Deer And Sassafras In Their Diet. Is the Plant Smarter Than We Think.

 Who eats sassafras, what parts, and what does the sassafras do in return.
Does enhanced toxicity result in labs using the same test plants over and over?


Anthropoplantism

Here, look at deer and rodents who eat part of the sassafras (for some leaves are toxic, for others, roots are toxic, for others bark is toxic, etc.  What does the plant do to defend itself against being totally consumed. This research suggests that some plants become more toxic to the eater, the more it is eaten.

Apply that to the lab setting. Suppose somebody brought in a sassafras shrub, to use as food to test for tumors. Same shrub, over and over, strip off parts to feed to the poor critters in the cages.  What does the sassafras do to protect itself? Become even more toxic?  And what does that do to the lab results.  More tumors than would ordinarily occur.  Question Asked But Un-Answered. Yet.  Also note in the New York Times, Tuesday October 27, 2009, at D2, article by Nicholas Wade"

"Mice are very prone to cancer; in some strains, 90 percent of them die of tumors.  People have stronger defenses against cancer, as is necessary for a long-lived animal; the disease accounts for 23 percent of human mortality.  But the mole rat has taken its anticancer defenses even further: it seems not to get the disease at all."

What if they were fed sassafras? The mole rats seem to have a double immune system, says the article.  We should study that, instead of why the lab test mice get the tumors so fast.

I. DEER

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A.  What do deer eat, and why do they eat what they do. 

Deer do eat sassafras. If safrole in sassafras is so toxic to mammals, why don't deer get sick.

Sassafras, summer

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Herbivores. Deer are classified as Cervidae, which means that they eat vegetation, and, incidentally, also shed their antlers each year. As herbivores, they have "compound stomachs" - see://www.oswego.edu/wscp/DEER.htm/- as do moose, and elk.

The compound stomachs enable the deer to eat woody things - like sassafras in the winter, spring, summer (not fall, when they have to fatten up), for those who do eat it -  that other creatures would find indigestible. See http://www.agfc.com/pdfs/free/whatdeereat_bro.pdf/. The stomachs have great scrabble names: learn them. "rumen, reticulum, omasum and abomasum." See ://www.oswego.edu/wscp/DEER.htm/

The rumen breaks down the browse first. The microflora there start a fermentation process. So, its food cannot exude something that will inhibit the fermentation - act like an antibacterial agent. Is that an issue with some woody things? Yes. Woody things or needles from some evergreens have high essential oil content, and essential oils are difficult to digest (Douglas fir, Juniper). So, deer don't pig out on those, but eat lots of things lightly, when they can.
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Moose Crossing, Quebec

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B.  Their stomachs can break the plant components down.  

 The chemical "building blocks" of the browse:  These also are important to the diet. More names here: lignin and cellulose (both hard to digest), hemicellulose, carbohydrates and proteins (easier). Some of those are unfamiliar, but too much of the lignin in the diet, for example, can cause weight loss and death. Some tolerated well, lots not.

So, an animal's diet also reflects what it is able to digest. Go far afield from that, and the animal is in trouble.  Nature doesn't need labs to tell us what to eat, necessarily. Would we not limit ourselves to so much root beer a day?

C.  They limit what they eat perhaps because of an anti-herbivore defense:

Some plants develop toxins, so that the preferred foods are not necessarily the most nutritious, but the least toxic. Here is the process:  http://www.tulane.edu/~ldyer/classes/406/koricheva.pdf/  See also ://www.oswego.edu/wscp/DEER.htm/ again,   Good site.  Browsing itself can cause the regrowth to be more toxic than the first growth. Deer like tips best. Browsing nips growth in the bud, literally, so helps keep the food supply coming - it the tree gets too high (over 10 feet, say) then the deer can't reach it.

Deer are not just "browsing herbivores", however; they also eat corn and soybeans and acorns and crabapples and other "grazer-browser" foods. They like variety. See ://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/sasalb/all.html/.  Animal wisdom.

Deer are like us. Look at the categories of foods they eat. There is a chart at the DEER site showing what they eat as to the following:

Food Categories

1. Preferred (roast chicken)
2. Staple (potatoes)
3. Emergency (tofu)
4. Stuffing (no, not Doritos. This category is what you stuff with when you are starving, so, say gruel and more gruel, like Oliver )
5. Pastime (peanut butter)

So:  Deer do eat sassafras. 

White-tailed New York State deer (as opposed to other areas, or the mule deer variety) prefer mountain sassafras. Massachusetts white-tails will eat it but do not prefer it. You can tell whether a deer ate a twig and not a rabbit, because the deer's stubby end will be left raggy, and the rabbit's stubby end will be clean-cut. See ://www.oswego.edu/wscp/DEER.htm

Does mere indigestibility explain why they do not eat more, or is it a search for balance in the enzymes, or is there a natural toxicity as well. Something can be indigestible without being poisonous or toxic.

