Blogs / Discoblog

Seeking out new chemicals that could help scientists develop new medicines and drugs might not be so hard after all—maybe we just need to look for bright colors.

When insects like ladybugs, tiger moths and many others don brilliant hues, they’re saying, “Don’t eat me—I’m full of toxins and taste terrible.” The insects have to get those chemicals from somewhere, and the mostly likely candidates are the plants they live and feed upon. Scientists from the Smithsonian’s Tropical Research Institute in Panama say that these plants, with their weird cocktails of toxins, could be best the best sources of new drugs for humans, if we could only find them.

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Prozac (and the rest of the SSRI family) may not do much as far as treating most cases of depression, but it turns out it might do wonders for lazy eye. A team of Finnish and Italian researchers announced that the drug, when administered to rats with impaired vision, played a role in correcting their eyesight. Even better, they think it could have the same effect on the two to three percent of humans who have amblyopia, or lazy eye, the most common cause of visual impairment among children.

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The dramatic thriller involving our drug-contaminated drinking water, starring a 2,500-word article by the Associated Press, has been taking over the headlines today (that is, at least, until the Feds found out how much Spitzer paid for hookers) . During the AP’s investigation, they reviewed published scientific reports, analyzed federal drinking water databases, visited environmental study sites and treatment plants, and interviewed hundreds of officials, academics, and scientists. The results: trace amounts of pharmaceuticals, including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers, and sex hormones contaminate the drinking water of 41 million Americans, including the watersheds of 28 metropolitan areas.

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