Cocaine and Ecstasy Cause DNA Mutation

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/news/story.jsp?floc=FF-RTO-romta&idq=/ff/story/0002%2F20031205%2F154957733.htm&sc=romta&photoid=20031205PAR01D

Cocaine and Ecstasy Cause DNA Mutation -Italy Study


ROME (Reuters) - Cocaine and ecstasy not only cause addiction and raise the risk of cancer but also provoke genetic mutations, Italian scientists said Friday.

"Cocaine and ecstasy have proved to be more dangerous than we had imagined," said Giorgio Bronzetti, chief scientist at the National Center for Research's (CNR) biotechnology department.

"These drugs, on top of their toxicological effects, attack DNA provoking mutations and altering the hereditary material. This is very worrying for the effects it could have on future generations," he said.

The use of ecstasy, a drug popular at all-night dance parties, increased by 70 percent between 1995 and 2000 according to a United Nations report published in September.

Ecstasy and amphetamines have overtaken cocaine and heroin as the fastest growing global narcotics menace, the study said.

The CNR report, which took more than three years to complete, said animal tests had shown a direct relationship between ecstasy and cocaine intake and the effects on DNA.

"In other words, the longer the time frame of drug consumption, the greater the damage to DNA," Bronzetti said.


discuss

Holy shit, (some) drugs are bad for you? Stop the presses!

maybe itll work out for the better, and it will be like x-men.

Maybe theyre just lying to get funding again.

In the interest of public safety and health;

If YOU, have any cocaine or ecstasy, you think may cause genetic mutation or possibly be harmful to your health;

please send it (posthaste) to:

Eraser_X
1730 N. 5th St.
Phila,PA 19122

All suspect samples received will undergo rigorous and impartial testing under not so clinical settings.

They're PROMOTING drugs by doing this! I mean, who wouldn't want to be:

The Hulk
The Fantastic Four
X-Men
Spider Man
etc.

?!?!?!

Maybe my anti-drug policy should slide so I can join the ranks of the X-Men?

All I can hope is that EXCESSIVE misuse of the drugs will severely affect peoples ability to procreate by either killing their fertility, killing them, or hopefully making them such annoyingly drug retarded losers that no-body will breed with them.
Unfortunately DNA mutuations only likely to lead to cancer, or give you meopish freaky unicorn babies that you will have to feed through a tube till they die at 4 1/2 years old.
Yay for drugs.

[Edited on Dec 06, 2003 by yumchen]

yumchen, you are enlightened.

i hope i get x-ray vision...hmmm maybe not...there are a lot of people i don't think i'd want to see with no clothes on. damn drugs!

Morgan said: I was just thinking that...it makes me want to try it in the hopes that I can develop a superpower.


It gave me a superpower. I can forget anything immediately.

I'm taking this entire press release with a large grain of salt for two reasons. First - if this original research, then why doesn't the press release refer to any published scientific article? It's generally accepted protocol within the scientific community that once a new finding has been accepted by a peer-reviewed journal, that one then can issue a press release referring to that paper. The reason for this is to stop creating false hype about scientific results (think: cold fusion) by at least making sure that other scientists have reviewed the results before they're released to the general public.

Second - if this is an agency report and not an original publication, then it should be the result of compiling lots of other published scientific literature so that the preponderance of data pointing in one direction is enough to make a convincing argument. A scan through the scientific literature revealed not a single article relating either cocaine or MDMA usage with DNA mutation. You can try checking it yourself in the medical database.

Edit: In fact, this study seems to suggest the opposite - that cocaine has no effect on genotoxicity.

While I wouldn't condone frequent abuse of cocaine or MDMA, the problems associated with them don't seem to have anything to do DNA mutation, as far as I can tell. This looks like it could be a case of politics preceding science.

[Edited on Dec 07, 2003 by legionnaire]

I'm more of an RNA kinda guy myself, but you go girl!

PCP has been known to give people superhuman powers, so why not coke and ecstasy?
Personally I think either flying or superhuman strength would be the powers to have. Either that or become like Magneto. His powers are awesome. And he can fly if he's wearing a metal belt.

Dude, that is such a lie perpetrated by people out to ruin the tobacco industry. If you get lung cancer, you can't enjoy delicious cigarettes, and they lose customers!

So do oxygen and general replication...you have 1 DNA mutation in your body every second. Woo hoo.

*looks up from coffee table dusted with copious amounts of white powder*

Huh?

Grain of salt my friend. People have been saying that about other drugs (LSD, etc) for years. Research is still inconclusive. As with any study, the results need to be replicated.

[Edited on Dec 07, 2003 by wigglefree]

i was speaking tongue in cheek.

i did a pub med journal search too and couldn't find anything related to the article either. if they ever do release a paper it well most likely show that MDMA is a mutagen in the same category as alcohol. (i.e. when you metabolize alcohol it turns into acetaldehyde that may then bond to the DNA base pair.) for example, they might be talking about the phenomenon of dopamine being taken into the serotonin neuron and broken down by an MAO that will leave H.Cl behind, which could cause DNA damage. anything that is an oxidant or can be broken down into an oxidant has the potential to cause DNA mutation.

<0


[Edited on Dec 07, 2003 by silentium]

You wana check out some crazy drug shit, google MPTP.

Last time there was a huge, ground-breaking study about the negative effects of MDMA, it turned out they'd actually been giving the monkeys speed by accident.

Ecstacy retraction