See your living room in a new way. Plants do supposedly develop defenses against

• those who clip or threaten it, see ://ming.tv/flemming2.php/__show_article/_a000010-001034.htm/ ; 
• or eat it, see Madagascar and its plants' anachronistic tactics against birds, that continue even though the birds are extinct, at ://www.pubmedcentral.nih.gov/articlerender.fcgi?artid=2275176/. 
• threats to come, by means of plant gossip (isn't this fun?), see ://www.sciencenetlinks.com/sci_update.php?DocID=168/ - passing on early warnings so the fellows downwind can rev up the chemical defenses for the future disaster
•   or at least reaction to "pain" - urban legend? A little too much anthropoplantism? See ://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum//thread318914/pg1.

You have to love it. Why be a "professional" when you could be a plantsperson.

But none who eat sassafras overdo it on their own, even when starving. It is not a "stuffer" browse.

Even in good times, some animals eat some parts of the sassafras - this one is a leaf guy, that one a twig guy, the other one a root kind of guy, some others, but nobody pigs out. For animals, none seem to eat sassafras so much as to be important. See ://www.fs.fed.us/database/feis/plants/tree/sasalb/all.html/ Animal wisdom.

So:  The Safrole Connection.  We are branching out to deer, because safrole oil overdosed in rats brought on tumors, we are told. http://www.heart-disease-bypass-surgery.com/data/articles/104.htm/. Do animals just monitor their own intake of diet matter? Why can't we as well?

We wouldn't overdo root beer. Perhaps that is because it does develop a toxicity if it is overdone? Or the animal itself, like us, prefers variety and would never eat nothing but.

Why don't they eat more?  It is all around.

Is the deer diet a self-imposed limit because the plant itself has put up more defenses than we realize.  Some plants defend against being eaten by becoming more toxic under siege.

We did find that the deer eat evergreens - rhododendron, kinds of needley things.  And this idea came up. Scientists know that some plants that are being eaten up, like the needley things in winter when the deer are going at them, will increase in toxicity.  The stuff that is not good for the deer gets stronger when the plant is being repeatedly nibbled. They tested by also doing snipping on their own - the woodsmen.  Then testing the result.  Sure enough.  The toxicity increased - a kind of defense against being eaten to death.

See ://www.oswego.edu/wscp/DEER.htm/:

Heavy continuous browsing on plant twigs can retard vegetative growth or even kill the plants.  Browsing may also cause subsequent re-growth to contain higher levels of toxic compounds.

Sassafras has another attraction for deer over rodents. The teeth of deer do not keep growing, as do rodent teeth, requiring constant gnawing.  No wonder deer are less "fended off" than rodents, if that is so.  Deer can eat the softer plants without dental problems. See  ://www.americazoo.com/goto/index/mammals/rodentia.htm/ Note the comments on the love-hate relationship between people and rodents. Damage done, but so cute.

So, if the sassafras also defends against being eaten, by becoming "more bad" for the animal that eats it, wouldn't that also be true in the lab.

Has anyone looked into that?  Deer like the end shoots, but the more they browse on them, and the plant gets threatened with death by ingestion, the more toxic and indigestible become the shoots. So the deer back off, and the plant can continue up, until it is taller than the browse line. Plant saved.

If plants respond to being nipped back time and again by becoming more toxic, does that happen in the lab where gnome technicians somewhere use the same sassafras plants over and over to get at the safrole oil from which they then overdose the rats? Do they do that? Go back to the same plants? If so, please check the toxicity of the oil. Does it get worse. If so, that would affect lab results. Their safrole is worse than the field safrole. Is that so? Perhaps. Nice theory.

Interesting. I recall some article about attaching electrodes to philodendron, measuring the mellow happy plant leaves, then loudly approaching with shears, clack clack and snip whack! The plant waves went nuts. Philodendron reacts to threat with fear. Is that so?

Would that plant under siege time and again react as did the evergreen - put up an additional defense to being eaten by becoming more toxic than ordinary nature. And wouldn't that skew the test results.  The animals were being given a far stronger dose than even a natural strong dose.

If so, that is another reason to toss the testing.

So, of course, noone will look into it.  Finding that the plant has outsmarted the FDA may cast doubt on the FDA.  It may help establish that we not only give substances that are not in the lab animal's diet, making it sick just because of that:  particularly rodents who need to keep gnawing and whose digestion surely reflects its need to gnaw and the juices thereof.  We also use plants that defend up.

And our stomachs may not rebel at all.  Someone needs to test whether sassafras in the field is the same degree of safrole strength as sassafras in the lab yard.  Shouldn't be hard.

Shall we use other than rats? 

Shall we test other animals for safrole?  That is also silly. No animal eats all of the sassafras. The species we looked up are selective. Even other rodents eat some parts of it, and know better than to eat what doesn't suit it.  No animal we find aims for the safrole and eats only that.

Try deer.  Deer eat parts of sassafras, some more, some less, but they also have compound stomachs for processing the woodsy things, the forage and the graze.  Wide variety.  Keep the variety, and the deer is healthy.  Overdose on something, provide too much with too little else, and it gets sick and even dies.  Surprise.  Same as the mice, same as us.

The main event is whether the sassafras itself, in addition to being allelopathic and discouraging other plants from growing around it, is also defensive in getting more toxic the more it is nibbled, or browsed.  That is the reaction of some evergreen species - the shoots and needles may well become more toxic the more the plant is under attack.  See below.  So, the plant defends itself against being eaten to death by becoming more bad for the animal.  Have some madeira, m'dear?

