Nexus - 1302 - New Times Magazine-pages

Page Content (OCR)

NEWS ... GLOBAL NEWS ... in economic cycles, which was the case of "Hydroponic marijuana is grown in USING PUBLIC DOMAIN TO the Soviet economic model, Washington _ fertiliser and fertilising solutions that are PREVENT PATENTING OF PLANTS in economic cycles, which was the case of "Hydroponic marijuana is grown in the Soviet economic model, Washington _ fertiliser and fertilising solutions that are and Brussels do exactly the same thing. eavily laced with trace elements and The hero of the day is the Brazilian for- _ particularly some of the heavy metals. It is eign minister, Celso Amorim, the leader of ad, not because of the concentration but the G20 group of middle-income develop- ecause it is actually introducing toxic ing countries which has managed to forge a levels of heavy metals into developing common stance with the lower-income rains—and then comes the psychosis that developing countries, forming a strong bloc comes with disturbance of brain function." of 110 nations—the G110. Dr Taylor said that if it took a certain (Source: Pravda, December 17, 2005) amount of THC to get stoned and if mari- juana users smoked a more powerful THC HEAVY METALS IN HYDROPONIC _ joint, they would stop when they got to MARWUANA LINKED TO their stoned state. "PSYCHOTIC EPISODES" "Tf it's got lower doses, they will smoke physician from the Sunshine Coast, more. Saying high doses of THC have Queensland, Australia, has stated that started bringing out these psychotic the heavy metals in hydroponically grown changes is a mistaken belief because peo- marijuana are affecting developing brains __ ple will smoke to their need." and increasing the psychotic episodes expe- Dr Taylor said that because of legal rienced by users. issues surrounding marijuana, it is impossi- Addiction medicine physician Dr David _ ble to conceive a research project to clarify Taylor said there is an ongoing misconcep- the matter. He estimates that hydroponic tion shared by the majority of medical col- marijuana accounts for 80% of the market leagues concerning the active agent, THC, and said that, in Australia, seized marijuana in hydroponic marijuana that "caused" psy- _ is not routinely calculated for concentration chotic mental states. He said THC is _ nor analysed for potentially dangerous unlil 1 ta ha th. anante L a quiet government office in the Indian capital New Delhi, some 100 doctors are hunched over computers, poring over ancient medical texts and keying in infor- mation. These doctors are practitioners of ayurveda, unani and siddha—ancient Indian medical systems that date back thousands of years. The ambitious $2-million project, chris- tened Traditional Knowledge Digital Library, will roll out an encyclopaedia of the country's traditional medicines in five languages—English, French, German, Japanese and Spanish—in an effort to stop corporations from claiming them as their own and patenting them. The electronic encyclopaedia will con- tain information on the traditional medi- cines, including exhaustive references, photographs of the plants and scans from the original texts. Dr Vinod Kumar Gupta, who is leading the traditional wealth encyclopaedia project and heads India's National Institute of Science Communication and Information Resources (NISCAIR), reckons that, of the nearly 5,000 patents given out by the US Patent Office on various medicinal plants by the year 2000, some 80% involved plants of Indian origin. Practitioners of traditional medicines say their importance cannot be denied. According to the World Health Organization, 70% of the people living in India use traditional medicine for primary health care. Also, some 42% of the people living in the US and 70% of the people liv- ing in Canada have used traditional medi- cines at least once for treatment. (Source: BBC News, December 7, 2005, http://news.bbc.co.uk) HEAVY METALS IN HYDROPONIC. MARWUANA LINKED TO "PSYCHOTIC EPISODES" Abusician from the Sunshine Coast, Queensland, Australia, has stated that the heavy metals in hydroponically grown marijuana are affecting developing brains and increasing the psychotic episodes expe- rienced by users. Addiction medicine physician Dr David Taylor said there is an ongoing misconcep- tion shared by the majority of medical col- leagues concerning the active agent, THC, in hydroponic marijuana that "caused" psy- chotic mental states. He said THC is unlikely to be the culprit. "Our attention should be turned to evi- dence about the adverse influences of heavy metals on the development of chil- dren's brains," he said. "Hydroponic mari- juana is laced with heavy metals and they are, in my view, the culprits disturbing brain function. agents. A former senior medical officer with the Alcohol and Tobacco and Other Drugs Unit at Nambour Hospital, Dr Taylor now practises from his clinic, Kalinn Therapy, at Buderim. (Source: Sunshine Coast Daily, Queensland, November 21, 2005) IBM CALLS FOR GLOBAL IDENTITY SYSTEM lhe growing need for fast, accurate veri- fication of personal identities has prompted a call from an industry observer for a global agency to set international standards. The realm of identity and access man- agement (IAM) is heating up as nations like the UK and the USA increase their use of biometrics and other identifying tech- nologies in ID cards, border controls and other areas. Beyond different governments "trying to create a mosaic for what they want as good identity management", wider international a 8 = NEXUS ————————— Or ra a FN om. oe. § ae oa www.nexusmagazine.com FEBRUARY — MARCH 2006