Wednesday, January 31, 2007

cannabis drug may help FIGHT obesity

LONDON (Jan. 30) - Human trials of an experimental treatment for obesity derived from cannabis, which is commonly associated with stimulating hunger, are scheduled to begin in the second half of this year, Britain's GW Pharmaceuticals Plc announced Tuesday.
A British pharmaceutical company says it has derived a treatment from cannabis that could help fight obesity. The company has already developed a treatment derived from cannabis for multiple sclerosis.
Several other companies, such as Sanofi-Aventis, which is investigating Acomplia, are working on new drugs that will switch off the brain circuits that make people hungry when they smoke cannabis. GW Pharma, however, says it has derived a treatment from cannabis that could help suppress hunger.
"The cannabis plant has 70 different cannabinoids in it and each has a different affect on the body," GW Managing Director Justin Gover told Reuters in a telephone interview. "Some can stimulate your appetite, and some in the same plant can suppress your appetite. It is amazing both scientifically and commercially," he said. [duh. it also makes a great car freshener--better than pine trees!--the rev.]
Drugs have to pass three stages of tests in humans before being eligible for approval by regulators in a process that takes many years. Sanofi-Aventis' Acomplia, which it believes can achieve $3 billion in annual sales, is already on sale in Europe and it is waiting for a U.S. regulatory decision in April.
Several other big drug companies also already have similar products to Acomplia in clinical trials. GW is best known for developing Sativex, a treatment derived from cannabis that fights spasticity in multiple sclerosis patients. Sativex, an under-the-tongue spray, has been approved in Canada, but has hit delays with regulators in Britain. GW submitted Sativex for assessment by several European regulators in September, and hopes to secure approval for the UK, Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands in the second half of this year at the earliest, the company said on Tuesday. GW's marijuana plants are grown indoors in a secret location in Southern England. [this should come as no surprise!--the rev.]
AND IN A COMPLETELY UNRELATED BIT OF NEWS . . .
Ancient Village Sheds Light on Stonehenge
WASHINGTON (Jan. 30) - A village of small houses that may have sheltered the builders of the mysterious Stonehenge - or people attending festivals there - has been found by archaeologists studying the stone circle in England. Eight of the houses, with central hearths, have been excavated, and there may be as many as 25 of them, Mike Parker Pearson said Tuesday at a briefing organized by the National Geographic Society.
"These are people who knew how to party," he told CNN.
The ancient houses are at a site known as Durrington Walls, about two miles from Stonehenge. It is also the location of a wooden version of the stone circle. The village was carbon dated to about 2600 B.C., about the same time Stonehenge was built. The Great Pyramid in Egypt was built at about the same time, said Parker Pearson of Sheffield University. Julian Thomas of Manchester University noted that both Stonehenge and Durrington Walls have avenues connecting them to the Avon River, indicating a pattern of movement between the sites.
"Clearly, this is a place that was of enormous importance," he said of the new find. The researchers speculated that Durrington Walls was a place for the living and Stonehenge - where cremated remains have been found - was a cemetery and memorial. The wooden houses at the new site were square and about 14 feet along each side. They were almost identical to stone houses built at about the same time in the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland, Parker Pearson said. He said there were indications of bed frames along the side walls and of a dresser or storage unit of some sort on the wall opposite the door. Stone tools, animal bones, arrowheads and other artifacts were uncovered in the village. Remains of pigs indicated they were about nine months old when killed, which would mark a midwinter festival. Stonehenge was oriented to face the midsummer sunrise and midwinter sunset, while the wooden circle at Durrington Walls faced the midwinter sunrise and midsummer sunset.
Two of the houses, found by Thomas, were separate from the others and may have been the dwellings of community leaders or perhaps were cult houses used for religious rituals. Those sites lacked the debris and household trash that was common in the other homes, he noted. Durrington appears "very much a place of the living," Parker Pearson said. In contrast, no one ever lived at the stone circle at Stonehenge, which was the largest cemetery in Britain of its time. Stonehenge is thought to contain 250 cremations. The research was supported by the National Geographic Society, Arts & Humanities Research Council, English Heritage and Wessex Archaeology.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Maybe they can get something to help the city of Boston chill the fuck out

http://www.g4tv.com/attackoftheshow/blog/tag/131/AquaGate.html

the mostly reverend said...

fucking "bah-stone-age-eons." no sense of humor, nor appreciation for modern art media.