So:  what follows is the detail from looking this up.  Interesting to us, but the point is that we need to test the plants own capabilities and qualities and its own defenses; before we just feed stuff to animals willy nilly.
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Sassafras. At dusk.

Stress and other living things.

If plants like evergreen varieties and deciduous react to stressors in measurable ways, by becoming more toxic in the case of the shoots being eaten; or the waves from the philodendron under attack; why do we test animals in the worst stress conditions known to man - torture, overcrowding, solitary confinement, rotten diet, and then act surprised when we concoct illness and pathology. We know anxiety and fear bring on illness in us as well as stressed out, tortured lab animals - so does that environment also skew the results.

DETAILS:

1.  Natural diets.  Pay attention. A natural diet produces a healthy animal. Animals get sick on bad diets, like we do.  So should we be surprised when test animals get sick.  

2. Defenses, so the animal keeps its diet in balance.  Other plants have been found to increase in toxicity under siege, when being nibbled frequently:  Does it create in itself more toxicity, than there was before all the nibbling, as a kind of defense to being eaten to death. If so, and if the labs use the same sassafras all the time to snip snip and grind up and inject the oil, are the labs themselves creating more toxicity than out in the field over there.

3.  Is there a people connection necessarily.  Or is animal testing just another industry perpetuating itself regardless. We questioned whether that means the same bad stuff will result in people, who have different variety needs, digestive systems (that is, one stomach) and teeth (that is, do not keep growing so you don't have to gnaw all the time).

4.  We have no idea.  The FDA ban on safrole was based on its animal studies on the rats, and supposedly buttressed by human case "reports" - see ://www.answers.com/topic/sassafras/ -  in the culinary section there. Read "reports" as just that - Somebody said so.  He said that she said that he had halitosis. Gossip, that is; anecdotes, claims from Aunt Hessie who got it from Luke, or from Addie down the lane who never told what was so anyway.

5.  Stomachy ruminators. That brought us to how deer, white-tail and mule; and moose; use sassafras.  All of these have compound stomachs to break down and ferment forage and grazing products. The stomachs in multiple make it possible to ultimately digest the woodsy things, as well as eat graze, and stay healthy as long as the diet is varied, and not too much of one thing. See details about the deer, their multiple stomachs, which of them prefer sassafras shoots, which will just eat them if they are around, and more that do not seem to eat it at all.  FN 1

7.  Chewy rodents. And from there we went back to other types of rodents, and all seem to have have simple stomachs. But the rodent digestive makeup includes processing a diet consistent with gnawing - if they don't gnaw, some of their front teeth just keep growing down or down and around. Not pretty.  So their stomachs have to tolerate whatever gets in there from the gnawing process.   See details about them, this time including rabbits, groundhogs, beavers, squirrels, chipmunks etc. at FN 2.  Some eat leaves of sassafras, some cut the branches (beavers, for dams), some eat the fruit, but nobody aims directly for the safrole, apparently.
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 8.  Either type - the stomachy ruminators; or the chewy rodents; have serious differences from human makeup, and what diets are good for them.  Why should testing on them, when they need to process weird enzymes  (is there a Bambi lab?); or saw down their incisors as they eat, be valid as to illness in us, when we don't eat the same things for the same reasons. This makes no sense.  The only thing that makes sense is that no wonder we cure so little, and only suppress symptoms.

OTHER ANIMALS, AND SASSAFRAS

Do deer eat more sassafras than rats because the rats, gnawing all the time, would be more of a threat to sassafras survival?  Rats would get at the littlest shoots, and nip them right off. That could be. See ://www.sfrc.ufl.edu/4h/Sassafras/sassafra.htm/.

Groundhogs: These eat sassafras, but  not the whole plant. See ://www.answers.com/topic/sassafras/ Add to our list of sassafras eaters these new ones: black bear, and marsh rabbits. There seems to be no toxicity, aversion.

Rabbit. Very still.

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The groundhogs and marsh rabbits also have some teeth that keep on growing, see them at ://www.hoghaven.com/study.html/, but maybe the soft sassafras is not enough to keep the teeth in check, so they do not bother. Click on the topics there.

Groundhogs do not have compound stomachs, as do deer; so they are more made for the tender parts than the woodies.  But they hibernate, which makes their systems different from mice, we understand.  But they are diffecan but they hibernate. We don't. Rabbits in winter eat the bark, however, and beavers cut the stems.

Do these differences increase or decrease the likelihood that overdosing them reflects something about us.

 Is there any animal enough like us to warrant our using their lives for ourselves? Listen to one react to that at ://www.hoghaven.com/sounds/ghs1c.wav/ Shall we test on black bears?

Generalize. Skip what you see before your eyes.

Rats and beavers and rodents, oh, my.

Beavers, chipmunks, squirrels, gophers, porcupines, gerbils, jerboas, and, Alice's favorites, rabbits and dormice. See ://animaldiversity.ummz.umich.edu/site/accounts/information/Rodentia.html/  We know that sassafras developed a defense against rodents - is that because the rodents have to gnaw, so the rodents really endanger the plant year-round? Is that so? These are indeed more like us in that they have single stomachs. But they are hugely different in that they have to keep gnawing not just for food, but to wear their teeth down so the teeth don't keep going.

