University of Queensland researchers have designed a new tarantula venom mini-protein that can potentially relieve severe pain without addiction. A mini-protein in tarantula venom from the Chinese bird spider, known as Huwentoxin-IV, binds to pain receptors in the body.
Tests in mouse models and shown to work effectively.
This could help with the Opoid epidemic.
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That is why I defined *victimless* as I did. Self caused harm does not qualify one as a victim. Market coercion in this case is a further problem, actually creating victims, as you say. I am not supporting drug use! I am pointing out a much more dangerous addiction, power addiction. “Possibly fewer dead and less costly.” And ethical!
It is not victimless. 10s of thousands get killed each year S of the border so people can get high Children are in the homes of those addicts. They pay a high price too. Nobody acts in a vacuum. Others are affected by others actions. I do however believe we need to legalize it, take the money out of it for criminals, and focus on treatment. That course however will not be victimless either. Possibly fewer dead and less costly.
Observing/experiencing Primals will make it all clear. Those not attracted have little Pain or other painkillers, such as power addiction. After birth Primals in particular, not only is the addiction gone, but often dramatic epigenetic permanent physiological changes are observed. Failure to explain this in another way, or even recognize that it happens, is the current *popular* understanding. But, as we know, science never loses in the long run. Been 50 years now!
Oh man you catch the ccp-virii?
I think that’s not quite right, because from what I’ve heard, most people who take them for pain don’t get addicted, aren’t even tempted. Rather like most people who drink don’t become alcoholics, I suspect.
I recall my mother, in the hospital for gall bladder surgery. They put her on some opiate, I came in to visit her, and found her staring at the ceiling. I asked her what she was looking at, and she said that she was just watching the clouds drift by.
“Mom, you’re indoors, that’s a ceiling.”
“Oh, so this is why people take drugs!”
I never would have had that reaction, because opiates aren’t any more effective for me than regular OTC pain relievers, and the side effects are a lot worse.
I think it’s got to be something more than just finding pain coming back to be averse. Maybe something genetic.
Exactly.
Primal, discovered on late 60s but postulated in 30s and foreshadowed by early Freud, directly proves the existence of same. See Janov for great details.
This might be true. I might have read it wrong. But I this “repressed childhood pain” sounds suspicious to me.
Spoken like a power addict.
It is the painkiller absence of repressed Pain *on the rise* that leads to addiction. Any thing or activity that *helps* an individual in that repression is addictive. People w/o Pain, thus without repression, will NOT become addicted. I know of some people who would disagree about the pleasantness of addiction. Yet they keep on it. Is humiliating oneself as a power addict does pleasant?
You point out an obvious conclusive problem with the War on Drugs, it is fighting a *victimless* market, all parties act voluntarily. Only those addicted to the War on Drugs, Drug War addicts, Power addicts, thus neurotics, would continue such BS.
There are a lot of different processes in the pain detection sequence. Which is why we’ve got a lot of different pain killers (paracetamol, ibuprofen, opioids, aspirin) which operate on different receptors and interrupt different parts of the pathway..
Of those only the opioids also produce the pleasant feelings that lead to addiction.
Addiction is when the painkiller (drug, activity, belief, etc) *helps* with repressed childhood Pain, often birth trauma. Then, when the painkiller is stopped, the repression does not want to resume, as it is a lot of work. If the painkiller is ONLY for current pain, as in an injury, when that pain is gone, the painkiller is no longer needed, indeed will be unpleasant.
This assumes that the opioid epidemic is caused by prescribing people opioids.
Which is of course the story that some people tell, but that’s hardly a proven case. (And it looks suspiciously like finding the nearest big corporation and blaming them, because #notmyfault #I-din-do-nuffin)
An alternative theory is that it’s all a matter of logistics.
Back in the 1980s when I had family members in law enforcement, the story was approximately: 1 kg of pure heroin can be cut with say 9 kg of icing sugar to get 10 000 lots of 1g shots, each of which might get $100 from a street sale. So you have $1m from a kg. No individual gets that $1m, but that is available for the total supply chain to get 1 kg into the country and distributed. That pays for the original production, the mule who walks funny through the airport, the cutting, the wholesaling, the various bosses who take a big cut etc etc. Actual numbers vary by a factor of 2 to 5 depending on the year and location.
But now we have fentanyl. Which is literally 100 times more potent but doesn’t cost much more (maybe 2x?) to make. So that 1 kg isn’t $1m. It’s $100m. Or to put it another way, you can smuggle in 10g and get your $1m. Clearly that means it’s actually 2 orders of magnitude easier to get the same street value into the country. Your smuggling is so much easier. Just send in a disposable drone.
Carfentanyl is 50 times MORE potent still. Your 1kg is now 0.2g. How are you going to block that?
Be careful, or you might end up with a spider on your back!
Well as with many allergies, you either are or aren’t allergic. It’s an option.
Hush now, us Gen Xers aren’t picking sides.
If this works by binding to pain receptors and opioids do this too, why would the venom not be addictive while opioids are?
A mini-protein. Yeah, like that’s not going to frequently cause allergic reactions!
Still, nice to have more options. Some people can’t really take opioids even if they are in severe pain. I get the paradoxical effect; Not only doesn’t the pain go away, I hallucinate and suffer from insomnia. No fun at all.
Yeeeaaaahhhhh, NOPE.
But, but, we don’t care about the opioid epidemic because it largely kills young people with bad morals…, not boomers, who worked so hard, and are *entitled* to live long retirements.