Legend of the Corsair

Yes. Today I have posted a zillion times - well, at least a half-dozen anyways. I even wrote poetry! I decided to read some news articles...

Kenya burned eleven "witches" recently. Dear powers that be, that is excruciatingly horrible.

And... *shudder* there is a new wait-til-the-abuses-start-happening drug that is currently being researched:

Trust drug may cure social phobia

A nasal spray which increases our trust for strangers is showing promise as a treatment for social phobia, say scientists from Zurich University.

They found that people who inhaled the "love hormone" oxytocin continued to trust strangers with their money - even after they were betrayed.

Brain scans showed the hormone lowered activity in the amygdala - a region which is overactive in social phobics.

Drug trials are underway and early signs are promising say the scientists.

Nicknamed the "cuddle chemical", oxytocin is a naturally produced hormone, which has been shown to play a role in social relations, maternal bonding, and also in sex.

Lead researcher Dr Thomas Baumgartner said: "We now know for the first time what exactly is going on in the brain when oxytocin increases trust.

"We found that oxytocin has a very specific effect in social situations. It seems to diminish our fears.

"Based on our results, we can now conclude that a lack of oxytocin is at least one of the causes for the fear experienced by social phobics.

"We hope and indeed we expect that we can improve their sociability by administering oxytocin."

Powerful effect

Previous studies have shown that participants in "trust games" took greater risks with their money after inhaling the hormone via a nasal spray.

In this latest experiment, published in the journal Neuron, the researchers asked volunteer subjects to take part in a similar trust game.

They were asked to contribute money to a human trustee, with the understanding that the trustee would invest the money and decide whether to return the profits or betray the subjects trust by keeping the profit.

The subjects also received doses of oxytocin or a placebo via a nasal spray.

After investing, the participants were given feedback on the trustees. When their trust was abused, the placebo group became less willing to invest. But the players who had been given oxytocin continued to trust their money with a broker.

"We can see that oxytocin has a very powerful effect," said Dr Baumgartner.

"The subjects who received oxytocin demonstrated no change in their trust behaviour, even though they were informed that their trust was not honoured in roughly 50% of cases."

In a second game, where the human trustees were replaced by a computer which gave random returns, the hormone made no difference to the players' investment behaviour.

"It appears that oxytocin affects social responses specifically related to trust," Dr Baumgartner said.

Defence barriers

During the games, the players' brains were scanned using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

The researchers found that oxytocin reduced activity in two regions which act as natural "defence barriers".

They are the amygdala, which processes fear and danger, and an area of the striatum, which helps to guide future behaviour, based on reward feedback.

The amygdala has been found to be extremely active in the brains of sufferers of social phobia.

Dr Baumgartner's colleague, Professor Markus Heinrichs, has begun a study where social phobia sufferers are given either oxytocin or a placebo, in combination with cognitive and behavioural therapy.

The trials are ongoing, but Dr Baumgartner said that early signs appear "promising".

The hormone could also be a candidate for treating patients with autism, he says.

"Autistic people also have a fear of social situations and have problems interacting, so it is very likely that oxytocin could help," he said.

"This hormone seems to play a very specific role in social situations so might be able to improve autism. But so far I am not aware of any studies."

Mauricio Delgado, a psychologist at Rutgers University, said: "This study has significant implications for understanding mental disorders where deficits in social behaviour are observed.

"While a degree of wariness may protect one from harm, being able to ''forgive and forget'' is an imperative step in maintaining long-term relationships.

"The reported oxytocin finding could provide a bridge for potential clinical applications."

Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/health/7412438.stm

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First "twisted" application I can think of is the military uses... Way to defeat the enemy, get the enemy to talk, and so forth. Trust your government to protect you, you don't need rights because we are trustworthy and will take care of you.
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And then there are the rising rates of possible starvation out there, revealed in this NY Times article: World's Poor Pay Price As Crop Research Is Cut (needs subscription). A series of excerpts follows:

"The brown plant hopper, an insect no bigger than a gnat, is multiplying by the billions and chewing through rice paddies in East Asia, threatening the diets of many poor people.

With demand beginning to outstrip supply, prices have soared, and food riots have erupted that have undermined the stability of foreign governments.

Crop by crop and country by country, agricultural research and development are lagging.

The demand for food keeps growing. Insects and plant diseases adapt, overcoming efforts to thwart them.

Many poor countries, instead of developing their own agriculture, turned to the world market to buy cheap rice and wheat. In 1986, Agriculture Secretary John Block called the idea of developing countries feeding themselves “an anachronism from a bygone era,” saying they should just buy American.

Around 2004, the world economy began growing more quickly, about 5 percent a year. So as the food supply was lagging, millions of people were gaining the money to improve their diets.

The world began to use more grain than it was producing, cutting into reserves, and prices started rising. Early this year, as stocks fell to perilous levels, international grain prices doubled or even tripled, threatening as many as 100 million people with malnutrition.

A plant hopper outbreak can destroy 20 percent of a harvest."