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Zeitgeist

It is especially important to the neutral point of view and no original research that criticism only be mentioned that can be referenced to reliable sources. And even if no specific criticisms are mentioned, the ability to link to an external website should not be used to sidestep these policies. Also, a self-published source, especially one published on google, is an obvious unreliable source, much like Zeitgeist itself. Someguy1221 (talk) 16:45, 22 September 2008 (UTC)

The article itself is on a video which someone has created using original research so your argument could easily be used to delete the page.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 14:58, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

Temazepam

Please take a look at temazepam, US poison control centers. 67000 cases, of which 3000 (0.04%) were serious and 243 fatal... The math is wrong, I don't have the source, pls fix it. Also it is flipping forth and back between Aussie S4 and S8. I gave up on these articles, but temazepam is probably one of the more reliable ones for the moment, if we only could prevent illiterates from editing I had more hope for the wiki project, in particular on the psychoactive substances. 70.137.143.23 (talk) 11:37, 24 September 2008 (UTC)

I am not very good at percentages. I have forgotten my maths I learnt at school. What do you think the correct percentages should be?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 14:58, 25 September 2008 (UTC)

b is x% of a. Namely x is b/a * 100. Shame on you! You need absolutely to relearn math, algebra, trig, calculus, statistics, otherwise anybody can fool you with statistics and numbers. Please, how will you make it into any science, if you don't answer quantitative questions correctly and are unable to assess the truth of quantitative claims? Same for chemistry and physics. The pharmacokinetics of substances are described by differential equations. You need to be absolutely firm with that, otherwise you don't understand the systems aspect of that. An understanding on a qualitative level is a good start, but has its limitations, making it no more than a good start. Take evening classes, community college, distance learning classes, self paced courses to beef that up. Of course only my lay opinion. (But every electrician knows basic math, otherwise your appliances would electrocute you like nothing, buzzz, hummm, spark, frizzle, fry, sizzle) 70.137.148.124 (talk) 02:07, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Yes shame on me. I have relearnt how to do percentage. I need to go back to school Haa. I fixed the percentages on the temazepam article. I did pass my maths exam, just a bit rusty in my old age. :=)--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 15:43, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

School math will not be enough... 70.137.135.70 (talk) 11:02, 27 September 2008 (UTC)

Benzo withdrawal

I edited a little in your favorite benzo withdrawal. Good article, thumbs up. I had to remove Kitabayashi et al as anecdotal, extreme case of "biased collective". I also rephrased very slightly, caveat "biased collective". I know that you are a little weak in math, no proble. Work on it, I may give you some leads if you ask. You urgently have to do some statistics, to fully understand the concept and pitfalls of "biased collectives" studies. They can prove almost everything. Without a "reductio ad nazium", I give you an example.

You find 50 feeble minded jews. You measure their brains, they are smaller than normal, and frequently disformed. You measure their intelligence, it is lower than normal. You write an article: "Jews have a low intelligence and disformed brains" by Dr. Mengele et al. Abstract:

In a study of 50 jews it was determined that they had a subnormal intelligence quotient, compared to healthy aryan controls. Morphological deviations in their brains were seen with an alarming incidence. We conclude that jewish blood carries genetic predisposition to brain degeneration and feeble mindedness, and propose a racial protection policy and castration to protect infestation of aryan blood with inferior and debilitating genetic traits.

I propose that you deeply think about this, get a statistics course, and don't wipe this off the table as racial slanders. This is how pseudoscience worked. (Besides I am a German immigrant to the US) Understand the caveats of biased collective studies, they can be used to prove almost everything. 70.137.159.126 (talk) 06:00, 21 October 2008 (UTC)

Look up Ascertainment bias 70.137.159.126 (talk) 08:34, 22 October 2008 (UTC)

Oh you must be a mind reader! How do you know the benzo withdrawal article is my favourite? I removed your statement about it being a biased collective. We need to see full text before concluding that it is biased and I think that there isn't a whole lot of debate about high dose abuse of sedative hypnotics causing brain shrinkage. The debate and controversy is more whether brain shrinkage or damage occurs from chronic prescribed dose use. I thought that you were from Germany because you knew German and said that you were not native to the US. Why did you leave, were you trying to escape the EU?--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 23:35, 31 October 2008 (UTC)

It is a biased collective because it is N=1, a patient who came ill. That means there is no random selection of test group and control group. really read up about it, and read WP:MEDMOS Yes, escaping from the EU. 70.137.175.130 (talk) 04:06, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

ok, the above was for Kitabayashi et al. The Karolinska study is a follow up on patients. By this it is a biased collective study. Read up ascertainment bias and clinical bias. I explain that to you. Such studies cannot prove causality. They prove that a condition has been observed, together (in a group having another condition) with another condition. This could be caused by e.g.

