Tag: research

CONGRESS IS PUSHING REVOLUTIONARY RESEARCH ON PSYCHEDELIC TREATMENTS FOR THE MILITARY

CONGRESS IS ON track to approve legislation that would mark a significant advance in U.S. policy toward psychedelics. 

Tucked into the National Defense Authorization Act of 2024 is a provision to fund clinical trials using psychedelic substances to treat active duty members of the military.

Section 723 of the NDAA directs the secretary of defense to partner with a federal or state government agency, or an academic institution, to carry out the research. The bill would fund the treatment of members of the military with post-traumatic stress or a traumatic brain injury with a number of psychedelic substances, including MDMA, psilocybin, ibogaine, DMT, and other plant-based alternative therapies (such as ayahuasca).

Research surrounding psychedelics as a possible treatment for post-traumatic stress disorder have slowly grown, and recent studies have shown promising results, with patients benefiting from even just a few treatments including MDMA and psilocybin. Already, the Food and Drug Administration has designated both treatments as “breakthrough therapies”: a special designation given to expedite the research and development into drugs with the potential to treat serious conditions. On Tuesday, MAPS Public Benefit Corporation, which focuses on psychedelic treatments for mental health issues, submitted a new drug application to the FDA for MDMA-assisted therapy for PTSD. The company says it’s the first such submission for any psychedelic-assisted therapy.

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Colorado Governor Says Marijuana Prohibition Created A ‘Chicken And The Egg’ Research Dilemma That’s Blocked Federal Reform

The governor of Colorado says that while marijuana reform is “not really a partisan issue” anymore, there are still “stodgy nanny state Republicans who want to control it.” Meanwhile, he says, ongoing prohibition has inhibited research into the science of cannabis that’s kept it strictly criminalized at the federal level.

Gov. Jared Polis (D) is hoping that will change sooner rather than later. He and the governors of five other states sent a letter to President Joe Biden this week, urging officials to reschedule marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA) by the end of the year.

In an interview that aired on Fox News Radio’s “The Guy Benson Show” on Thursday, Polis said he would’ve liked to see a federal policy change five or 10 years ago as states such as Colorado enacted adult-use legalization, but he theorized that prohibition itself created a “chicken and the egg” situation that has effectively stymied reform by making it harder to conduct research on the effects of cannabis, a stalemate that has been reinforced by congressional politics.

The administrative marijuana scheduling review that Biden directed last year could help break that policy logjam, he said. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has already determined that cannabis should be moved from Schedule I t0 Schedule III, and now it’s up to the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) to make a final determination.

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Top Federal Agency Promotes New Marijuana Research Center Amid Scientists’ Complaints About ‘Complex’ Study ‘Barriers’ Under Prohibition

A top federal health agency says it recognizes that there are ample concerns among scientists about how they’ve “encountered barriers that have hampered their research” into marijuana under federal prohibition, including “complex” federal regulations and inadequate supplies of cannabis.

That’s why the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is now seeking to resolve some of those challenges by standing up a Resource Center for Cannabis and Cannabinoid Research, an official said in a blog post on Tuesday.

NIH posted a notice of funding opportunity late last month, explaining how it’s seeking an entity to operate the center through a cooperative agreement in order to “address challenges and barriers to conducting research on cannabis and its constituents.”

To help facilitate that process, the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health’s (NCCIH) Patrick Still announced that the health agency will be holding a webinar on January 25 to provide potential applicants with technical assistance.

“There’s growing interest in potential therapeutic uses of cannabis and its constituents among both health care providers and the public,” Still, who is a program director for NCCIH’s Basic and Mechanistic Research branch, wrote. “Substances in cannabis have a variety of pharmacologic effects, and rigorous research is needed to understand their mechanisms of action and investigate their possible value in helping to manage health conditions.”

“However, investigators working in this field have encountered barriers that have hampered their research,” he said, pointing to feedback NCCIH received as part of a request for information last year.

“The barriers that many of them have mentioned include difficulty meeting complex federal and state regulatory requirements, problems obtaining cannabis products suitable for research, a lack of validated measures of cannabis use and exposure, and inadequate scientific infrastructure to support research studies,” Still wrote.

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Ibram Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research Hasn’t Produced Any Research

Ibram X. Kendi’s Center for Antiracist Research made headlines this month when it announced it would axe a third of its workforce. But those layoffs may not have much of an impact, considering the center has hardly produced any original research at all.

The Boston University-based center has produced just two original research papers since its founding in June 2020, according to a Washington Free Beacon review. Output from the center’s scholars largely consists of op-eds or commentary posted on the center’s website. The group’s plans to “maintain the nation’s largest online database of racial inequity data in the United States” quickly fizzled out, and the database has been dormant since 2021.

The Center for Antiracist Research is the latest left-wing group to fall on hard times. George Soros’s Open Society Foundations, which gave $140,000 to Kendi’s center, cut 40 percent of its staff in June. The Black Lives Matter Global Network Foundation’s revenues fell 88 percent from 2021 to 2022, as support for the movement plummeted to an all-time low.

It is unclear how much money remains in the Center for Antiracist Research’s coffers. Boston University did not respond to a request for comment.