Which of these mammals is most like us so that animal testing on that animal is relevant? We are neither gnawers nor browsers except on Doritos. So, pick: The compound stomach type, or the dentition going on forever type? Is our testing purely convenience of the tester and the rapid reproduction capability in tiny cages? What if that fact of perpetual tooth growth makes a difference in the animal's reaction to substances fed it for testing.

Sassafras: Three leaf variations, same branch, lower story

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How to conclude reasonably, that sassafras is bad for us in usual eating or drinking doses, because it is bad for rats for whom it is toxic anyway and in huge doses; and for deer (in those places where the deer eat it as preferred or tolerated food) but who react adversely any time only one food source is provided. Their diet needs variety, light browse here and graze there. That sounds more like us than the gnawers.

SASSAFRAS: A SURVIVAL POWERHOUSE

Sassafras can tolerate a great deal of encroachment by those eating it, and grows fast. It is useful as one of the first species to show up in abandoned fields, and refreshes depleted soil. Sassafras enriches it right up with its underground runners, lots of branching bushes in the understory, and big leaves.

Choctaw Indian Legend, Sassafras and the Flood. Lifesaver Raft.

The Flood: Choctaw Legend

How does sassafras attach to Native American creation legends? The picture here is not Mississippi, Choctaw country, but it sets an overall mood.

We know that sassafras was banned after inadequate testing and after thousands of years of use and reference in cultural lore in the Americas, including in religious legend.

Should we not take a second look at the discard pile.

Do go to www://choctawindian.com/, and read the tale aloud to yourself. It is sassafras that saves the life of the last human before the Flood. This is not the creation myth I was looking for from eastern countries, but this flood story may be even better.

The Choctaws are (were?) a matriarchal society, with roots in the Mississippi-Alabama areas, and seeing nature's bounty as symbolic of a mother's love. See www"//choctawindian.com/.

They lost out when the European Patriarchal and conquering cultures arrived.

Their Creation story is at that site. I found elsewhere their Great Flood story, with parallels to our Noah. The flood looks like a tsunami, rather than after a long rain. Read the www.tc.umn.edu/%7Emboucher/mikebouchweb/choctaw/flood1 for Ancient Choctaw Legend.

Sassafras - Seven Bedbugs In One Blow

Sassafras as Insect Repellent

Uses of Plants: A Matter of Dosage, Extraction, Information 

Give a bug enough aspirin and it, too, will expire.

Economic opportunity. Bedbug resurgencies are in the news.  See Just Try To Sleep Tight. The Bedbugs are Back at ://www.nytimes.com/2005/11/27/nyregion/27bugs.html?_r=1/  Our solution is at hand.  Put people back to work. Use sassafras wood to make your bed frame.  See ://www.woodmagazine.com/materials-guide/lumber/wood-species-3/sassafras/.  Here's more:  see://www.crabapplehillsfarm.com/chf2001/showrooms/ArkansasSassafras/ArkansasSassafras.shtml/

Sassafras in Summer: three leaf forms, on one branch in understory

Use it in the kitchen, for cupboards.  Insecticides have used sassafras oil for years, from early explorer and colonial times, see current use at ://www.diatect.com/kill-bed-bug-ppc.php/. Grow your own.  See ://www.kerrysgarden.us/2006/03/01/digging-sassafras-trees/

We already know it repels rodents. Use it for children's cribs.

A multi-purpose plant. How it is used, with what dosage, with what preparation, makes the difference between a good use and a malignant one.  Just as with aspirin.

Sassafras and Cholesterol Control? Liver Detox?

Sassafras and Cholesterol Control?

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Sassafras, as a tea, made from de-barked, and minced-pounded, tender roots from the understory level,  has long been ingested as a "blood purifier."  See ://www.florahealth.com/flora/home/International/HealthInformation/Encyclopedias/Sassafras.htm/ 

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Sassafras, summer grove, understory emerging

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Even that mainstream site is skeptical of the ban on sassafras/safrole (issues of preparation and dosage really) but it gives a sensible overview of the status today of use of sassafras; and how a plant that used to be useful we now handily discard.  The site also gives the recipe for making tea, with the sensible precaution to use it only for 4-6 weeks over the course of a year. We can live with that. Now, to get the roots and try it. The site also offers a bibliography. See also ://www.foundationsofherbalism.com/pdf/11.pdf/.

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Issue:   High bad cholesterol; toxins building up in the liver. Some 17,000 people are waiting for liver transplants, do a search for liver transplants and get that and other stats.

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Start with the premise that centuries of use of sassafras as a "blood purifyer" produced enough good results for the practice to become widespread.  Then, logic would have it that "purifying blood" - whatever that is, but the term recurs so often in folk remedies and cultures - would be beneficial in purifying blood of its nastier cholesterol elements, and help the liver in that and other filtering actions. 

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Research in the public interest. 

