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Student discovers fungus predicted by Albert Hoffman
- zer00eyz 1y ago> drug LSD, which is used to treat conditions like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction. Umm, ok, sure thats what it's used for. That one sentence just points to a large issue with the whole tone of this article. Clearly LSD is still a problem child.
- AngryData 1y agoHow is it a problem child? The only problem is the fed's blanket ban of it like many other drugs that do have known medical uses. Feds still classify marijuana as schedule 1 with no medical uses, and yet multiple states allow you to buy it freely. Just don't invite the feds to your house.
- SequoiaHope 1y ago“LSD: My Problem Child” is the name of Hofmann’s book. https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lsd-9780198840206?lang=en&cc=gb https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lsd-9780198840206?la...
- garciasn 1y agoPlease be serious: alcohol is a real problem child but it’s widely used and legal. Cannabis and LSD have their issues, sure; but, so do so many other drugs that aren’t schedule I. Scheduled drugs are simply politicized to separate the ‘desirables’ from the ‘un-‘.
- knowitnone 1y agoare you saying alcoholics are desirables because I have a different view on them
- fuzzer371 1y agoNo, it's because the "Undesirables" simply have a skin tone that isn't white.
- fsckboy 1y agopretty sure LSD is readily found amongst white people at predominantly white universities.
- hobs 1y agoYes, but it was the dirty hippies taking it, not the god fearing white male conservatives. They just smoked cigarettes and drank until they died.
- fsckboy 1y agoto be clear, a lot of the dirty hippies smoked cigarettes and drank till they died too. maybe some heroin too. source: my family
- hobs 1y agoYes of course, but the point was that the hippies were part of the undesirables, along with the black folks, the mexicans, and any women who wanted to say, own private property or have a bank account.
- worik 1y agoLook at what Timothy Leary and Ken Keasy were saying about LSD Turn on. Tune in. Drop out. Apart from being really stupid advice it was viewed, correctly, as a direct threat to the established order. The established order is very bad (no arguments now?) but Tim and Ken were being very stupid and bought a whole load of shit down and put psychedelics back 40 years
- mynameisash 1y agoIt's extremely well-known and documented that the War on Drugs was racially motivated, and hence drugs used by certain minority groups more than the majority white population were made illegal. GP's comment isn't suggesting alcoholics are desirable, but that people who preferred alcohol over other drugs were historically part of the "desirable" group. That's my reading of GP's intent, anyway.
- m3047 1y ago"problem child" is an allusion to Hoffman's own characterization.
- SequoiaHope 1y agoIndeed. “LSD: My Problem Child” is the name of Hofmann’s book: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lsd-9780198840206?lang=en&cc=gb https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lsd-9780198840206?la...
- chiefalchemist 1y agoYou should read / watch Michael Pollan’s “How to change your mind” https://m.imdb.com/title/tt21062540/ https://m.imdb.com/title/tt21062540/
- luqtas 1y agowhy so? this is probably the direction he wanted to go if i can recall his book (problem child) correctly the more insight into the synthesis of a pro-therapeutic substance, the easier (i guess) is to remove the undesirable effects (what recreational people want)
- doormatt 1y ago> The researchers prepared a DNA sample and sent it away for genome sequencing, funded by a WVU Davis College Student Enhancement Grant obtained by Hazel. The sequencing confirmed the discovery of a new species and the sequence is now deposited in a gene bank with her name on it. > “Sequencing a genome is a significant thing,” Panaccione said. “It’s amazing for a student.” Question - how is it significant, considering they sent it off to another company to do the sequencing?
- randomNumber7 1y agoShe did want to say: "It is amazing for a student to get this much success by a half accidental discovery" Then she thought about things incomprehensible for programmers and said the other sentence.
- therein 1y ago> incomprehensible for programmers You should stop projecting. I understand something may be incomprehensible to you and you happen to call yourself a programmer. That doesn't mean you're correct about either.
- vanderZwan 1y agoI'm expecting the significant thing is knowing which DNA to sequence. Also, if I'm reading the article correctly she isolated the DNA being sequenced first, so it's not like she just sent in the fungus and offloaded all of the work.