1. The chronic drug use causing brain abnormality.

2. Preexisting higher incidence of brain abnormality in people who become drug abusers.

3. A common reason causing both drug abuse and brain abnormality. (Preexisting comorbidity) e.g. environmental toxicity exposure causing brain changes and nervousness which leads to benzodiazepine abuse.

4. A simple correlation between brain abnormality and being in treatment for behavioral problems. You will find that people being treated (the biased collective) for impulsive behavior, gambling, criminal behavior etc. or even people belonging to some social dropout group (sect, militia, flat-earthers, creationists, libertarians etc.) have a higher incidence of brain abnormality than random control. But there is no causality, that gambling or being in a sect causes brain damage. I hope this illustrates the case. This connects the whole reasoning to our previous discussion about social deviancy as a treatable disease in fascist pseudoscience. (Which you obviously mistook as Nazi-slanders, a little bit too quickly. You are generally jumping to conclusions all too early, if they seem plausible.)

A healthy control group doesn't help against clinical bias. After all these people (patients) came to a mental institution because they had something wrong with their head. This is the general mechanism of clinical bias. Also the assessing doctors know that these are tests of drug abusers. So for removing the bias the doctors would also have to be blind, not knowing what results they are seeing. There are a few studies which are in this sense double blind, and they don't duplicate the karolina results.

Insofar, the fact that biased collective studies generally cannot prove causality is known. It is a biased collective because they are follow up patients. We had this discussion on the temazepam article already, did you forget?

Europe: to be precise, to escape from Germany. Not from fake-Hollywood-Germany, like Goodson. Not from fake-Hollywood minority UK either. And I didn't try to escape, but did it. The US was worth it until they became hysterical idiotic and ruled by christian taliban 8 years ago) 70.137.175.130 (talk) 04:24, 1 November 2008 (UTC) 70.137.175.130 (talk) 07:05, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

I don't think a pre-existing brain disorder is likely to explain the brain damage seen in chronic high dose abusers of benzodiazepines. For example if drug abusers have pre-existing brain damage why for example is brain damage not seen in chronic opiate abusers or canabis abusers? Is it a coincidence that a drug with a similar pharmacolgical profile to alcohol in mechanism of action causes similar but not identical brain damage to alcohol? You don't like libertarians and you are from germany? Don't you forget the dangers of socialism eg Hitler's National Socialism. ;=) You should be careful denoucing those who know the dangers of giving too much power to the government. ;=) The double blinded studies were not on high dose abusers but on ttherapeutic dose users. I do admit that the data on chronic therapeutic dose use and structural brain damage is conflicting and difficult to ascertain a definite answer on whether benzodiazepines cause structural brain damage eg brain shrinkage at chronic prescribed dose levels.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 22:04, 14 November 2008 (UTC)

Answer in the detail:

1. The brain damage has been seen in chronic high dose abusers, but only in biased collective studies. (namely on patients of the looney mill) These cannot prove or disprove the causality, for the above mentioned reasons.

2. Cannabis, opioids: Good question and plausibility check. You have to go way back to the 60's and 70's before the discovery of the cannbinoid receptor. Then you will find a whole lot of studies on chronic users (namely patients of some looney mill), which find exactly that, namely brain shrinkage and brain damage to the point of "swiss cheese" brains with holes, caused by cannabis. For some time it was hypothesized, that the effect of cannabis is indeed just caused by brain damage (the popcorn effect on your brain cells), based on these studies. However, this were "biased collective studies" with exactly the same methodical flaws as now the benzo studies. As the whole thing has been well researched and has been controversial, it turned out that such effect could not be confirmed in animal experiments, that the underlying mechanism was not brain damage but action on the previously unknown cannabinoid receptor. So the theory disappeared. Opioids: Swiss cheese brains have also been observed in chronic opioid abusers, probably by shooting up dirt and adulterants, again in "biased collective studies" Again, this could not be confirmed on closer inspection. Same for smoking opioids, in anecdotal reports. (probably some adulterant)

3. Alcohol: Alcohol is not an exact analog of benzos, among other reasons mainly because it causes an enormous body load due to the relatively enormous amount of substance (namely hundreds of grams in real heavy drunkards). You will find that these drunkards also have heavy metabolic distortions, enzyme induction (dehydrogenase and others), cirrhotic livers, polyneuropathy, depletion of vitamins (B1) and god knows what else. They have ammonia in the blood etc etc. They also have brains, which are tanned with acetaldehyde. It is not the Gaba site which is killing them or makes the brains shrink. It are the reasons I mentioned.