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Not to criticize our national Pharma Preservation of Profits cult, but is there not a public interest component in exploring and testing folk remedies to see how and if they work, even though the ingredient cannot be patented.  Or do we only test the moneymakers?  Wrong question.

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Look up, do a search for words like blood purifier sassafras cholesterol.  Sassafras is known as a good liver detoxer and general stimulant.  See ://www.steaptv.com/2008/05/06/how-to-dandelion-tea-sassafras-tea/.  

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Liver detox.

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Liver detox? What is that?  See ://www.liverdoctor.com/index.php?page=liver-detoxification/. 

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Livers go amok trying to filter out all the bad stuff we eat, drink, are exposed to environmentally that gets inside. Think great big gobs of greasy grimy fatty stuff, greasy grimy fatty stuff, greasy grimy fatty stuff, great big gobs of greasy grimy fatty stuff and me without my spoon. See, if you must, ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EBK1RBj1sKo/ and ://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaX95ImQcqc&NR=1/  

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Sassafras, understory close-upThe point is, if we can do little backyard remedies as in the old days, take your tonic in the spring when the little roots are nice, pare them and mash them up, the little things, and add your hot water, and go rock on the porch to health, why not. 

It often looks like surrounding vegetation.  Takes some looking when it is just taking hold in a woods of other woods.  

Beats ICU. Make some bread of it even - see ://www.ingestandimbibe.com/Articles_p/rootbeer_p.html/  And if the testing ever shows toxicity to humans in the doses we use, that, of course, is different.

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FDA,  you are interested in the proper functioning of all the Cholesterols, Healthy Livers. 

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Here is your mission, should you choose to accept it.  

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Unhinge from Pharma and profits.  Unembed yourself.  And sponsor government or other altruistic and well-funded group testing of the ordinary remedies in our back yards.  

Offer sensible dosing and preparation information, while continuing to foster regular medical checkups. Sassafras:  less toxins than in a beer beer.

Sassafras oil. MDMA, Safrole, As Nature's "Truth Serum"

Sassafras Oil:
Use as "Truth Serum"

Ecstasy ingredient. MDMA. From safrole.

The Army considered it a possible truth serum,
tested effects on animals, lethal doses, in the 1950's;
then results of all test activity were classified until 1969, released as to effects in 1973

At issue: As a truth serum substance,
what did the Army find as to reliability,
what was it doing with it from the 1950's to 1969,
and why not use it instead of torture.

Use torture when you do not want truth, perhaps.
Use it when you want the answer you want, nothing less.
Like the Inquisition. Or fabricating other "connections" needed for political reasons.

And you will get it, often. Even if false.

For truth, why MDMA? It is the ultimate party, relax and share drug. A natural for disclosure.

Then there was FDA's sudden ban, in the 1960's,
based on anecdotal information, not reasonable testing.

All research had to stop on the "outside".

Was that for political and not scientific reasons?

Fast forward: Did Cheney and the other torture afficinados know of other,
more reliable ways of getting information than torture.
What was the decision-making process to choose.

Did they want "truth" or a "confession" to something untrue.

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Is this MDMA technique what President Obama referred to when he said that we have other ways of getting at what people know, and we do not need torture. See something like it 4/29/09 at ://www.click2houston.com/politics/19319397/detail.html.

True if you seek truth. False if you are really setting up a story line and need the person to say what you want. Like witch hunts. The Malleus Maleficarum lives. See ://www.malleusmaleficarum.org/; ://www.sacred-texts.com/pag/mm/. Yes, I am a witch. Stop. Stop! Like setting up case for war, see ://edition.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/05/14/iraq.torture/

Whichever way that political issue goes, meanwhile, here we look at ways to get true information: sassafras derivative, benign; or torture, malignant. What are the factors.

Here is something the Army has known about for decades: MDMA. And we ask what did it do with it? Or the CIA. Which had what is unclear. Did they share? Explore further? Why not?

Interesting to us: there is a long-known capability of the ecstasy drug ingredient, MDMA. This is extracted from safrole or sassafras oil, and it lowers people's defenses, produces euphoria, a state of mind where the person just wants to share. Ecstasy. Would you believe? A way to force disclosures?

Use as a truth serum mechanism. There have been other forays into truth serums (sera? que sera?) see Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics at ://www.cognitiveliberty.org/8jcl/8JCL77.html/. But could the use of truth serums be in itself a kind of torture. See ://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/04/07/60II/main548221.shtml/ No easy answers. But the kind of drug used, and in what dose and with what effects, could make the difference.

Still, we have the current need of our military/ intelligence community to get reliable disclosures of information from captives. This assumes their instructions are to get truth, and not just words to fill in what is needed to make a story line, forced but false confessions to close the case. For truth, does the Army indeed use, or could they; and can they not substitute, sassafras/ecstasy as a productive alternative to torture. Torture is illegal, immoral and ineffective even in a time-bomb scenario (who has time to waterboard over a hundred times; and still the person may lie). Anything to stop the pain.

