whole bag yourself? According to a new study — you’re not a glutton, you’re addicted. A student at Connecticut College found lab rats that ate oreos were just as strongly associated to them as lab rats that were injected with cocaine or morphine. (Via WNCN) And, this sounds even more dangerous — eating Oreos activated even more neurons in the “pleasure centers” of rats’ brains than those addicted drugs did. (Via YouTube / Oreo)

A team of researchers led by Michel De Waard, Inserm Research Director at the Grenoble Institute of Neurosciences (Inserm, University Joseph Fourier, CNRS), has discovered that an African medicinal plant produces large quantities of molecules with analgesic properties. Even more surprising, analysis show that the molecule is identical to Tramadol, a wholly synthetic medication that is used world-wide as a painkiller. According to the research team, this is the first time ever that a synthetic medication produced by the pharmaceutical industry has been discovered in strong concentrations in a natural source. This unexpected discovery had just been published in the...

When opium was cheaper than whiskey – and Great Britain waged a "wicked" drug war When Opium Was Cheaper Than Whiskey - and Great Britain waged a "wicked" drug war The bottles have a beautiful aqua color to them. If you hold them up to the light, rainbows fire across the delicate patina. But their beauty belies the deadly reality behind the delicate hues. The bottles once held opium based "elixirs," such as Dr. McMunn's Elixir of Opium, most claiming to be a cure for a host of ailments, including the relief of "convulsions and spasmodic action," as well as...

Argentina's relations with the U.S. worsened sharply Monday as the South American country continued to hold military equipment it confiscated last week from a U.S. Air Force C-17 transport plane sent as part of a training course for local police. U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Arturo Valenzuela, called on Argentina to return the property without delay. "It's absolutely necessary that they immediately return that material. It makes no sense for it to have been confiscated this way. This material was intended for a joint exercise in training people to rescue hostages," Mr. Valenzuela Monday said on...

This comes from a Vegas paper, so I'll summarize: Day 1 of the inquest into the police shooting of Eric Scott at a Las Vegas Costco emphasized the large amount of prescription painkillers found in his body. The assistant DA suggested Scott was suicidal. Day 2 apparently spent a bunch of time explaining why there will be no video...basically, the machines weren't working, sorry. Then the cop who was closest to Scott testified. In his testimony, he says the gun found by investigators was in its holster, and that he didn't realize the gun was in its holster when he...

In some of the rooms in the hospice unit at Franklin Hospital, in Valley Stream on Long Island, the patients were sleeping because their organs were shutting down, the natural process of death by disease. But at least one patient had been rendered unconscious by strong drugs. The patient, Leo Oltzik, an 88-year-old man with dementia, congestive heart failure and kidney problems, was brought from home by his wife and son, who were distressed to see him agitated, jumping out of bed and ripping off his clothes. Now he was sleeping soundly with his mouth wide open. “Obviously, he’s much...

A toddler who authorities said was possibly given too much morphine during a dental procedure died Sunday night. According to the Bexar County medical examiner's office, Maddoux Cordova was pronounced dead at 7 p.m. at Wilford Hall Medical Center, where he had been treated for about two weeks after complications arose from the Dec. 11 dental procedure. Mark Stinnett, attorney for Maddoux's dentist, said the procedure took place at an outpatient surgical facility. An anesthesiologist administered his medication, Stinnett said. The 22-month-old was being treated for a decaying tooth, family members said. According to a spokeswoman for the San Antonio...

Excerpt: Ann Novotny studied the signaling used by the cancer in a portion of large intestinal and colon cancer. She found that there are receptors for opioids, such as morphone, on tumor cells. If morphine is supplied to these cells the protein urokinase is released, which the cancer cells can use to enhance their capacity to spread. Source: "Blocking Signal Molecule Can Prevent Growth of Large Intestine and Cancer," Link: http://www.physorg.com/news172915513.html

Enlarge ImageBrother morphine. Research with rats may explain why opioid painkillers work better for males.Credit: Scott Camazine/Photo Researchers Inc. Men get more relief than women do from painkillers like morphine, according to some studies. New research with rats hints at a possible explanation: Male rats have more receptors for the drug in a brain region involved in pain processing. Although it's not yet clear whether the same is true in humans, researchers say the study underscores the need for more research on the sex-specific effects of pain drugs. The new study used rats in part because they exhibit a...

"Paulo Melo, 29, has been in a coma at the Royal Darwin Hospital for two weeks, after severing his spinal cord in a car crash." - read more below: doctor requested, family objected, court granted