Sidenote: I would call myself a european liberal, but this has a somewhat different taste and history than American libertarianism, and also American liberalism. I have not yet discovered the full extent of the differences between these three. Less governmental control and intervention is certainly a good goal, but beware of the pitfalls. We have just seen the example of an economy turned into a casino, so I have to ask myself if it is wise to allow unlimited speculations on virtual and borrowed money and unlimited leverage for speculators. I don't want to end up living in a cardboard box under a bridge in a future gold rush city of unchecked capitalism, which relies on mass hysteria and "tulip mania" (read that term up, it is interesting).

For more read this : http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/24518

download: http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24518/24518-h/24518-h.htm

(as you are interested in pharmacology and psychology, don't miss the chapter "The slow poisoners" ;=)

Such environment could force me to speculate and gamble with the speculators and gamblers, or to lose and then starve. This is no good for people who just want to earn the money by honest work, then save it and retire on it one day. And I don't want national socialists or socialists. But I also don't want to be unlimited fair game for the big money people. 70.137.153.142 (talk) 14:28, 15 November 2008 (UTC)

Besides: for my taste American libertarianism seems to be a little too close to the ideas of free citizen militias etc., in my opinion these guys show the traits of historical lynch mobs and want to know everything better than the government. I damned don't want practical lessons in the legal traditions of the old west by such "citizen watch" organizations, particularly not as an immigrant. This is all too close to memories of the "SA" storm troopers in German history, who brought Hitler to power and wrecked the Republic. (You remember, "Germans don't buy from jews!" The demolition of jewish businesses, etc. All by "concerned citizens", namely the storm troopers.) These guys already go for immigrants (presumed "illegal aliens") on their own device in the US. You can't imagine, it is the pure fascism. So this is one of the marked differences to European liberalism. I will be glad to be protected by the government from such kind of "political activism". I also believe these guys are illiterates and don't know what they are doing. Sorry for the political rant, I just want to explain to you that Germans of my generation don't condone that fascism. I hope the young generation in the UK will one day honor our honest work towards a democratic German society in freedom and equality, which will never be run by dictators again. 70.137.153.142 (talk) 09:05, 16 November 2008 (UTC)

Hi, I may have another look at that section sometime in the next few days and maybe see if I can include the fact that it is not conclusive. Will need to read through the different papers. 90% of opioid misusers use benzos and 30% use them regularly and chronically and also there is a high degree of alcohol misuse. I would like to see if they controlled for excessive alcohol misuse, benzo misuse in the opioid and cannabis studies. If you have the link to these studies I would be interested. The borg et al study on benzo users did control for alcohol misuse so don't think that it is a biased collective certainly not as biased as you are making out. I partly agree with you on the alcohol, all the points that you state are true and I was not implying that benzos do the same degree of structural damage to the brain as alcohol. I do agree that alcohol is more toxic to the brain structures than benzos or just about any other drug out there. However, all solvent based drugs (including benzos) or inhaled solvents do brain damage or shrinkage perhaps not to the same degree as alcohol abuse. Solvents don't have the same properties as alcohol. There is something about solvent based substances which damages brain structures, they are well known as neurotoxins if taken for chronic periods of time. Well libertarianism is the total opposite of liberalism and facism. Actually the US economy is crashing to do with too much interventionism. There was an economic bubble which was going to burst in the 1980's but bailouts were passed which stopped and delayed it causing an even bigger bubble, which is being experienced now. If the bubble in the 80's had been allowed to burst when it was smaller and the wrong doers in the economy paid their price for their mistakes or corruptions without bailouts then we wouldn't be where we are now. Now with these bailouts it is more of the same which will lead to an even bigger economic problem, months or years down the line. Bailouts (interventions) only reward the people/corporations and financial institutions who make mistakes or who are corrupt therefore encouraging more corruption as the big financial institutions and corporations will know that if they begin to crash the gov will hand them money and bail them out. This is the opposite of free market capitalism. The is corporate capitalism where the good guys (the tax payers) reward the bad guys (the corporations and instititions. In free market capitalism if anyone makes a bad move they suffer the consequences, in an interventionist type economy you bail out and eventually this destroys or harms the economy. Also for facism to exist you need to centralise power over the economy and political system, which is what liberalism and fabian socialism advocates. Lets hope that there is never a holocaust again. Unfortunately I think that there will be another one the way things are looking in the geopolitical sphere, the way things are lining up. I wouldn't want to be a Jew today especially living in Israel. Once the US economy tanks, Israel will not have any strong allies.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 13:16, 27 November 2008 (UTC)