• Yet is this use of ecstasy really off limits because it was banned by the FDA in the 1960's or so? Or was the ban helpful to the Army/ CIA in keeping its information to itself for decades. A ban for political and not scientific health reasons. Top Secret. If so, it failed. People know and knew what ecstasy produced. If the Army had it, why did they not use it - why go to torture instead? Just because torture is more satisfying to the Cheney-type mesomorphs in charge, preferring muscle? See Fear of Fog, Ectomorphs, Mesomorphs. Whose interest is served by the ban. Intelligence at work? Or lack of. All depends on the purpose for the torture: Truth, bad choice. Get what you want, good choice.
  
• For instant overview, and the politics involved in the handling of MDMA and its speed-of-light ban, 3,4-methylenedioxmethamphetamine, see Substance Abuse, A Comprehensive Textbook, by Charles S. Grob and Russell L. Polond, at http://www.drugtext.org/library/research/mdma/archive/15/default.htm/ at 24 MDMA. FN 2
  

Sections here:

I. The bad effects of MDMA, at high doses (Army used lethal), problems of adulteration, misuse

II. Potential of MDMA as a "truth serum", everybody relax and togetherness abounds

III. What We Know About Testing So Far: Still learning.
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a) MDMA as Army Experimental Agent 1475, or EA-1475, or ea1475

b) Testing and Consent Issues: Who was used, if anybody. Human testing? In the gap 20 years?

IV. Good Uses for MDMA - Therapies, No Need for Torture; Other.

V. Was the FDA ban for political, economic even military reasons, but not scientific as to the public's access with reasonable information, dosing

Footnotes. Substantive here. Read especially FN 2, the Grob and Polond text summary.

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I. Bad health effects of using MDMA

The bad news comes before the good, so you can compare these kinds of effects of a drug to the bad effects of torture on someone.

MDMA was tested by the US Army in the 1950's, but only on animals, and the results were released in the 1970's (why the delay?) as to those high doses in animals. Declassification only in 1969, says this site, MDMA Drug Information, at Medic8 Drug Information, at ://www.medic8.com/medicines/MDMA.html/ These were "lethal dose" studies, see the Drug Information site. MDMA is also known as Mud, Molly or Madman. Good summary at that long site. Similar topics to our FN 2, the Golb and Polond text. A/k/a Adam for MDMA.

Adverse reactions: See also FN 2, Golb and Polond; and Medic8.

Here is a list from a Philip Wolfson, Journal of Psychoactive Drugs Vol.18/4 1986, his book Meeting at the Edge with Adam: A Man For All Seasons, (Adam is another name for MDMA). He is/was a psychotherapist who believed that using MDMA may open new possibilities for psychotherapy treatment, when used in conjunction with it.

See the quotation and discussion at E for Ecstasy by a Nicholas Saunders, appendices to 1993 book, at ://paranoia.lycaeum.org/mdma/e.for.ecstasy.append/ There, Wolfson is attributed with this list. How much of this is high-dose related?

"(1) Severe and potentially fatal reactions can occur unpredictably on occasions.
(2) Seizures are said to have occurred.
(3) MDMA may reduce resistance to infection.
(4) MDMA causes increase in blood pressure.
(5) A variety of short-term reactions may occur, sometimes persisting or recurring for several months, including anxiety and insomnia. A client's judgment can be interfered with by their heightened sense of excitement under MDMA.
(6) MDMA has no established safety record - the necessary experiments have not been made." (emphasis added)

The government does not list any of those reactions, however - and only shows official concern that there can be adulterants in the mix that can be harmful - otherwise, little reason to ban it except that people like it and "abuse it" - see that at US Dept of Justice, DEA, Drug Information, at //www.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/mdma.html/

II. Potential of MDMA as a "Truth Serum" Type Technique

More from Wolfson at the Saunders book site at ://paranoia.lycaeum.org/mdma/e.for.ecstasy.append (yes, this is totem pole hearsay, but you are alerted so you yourself can go vet)
.

Totem Pole Hearsay: This, in the woods in Romania. Brancusi?

"He (Wolfson) says that MDMA is unique because:

"1. It offers a rapid and significant break with people's defence structures.
2. It can facilitate a shift from a state of self-hatred to one of love of self and others.
3. It encourages people to shift from isolation to contact and intimacy and from withholding
to giving.
4. When MDMA has given them a more positive attitude, people find it easier to make decisions."

III. What Have Know About the Testing-Non-Testing So Far

A. Ask the Army. They know.

What we know is from the Saunders site, Grob and Polond at FN 2, the Medic8 site, and others as shown here.

First, the Saunders site. Again we are using wonderful totem-pole hearsay. Do a "find" for that at ://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?court=ma&vol=appslip/17416&invol=1/. In short, totem pole hearsay is like the old Listerine commercial - he says that she says that he has halitosis.

The report is from a Rick Doblin, president, Multi-Disciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, in the US (the Saunders site is British). Doblin presented this as part of his dissertation at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, see ://www.maps.org/staff.html/.

"1. Report of US Army tests on MDMA, from Rick Doblin president of the Multi-disciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies in the U.S.