- dathinab 1y agoI think what they mean is: sequencing a genome [of a new species] is a significant thing
- buckle8017 1y agoA full human sequence is only 2-5k USD so it's about money. I doubt she wrote the grant, professor looks like he would give certain students undue credit.
- randomNumber7 1y agoIt is know since a long time that morning glory seeds contain LSA. Also LSA is different from LSD. While you can legally get the former it is (from my experience) way more dangerous than LSD.
- TeaBrain 1y ago>It is know since a long time that morning glory seeds contain LSA This is one of the givens they were working off of. The finding of the research is the fungus that produces the LSA in the seeds.
- zoklet-enjoyer 1y agoLSA distorted my perception of object sizes and made me very nauseous. I took it once in high school. HBWR seeds. Scraped the nasty stuff off the outside. Fell asleep while waiting for it to kick in. Woke up intoxicated. Puked. Went back to sleep
- NewJazz 1y agoLol similar situation for me. Took a hike actually. Puked on the beach. Got some seawater and washed the puke away / buried it in the sand. Rough time.
- culi 1y agoAlways take dramamine or ginger with you if taking HBWR. There are ways you can extract the LSA without the compounds that give you nausea but it's a pretty involved process
- culi 1y agoHBWR seeds cured my anxiety when I was in highschool. Also gave me the worst nausea I'd ever experienced. Also made me a lot closer to my mother Hell of a plant
- jlg23 1y ago> it is (from my experience) way more dangerous than LSD. That is not necessarily related to the compound but the method of consumption. Natural sources of psychedelic compounds have, naturally, variances in potency. With Morning Glory seeds you also ingest some other probably pharmacologically active compounds, again in amounts that vary from seed to seed.
- gwbas1c 1y ago> drug LSD, which is used to treat conditions like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction. Wait: I thought LSD is schedule 1, and there are no legally-sanctioned uses of it? Did something change while I was living under a rock? (Unlike MDMA, where there were legally-sanctioned experiments recently.)
- hungmung 1y agoHere's one, I'm sure there are others: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38042914/ https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38042914/
- AngryData 1y agoMDMA, magic mushrooms, and cannabis are all also Schedule 1 by US federal law too. All it really takes though to get around it is for a state law to allow it and the state to tell the feds to go fuck themselves and close the door to them and make them challenge it in court if they want to do anything about it, which the feds don't want to do because it would cost ass tons of money to fight in court and would only further prove that drug scheduling is mostly just bullshit and lies.
- QuercusMax 1y agoThey'd likely have to show they're worse than booze or cigarettes, which is gonna be awfully hard to accomplish.
- IAmBroom 1y agoNo such requirement. Ibuprofen would not survive being compared to the danger of alcohol. A shot-glass full of headache pills can be lethal.
- QuercusMax 1y agoAre you confusing ibuprofen with acetaminophen? Lots of stuff that's poisonous is legal, though. You can buy and drink all the drain cleaner you want.
- hollerith 1y ago>> drug LSD, which is used to treat conditions like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder LSD can cause PTSD. Dr K of the "Healthy Gamer" YT channel gives that as the reason people shouldn't do LSD in this next 8-min video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So7hE1Ba_QA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So7hE1Ba_QA The video is not about LSD or PTSD, so it would be nice if I could give a time index into where in the video Dr gives the warning, but sadly I don't have time right now.
- 173throwaway 1y agoLSD saved my life. I suffered chronic depression and anxiety with suicidal ideation, had tried multiple psychiatric drugs and forms of therapy, and nothing had improved (the failure of these officially-approved modes of treatment actually left me feeling much more hopeless). Taking LSD gave me the insight that this wasn't fundamental the the nature of being me, that there was hope that one day I could love my life. The road to get there has been difficult, and has involved intense (non-LSD) psychedelic-assisted therapy to deal with very deep childhood trauma, but that first fundamental glimmer that there's a reason to have hope came from an experience with LSD. If I had listened to stern authority figures telling me that there's never a good reason to try it and it could only do me harm, I would in all likelihood be dead today.