Kendi had high hopes for the center, which employed at least 45 employees as of July. The nonprofit would “foster exhaustive racial research, research-based policy innovation, data-driven education and advocacy campaigns, and narrative-change initiatives,” Kendi said, in order to “figure out novel and practical ways to understand, explain, and solve seemingly tractable problems of racial inequity and injustice.”

In December 2020, the center launched the “Racial Data Lab,” which Kendi claimed would “give us the ability to see the hotspots of racial inequity in real time in this country.” As of September, the Racial Data Lab only compiled information on COVID-19 infections and deaths. That COVID-19 tracker stopped collecting information in March 2021. The center has since removed the names of anyone who worked on that project from its website.

The center’s scholars have produced only two research papers, both of which were co-authored with a number of other academics. Elaine Nsoesie, who leads the Racial Data Tracker project at the center, appeared last in a list of co-authors of the January paper “Association of Neighborhood Racial and Ethnic Composition and Historical Redlining With Build Environment Indicators Derived From Street View Images.”

Nsoesie’s low ranking among her co-authors could suggest she contributed the least to the paper, which concluded that neighborhoods with a higher concentration of black residents had more “dilapidated buildings.”

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Ohio State receives first-ever DEA license to grow psychedelic mushrooms for research

Ohio State University is about to grow psychedelic mushrooms.

For scientific research, people.

Ohio State, alongside the mental health and wellness research and development company Inner State Inc., was awarded the first-ever license by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency to grow whole psilocybin mushrooms. The mushrooms will be used in the study of mental health treatment capabilities with naturally grown psychedelic mushrooms.

“This license is a major milestone not only for Inner State and Ohio State, but for the entire field of psychedelic research,” Inner State CEO Ashley Walsh said Wednesday in a news release.

The license allows Ohio State and Inner State to cultivate psilocybin mushrooms for research purposes only. All research will be conducted in a federally sanctioned and secured grow house in accordance with strict DEA regulations and guidelines.

“By combining cutting-edge techniques in genomics and metabolomics, we have the opportunity to obtain a high-resolution picture of the chemical diversity of mushrooms that have remained difficult to study for several decades,” according to Ohio State researchers Dr. Jason Slot and Dr. Kou-San Ju.

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Federal scientists conduct illegal molecular research

Newly-released records show that the National Institutes of Health (NIH) has been involved in over two dozen cases of research with recombinant or synthetic nucleic acid (r/sNa) molecules without proper approval, and in violation of its own guidelines.

That’s according to the watchdog group Judicial Watch, which who recently obtained 2369 pages of records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request.

Lincoln Dr. Matt Anderson reports an incident that began in March 2018 wherein Dr. Shi-Hua Xiang created an HIV pseudo virus containing Marburg glycoprotein M78 in a university Biosafety Level 2 laboratory, for which he did not have authorization.

NIH Documents

Recombinant or synthetic nucleic acid (r/sNA) molecules are constructed outside of living cells. The molecules are made by joining DNA or RNA segments (natural or synthetic) to DNA or RNA molecules that can replicate within a living cell.

They may also result from replication of previously constructed recombinant molecules.

NIH guidelines detail safety practices and containment procedures for basic and clinical research involving recombinant or synthetic nucleic acid molecules, including creation and use of organisms and viruses containing recombinant or synthetic nucleic acid molecules.

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CNN Suggests That Doing Your Own Research Is “Idiotic” and Only They Can Tell You What’s Fact

When it comes to facts, CNN seems to believe that only it should be able to tell you what they are and what they aren’t. That desire goes so far as to suggest that going out and doing your own research is “idiotic.”

CNN host, Don Lemon, for instance, said that “we have to start doing things for the greater good of society and not for idiots who think they can do their own research,” adding that these same people think “they are above the law and they can break the rules.”

Firstly, the fact that he’s attacking people who do their own research as the same who think they’re “above the law and break the rules” is rich given the fact that he’s a Black Lives Matter supporter, and effectively applauded the destruction of cities and communities in the name of “justice.”

But most importantly is the suggestion by Lemon really exposes the mentality of CNN and even the mainstream media overall. It doesn’t like you going out to find the answers for yourself, let them tell you what is and isn’t reality. It’s for your own good, or as Lemon said, “the greater good.”

If you break down what he’s suggesting, he’s saying that they should be able to craft whatever narrative CNN pleases and have it be the way any situation is defined. This is effectively suggesting CNN should be able to lie to you and that lie is the truth.

It’s very Orwellian, but I wouldn’t expect anything less from CNN, which has effectively become a propaganda arm of the Democrat Party.

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CNN charges Americans not smart enough to do own research on COVID vaccines

At least two contributors to the far-left CNN network are charging that Americans simply are not smart enough to do their own research and make their own decisions about COVID and its “vaccines,” which actually are more like treatments.

It is Ramishah Maruf, of CNN Business, who explained, “The problem is that most people simply don’t know how to do their own research, especially when it comes to understanding the complexities of medical science.”

Maruf quoted CNN correspondent Brian Stelter, who said that four words, “Do you own research” are hurting the U.S. pandemic response.

Celebrity Nicki “Minaj helped raise doubts about COVID-19 vaccines on Twitter last week she would only get the shots once she’d ‘done enough research.’ It may seem like a reasonable, even positive, attitude, and it is a favored talking point echoed by many in the right-wing media,” the report said.

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