May I correct you in a few points: 1. The studies are biased alone by being on ex-patients. 2. benzos are not belonging with solvent type mechanism, how do you think they belong there? 3. German liberalism is not social democracy (labor party), but look up FDP (Deutschland). They are closer to libertarians. 4. Israel will still have strong support, e.g. my generation of Germans is strongly pro-Israel. Unfortunately the young generation fell victim to anti-Israel leftist propaganda. 70.137.131.1 (talk) 20:32, 1 December 2008 (UTC)

I will need to check the studies out and will do so in the next week or so. I have a killer headache from some virus. Benzodiazepines were made from a solvent based chemical dye called quinazolone-3-oxide. Leo sternbach was working with and modulating the structure of a solvent based dye. See this link.. Whether the actual benzodiazepine molecule retains some of the properties to be classed as a solvent I am not completely sure. Solvent based dyes are well known for being neurotoxin in high enough doses over a long enough period. I still do think that it is likely that high dose benzodiazepine usage causes brain shrinkage. Read Barry Haslam's story on benzo.org.uk he was prescribed 30 mg of lorazepam (300 mg of diazepam equivalent) for 10 years and has brain damage/brain shrinkage. I checked out FDP (Deutschland), they look pretty good, their platform at least, dunno what they are like in practise as I don't live in Germany nor speak the language.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 21:32, 3 December 2008 (UTC)

The solvent dye class is not solvent based, but called so, because they are suitable for coloring oils, solvents, fats etc. and are usually oil soluble, petrol soluble etc but not water soluble. Nothing carries over from there, any such conclusions are based on a false analogy.

The FDP (Deutschland)party in Germany has been instrumental in the preservation of individual rights against unconstitutional police state tendencies.(warrantless searches, wiretaps, secret police actions w.o. judicial control) Unfortunately the influence has been limited, as the party was always a minority partner in coalitions (with the big socialist/labor block or the conservative block), with below 10% of the votes. 70.137.176.2 (talk) 19:39, 7 December 2008 (UTC)

You are right actually that the solvent dyes class is not a solvent. However, solvent dyes are still widely known and accepted to be neurotoxic. The fact still remains that Leo Sternbach tweaked the molecular structure of a widely known and accepted neurotoxin (a solvent dye) and created benzodiazepines. However, like Prof Ashton has stated, that does not mean that benzodiazepines share the same toxicities as it's original parent compound but that it raises suspicions which should be further investigated, eg with MRI scans and PET scans on chronic benzodiazepine users which have never been done, only CT scans. I accept that you are correct though that I cannot carry across the toxicities of solvents to solvent dyes. Thank you for clarifying, however, like I say solvent dyes are well known neurotoxins. That is still a fact.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 20:48, 10 December 2008 (UTC)

Actually, I think that I need to do a bit more research before making up my mind on the dye/neurotoxic theory. Probably won't be for a while. I am too busy these days. I am realising that a lot of sources who hypothesise that the long term effects of benzos may be related to it's original parent compound may be making the same mistake as I am by treating a solvent dye as a solvent when as you pointed out that this is not or not necessarily the case. Shame the FDP party aren't the mainstream party. Oh well. At least they still have some influence.--Literaturegeek | T@1k? 03:52, 11 December 2008 (UTC)

Parafon Forte

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--Cssiitcic (talk) 22:28, 18 November 2008 (UTC)

Benzodiazepine

I noticed your revision on benzodiazepine. Could you clarify why you used boldface so extensively (and against the MOS)? Would you consider removing it? JFW | T@lk 17:57, 11 December 2008 (UTC)