Could tobacco hold the key to beating cancer?

[Ansel]

:-]

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...rk-humans.html

[QuincyBaker]

But, but, but.
Tobacco is always bad, and always kills people. Right? RIGHT?!

[Crow]

But, but, but.
Tobacco is always bad, and always kills people. Right? RIGHT?!

[Kaplan]

This article appeared in the March 2014 issue of Discover Magazine, about nicotine's ability to help with Parkinson's and various other issues:

http://discovermagazine.com/2014/march/13-nicotine-fix

Perhaps most surprising is that, in studies by Boyd and others, nicotine has not caused addiction or withdrawal when used to treat disease. These findings fly in the face of nicotine’s reputation as one of the most addictive substances known, but it’s a reputation built on myth. Tobacco may well be as addictive as heroin, as some have claimed. But as scientists know, getting mice or other animals hooked on nicotine alone is dauntingly difficult. As a 2007 paper in the journal Neuropharmacology put it: “Tobacco use has one of the highest rates of addiction of any abused drug.” Paradoxically it’s almost impossible to get laboratory animals hooked on pure nicotine, though it has a mildly pleasant effect.

The same study found that tobacco smoke itself is necessary to amp up nicotine’s addictiveness. In 2005, for instance, researchers at the University of California, Irvine, found that animals self-administer a combination of nicotine and acetaldehyde, an organic chemical found in tobacco, significantly more often than either chemical alone. In 2009, a French team found that combining nicotine with a cocktail of five other chemicals found in tobacco — anabasine, nornicotine, anatabine, cotinine and myosmine — significantly increased rats’ hyperactivity and self-administration of the mix compared with nicotine alone.

In short, the estimated 45.3 million people, or 19.3 percent of all adults, in the United States who still smoke are not nicotine fiends. They’re nicotine-anabasine-nornicotine-anatabine-cotinine-myosmine-acetaldehyde-and-who-knows-what-else fiends. It is tobacco, with its thousands of chemical constituents, that rightly merits our fear and loathing as the Great Satan of addictiveness. Nicotine, alone: not so much.

[michellepena]

it is the big no, it causes death

[Snusdog]

it is the big no, it causes death

What! I'm using it right now and I feel fi..........

[michellepena]

What! I'm using it right now and I feel fi..........

what do you feel now?

[Snusdog]

what do you feel now?

I feel like all the world is spinning away......I see a bright light and here voices singing ....... no wait .... that's just my damn neighbor with his flood lights on playing some kind of opera crap on his back patio

So basically.......I just feel annoyed......which is pretty much how I always feel.

Carry on