"In the 1950's, MDMA was one of the analogs of MDA that were given to animals by the U.S. army at the Edgwood Arsenal, which was then investigating drugs for use in chemical warfare. There is no evidence in the public domain to indicate that MDMA, which was code named EA-1475 (Experimental Agent 1475), was ever given to humans or was tried as a truth serum." (emphasis supplied)

Discussion:

Well, why not give it to humans or try it as a truth serum? It looks like the Army did. This was before the ban. Are you kidding us? That's what the Army does - force information from people. Why don't we believe that the Army just left it alone.

Here is Point A. There is Point B. Connect the dots.

If MDMA was not followed up, perhaps it was just too soft to satisfy military people. Use a nice gurney and a quiet room to get reliable information? No, we are the Army. We like blood. Screams. Punish, and personally, even if it is against self-interest. And takes 138 times to get something. Or more, or less.

Tentative conclusion:

Apparently we still have a tool available in MDMA, from sassafras; that remains largely untested, because either the Army will not do it out of honor; or they have done it and have found it extremely effective, so it must be kept Top Secret.

Yet, here it is on the internet. We see as ordinary people following dots that safrole/MDMA appears to have great potential in fostering reliable disclosures because that is what the substance does - from the old hospitality drink of Native Americans, see Sassafras and History, International and Historical Uses, to today - MDMA fosters trust, openness, togetherness, fuzzy feelings. It has been considered as a "truth serum" before. See ://www.psychonaut.com/index.php?option=com_jd-wiki&Itemid=&id=mdma/

• That Psychonaut site notes that the Army in the 1950's MDMA was found "unsuitable" for the purpose, a truth serum. And never (they say) tested people. Just overdosed animals.
  

And the Army never released its results on the animals until 1973 - twenty years later. See the Medic8 site.

Declassification until 1969, and still not released for a further 4 years? Does this raise any questions, class? The sites at Psychonaut and Medic8 note the effect of the drug, to promote, in sum, "togetherness." Are we to believe that the Army only looked for lethal side effects possibly, and so they released those results only and very late in 1973? That they never tested out its truth-forcing? When that is their job?

B. Testing worries.

Who were the test subjects? If there were any during the 20 years between the "study" and the release of results, heh heh. Did the people know they were being tested. Was consent freely given, and in writing as required by the Geneva Convention, see ://academic.udayton.edu/health/05bioethics/01taylors.htm. What happened to them, the people tested, if any were. Military testing: see ://www.humanrights-geneva.info/US-A-long-and-disturbing-history,2972/
.

And are the side and after affects really more benign than in torture. If not, say so. Look at FN 2 and Medic8 for more on side effects. At this point, however, it looks like with proper dosing, bad side effects could well be avoided. We know what dosing gets used in these kinds of tests, we think. Geared to produce the worst.

• What do various sites say, and, yes, they do speak: See the effects the drug produces, and the responses - horrors - it works, or just might.

MDMA.net:

"The heightened emotional responsiveness, lowering of defensive barriers, openness and sense of closeness to others induced by MDMA can promote an honesty of self-disclosure that might be manipulated for malign ends. Fortunately, this hasn't yet happened on an organised scale." ://www.mdma.net/

This quotation is from a site exploring the history and uses of MDMA. Note the boy scout reluctance to use it because it could be used "for malignant ends." Effectiveness as a truth serum: This is still open.

Army testing. Back to that. What is wrong here. See again the brief overview of the experiments at MDMA at ://www.mdma.net/. Short, but detailed: A helpful place for summary as well.

Everybody knows that the Army looked at it as a truth serum, but nobody knows what they saw. Just that suddenly, after the Army testing in the fifties, the bans came in the sixties and seventies. Look at FN 2 for the pressures on the scientists.
.
Meanwhile, shall we spike the UN punch? For a little togetherness?
.

IV. Why Has MDMA Been Ignored.
It seems to do what it says - people just love to open up with it

Maddow, Olbermann, all the talkies who do more than just churn opinions, you have high priced explorers on the roster. I am a little old lady in sneakers and putting stuff together that looks interesting. Join in.
.

So far, we are told that truth serums are not foolproof, and someone still can mislead a questioner when in the twilight, see Sassafras Tree, Natural Pragmatism, Truth Serum Idea. No more reliable than torture, say. And we know you may have to do that 138 times to get what you want, if you ever do, and by then the ticking bomb is boom. Was MDMA included in those overviews of drugs?

Back of old medicine cabinet. What is inside? Dare we look?

Have we really looked in the cupboard, to see what there is other than torture? Turn it around!

No. Nobody has tested MDMA for its use as a truth serum, on the public record that we see so far. Is the lack of research because the FDA has banned it? Then lift the ban, or narrow it. We can't touch that. Do we believe that would stop the Army.

All the ban does is stop research, and regular people from checking the scientific bases for the bans, and whether less restrictive alternatives are scientifically supported here. FN 1.

V. Good uses for MDMA, possibly.

Treatments. Benign recreation.
A matter of dose, like alcohol

And, of course, avoid Torture.

• MDMA widely spread among psychotherapists in the 50's-60's ff. As ecstasy, it became known as a psychedelic hug drug - "Adam" for a shortcut name. FN 1. That was an era of using drugs in therapies, and much of that may well have been a fad and later debunked; but a spin-off for disclosure purposes surely can be explored.