- fnord77 1y agoI personally know some whose life was destroyed by it. LSD totally shattered them. 10 years later and this person still isn't right.
- homeonthemtn 1y agoI really appreciate the mature tone this article took towards the discussion of a psychedelic compound
- fsckboy 1y ago>produces effects similar to the semisynthetic drug LSD, which is used to treat conditions like depression, post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction yes, such incredible maturity, didn't even mention that these are not the reasons that most LSD is sold, bought, and consumed... although, "self-medication" probably does adhere pretty well.
- worik 1y ago>...these are not the reasons that most LSD is sold, bought, and consumed Yes To be clear most LSD users, who've done LSD for years, do it for fun. Once you've polished the windows, it is fun to go back and look at the view...
- NewJazz 1y agoFor me the last time I took a trip I was alone for most of the trip and I cried a lot and my heart felt physically pained. I felt sorry for my heart that it had to keep beating and could not rest. It was a really challenging trip. I haven't been on another trip since.
- worik 1y ago> I haven't been on another trip since Good choice. It is not fun, unless it is
- hollerith 1y agoThat would be good subject matter for a poem.
- candiddevmike 1y agoSet and setting?
- scythe 1y ago>Still, some clinicians use them to treat conditions like migraines, dementia, uterine hemorrhaging and Parkinson’s disease. I think it's more common to use synthetic derivatives of ergot alkaloids like ergonovine. But ergot itself is infamously difficult to cultivate. So it's no surprise that they have immediately started trying to culture this new fungus.
- AStonesThrow 1y ago[dead]
- throwing_away 1y agoAre clones available for research purposes?
- Zaylan 1y agoReally impressive that a student managed to find something Hofmann suspected nearly a century ago. Makes you wonder how many of these hidden chemists are still quietly working in symbiosis with plants, carrying out complex metabolic processes we haven’t noticed yet. It also makes me think about how much untapped potential might be hiding in the ordinary plants we pass by every day.
- latexr 1y ago[flagged]
- PakG1 1y agoPerhaps the impressive thing is that it wasn't found for so long and finally was. Not that it was a student.
- latexr 1y agoPerhaps, but that was not how it was worded. Like I said, I’m genuinely asking. If the original author wants to say “oh, I don’t think the student part is relay relevant”, then it’s all good. Otherwise it’s still all good but I want to understand their choice of mentioning the student.
- tharkun__ 1y agowasn't found for so long and finally was If this is the case, isn't it quite clear why "student finds it" sounds more impressive than "expert finds it" or "professor finds it"? Now I'm not saying that a student shouldn't be able to find it. But in conventional wisdom it seems quite clear why one sounds more impressive than the other if you ask me. A student is still learning. Not at the peak of knowledge/ability. While an "expert" or in the context of academia, a professor, would seem more knowledgeable. In that context, the wording seems expected / understandable. Of course in reality in some real life contexts a professor might be more "stagnant" than a student that's trying to get a big discovery in order to earn a doctorate/professorship or course. But that's not "conventional wisdom" for the masses.
- driggs 1y agoWhile it's been known for many years that endosymbiotic fungi are responsible for producing the ergot alkaloids in the Morning Glory plant family, and the recent discovery here is the identification of the host-specific fungal symbiont for the common decorative flower Ipomoea tricolor, this plant-fungus relationship was not known in the days of Albert Hoffman's research. He is most famous for synthesizing and experiencing the effects of LSD from ergot-derived alkaloids; ergot is a fungal pathogen that grows on grain plants. He then identified psilocybin as the active psychoactive component of magic mushroom samples from Mexico. When he turned his work to identifying the active component in Morning Glory plants, he presented his work showing that he'd discovered LSA, another ergot alkaloid. Other researchers accused him of having contaminated samples, because he'd found in plants compounds which were known only from the fungi kingdom. Hoffman's work was vindicated, in a sense, when the relationship of endosybiotic fungi (cryptic fungi which spend the majority of their lifecycle inside a plant) was later elucidated.