See this google book (copy and paste the address, long as it is) Speed, Ecstasy, Ritalin, The Science of Amphetamines, 2006, by Prof. Leslie Iversen, Ph.D., Dept. of Pharmacology, Oxford Univ., at Section 8.1, page 149-150 ff, Chemistry and history.

The site is a long URL - copy and paste at ://books.google.com/books?id=CkAaAZRLfOcC&pg=PA150&lpg=PA150&dq=sassafras+tree+truth+serum&source=bl&ots=U1tVm1MsFj&sig=eRioOVlwhjv2tTs2rHSIAkmmvy4&hl=en&ei=xeMLSqaFLOKntgfw1OH0Bw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5#PPA149,M1/.

That book is reviewed in 2006 at ://www.newscientist.com/article/mg19125622.200/

If so, it is all the more damning that we did not choose to use it over torture.

Discussion:

As a culture, is this true: That we prefer research into, the process of, and application of torture, that is, punishment; to using something that might be pleasurable to get the job done, and done more reliably: MDMA. Is all that is pleasure, sinful? Are we still stuck in that?
.

Sin and Pleasure: The Contemplation

V. Ban for Cultural and Political Reasons, not Scientific

That is what it looks like, after all this time looking at the angles. MDMA is a safrole, or sassafras oil, extract long used and long-banned as a psychedelic, pleasurable. And look at the outcry against researching its good uses, and promoting torture instead by opposing investigating, challenging the use of torture. See FN 1 for the non-merits of the ban on safrole; and FN 2 for assessments of the grounding of the ban. Note that no rat, even though allergic in the sense of being in an allelopathic relationship with sassafras, got tumors when doses were used like those humans would, proportional. Don't let that idea out.

So, we don't and won't use this potential resource if we need to get information from people, as apparently we do need, if research were allowed to continue on it. The reason sassafras is not researched is 1) the ban, cultural rather than scientific, see FN 1; and 2) value judgments, that if it works, it might be used for malign ends.

If we aren't already malign in using torture, who is?

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FN 1 History. Ecstasy spread to yuppies in the '80's. Intense rapturous delight! More! The DEA banned it, even from medical use, over objections of those who sought a less restrictive control, see the Iversen book at 151. But addiction and finding brain damage - how was that done. Again, it was in those rats who are allergic anyway - yet, it was enough to ban it all as to humans.

And that was so even though there were no tumors even in the rats at dosage levels like humans would use, proportional. Nonetheless, look what happened.

• A judge ordered it to be available by prescription and for research, not banned; but the DEA put it on the full ban list anyway. Iversen at page 152. Where is the science, and where is the culture. Guess.
  
  The ban, however, just curtailed the research - attitudes of the recreationally minded did not change. The controversy over the ban was free advertising.
  
  Idea - The government will not foster unfixed testing (they use huge doses on rats already allergic to it, so no wonder the rats get tumored)

• because sassafras grows in our back yards, and
• we might make what we want ourselves, and then
• what profit would the Manufacturers and the lobbyists and Pharma make.

Today, that argument gets bigger: This is a recession, so we can't have people doing for themselves and putting other people out of work. They need to buy. And the ultimate argument: ban it because sassafras is an ingredient in ecstasy, and we can't have that, either. A cultural reason.

Guard your pies, pickles, children's stories and vanilla, mmmmmm. And lawns.

The safrole extract needed for ecstasy is also in "nutmeg... dill, parsley seed, crocus (such a pretty yard. You say you are having a lawn party?), saffron, vanilla bean, and calamus." Also the above-ground woody part of another tree, the Ocotea pretiosa. See the Speed, Ecstasy, Ritalin book above.
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For Ocotea pretiosa, see ://www.spiritgarden.co.uk/cart/index.pl/catid_5/proid_108/_/_/BrazilianSassafras/OcoteaPretiosa

Brer Rabbit?

He loves calamus. Calamus is in The List there, of substances with safrole. It was/is a common digestive with nice side effects. See it at mealtime at Uncle Remus Tales, Translations: Uncle Remus Initiates the Little Boy; and, same site, Calamus Root Side Note.

.......................................................................
FN 2. Grob and Polond textbook section on MDMA, looks like chapter 24 there.

Topics on MDMA include:

History,
Epidemiology,
Potential Treatment Applications, but before beneficial-purpose testing could be done, it was banned - on the most restrictive Schedule 1. Even smoking and drinking decreased while subjects in earlier studies were using ecstasy in controlled settings.

On to Adverse Clinical Effects, not seen in healthy, occasional, moderate users; but in excess - as with liguor, we suppose. Also there are issues of amateur "manufacture" and purity and quality of what is marketed. Like the stills of white lightning? Also issues of pre-exisiting medical vulnerabilities. Long section on the bad effects and on whom and when and why.

Then on to Neurotoxicity. No link necessarily. Lab animals show effects of serotonin change, but not lasting. Extending animal results to human has been inconclusive. Go read the whole thing. Too detailed for here.

Then the zinger in the field - political and economic agendas invading the scientific arena. There are pressures on the scientists to ally their findings with conventional "expectations."

Science vs. politics. When will science prevail. Obama? Your turn.