[HN Gopher] Student discovers fungus predicted by Albert Hoffman
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Student discovers fungus predicted by Albert Hoffman
Author : zafka
Score : 34 points
Date : 2025-06-11 00:36 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (wvutoday.wvu.edu)
(TXT) w3m dump (wvutoday.wvu.edu)
| zer00eyz wrote:
| > drug LSD, which is used to treat conditions like depression,
| post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction.
|
| Umm, ok, sure thats what it's used for.
|
| That one sentence just points to a large issue with the whole
| tone of this article. Clearly LSD is still a problem child.
| AngryData wrote:
| How is it a problem child? The only problem is the fed's
| blanket ban of it like many other drugs that do have known
| medical uses. Feds still classify marijuana as schedule 1 with
| no medical uses, and yet multiple states allow you to buy it
| freely. Just don't invite the feds to your house.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| "LSD: My Problem Child" is the name of Hofmann's book.
|
| https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lsd-9780198840206?la.
| ..
| garciasn wrote:
| Please be serious: alcohol is a real problem child but it's
| widely used and legal.
|
| Cannabis and LSD have their issues, sure; but, so do so many
| other drugs that aren't schedule I.
|
| Scheduled drugs are simply politicized to separate the
| 'desirables' from the 'un-'.
| m3047 wrote:
| "problem child" is an allusion to Hoffman's own
| characterization.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| Indeed. "LSD: My Problem Child" is the name of Hofmann's
| book:
|
| https://global.oup.com/academic/product/lsd-9780198840206?la.
| ..
| doormatt wrote:
| > The researchers prepared a DNA sample and sent it away for
| genome sequencing, funded by a WVU Davis College Student
| Enhancement Grant obtained by Hazel. The sequencing confirmed the
| discovery of a new species and the sequence is now deposited in a
| gene bank with her name on it.
|
| > "Sequencing a genome is a significant thing," Panaccione said.
| "It's amazing for a student."
|
| Question - how is it significant, considering they sent it off to
| another company to do the sequencing?
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| She did want to say: "It is amazing for a student to get this
| much success by a half accidental discovery"
|
| Then she thought about things incomprehensible for programmers
| and said the other sentence.
| vanderZwan wrote:
| I'm expecting the significant thing is knowing which DNA to
| sequence. Also, if I'm reading the article correctly she
| isolated the DNA being sequenced first, so it's not like she
| just sent in the fungus and offloaded all of the work.
| randomNumber7 wrote:
| It is know since a long time that morning glory seeds contain
| LSA.
|
| Also LSA is different from LSD. While you can legally get the
| former it is (from my experience) way more dangerous than LSD.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| >It is know since a long time that morning glory seeds contain
| LSA
|
| This is one of the givens they were working off of. The finding
| of the research is the fungus that produces the LSA in the
| seeds.
| gwbas1c wrote:
| > drug LSD, which is used to treat conditions like depression,
| post-traumatic stress disorder and addiction.
|
| Wait: I thought LSD is schedule 1, and there are no legally-
| sanctioned uses of it? Did something change while I was living
| under a rock? (Unlike MDMA, where there were legally-sanctioned
| experiments recently.)
| hungmung wrote:
| Here's one, I'm sure there are others:
|
| https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38042914/
| AngryData wrote:
| MDMA, magic mushrooms, and cannabis are all also Schedule 1 by
| US federal law too. All it really takes though to get around it
| is for a state law to allow it and the state to tell the feds
| to go fuck themselves and close the door to them and make them
| challenge it in court if they want to do anything about it,
| which the feds don't want to do because it would cost ass tons
| of money to fight in court and would only further prove that
| drug scheduling is mostly just bullshit and lies.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| Drug scheduling is complete bullshit and is backed by politics
| and bronze age protestant beliefs, not science.
| edwardbernays wrote:
| Fact check: true. It's also completely up to the head of the
| NHS, who is currently noted drug enthusiast RFK Jr. Here's
| hoping he'll legalize LSD and mescaline! He's used enough
| mescaline and spiked enough people's drinks with it, and also
| forced LSD on his pet birds, so at this point it's pure
| hypocrisy for him to keep it scheduled. Of course, we should
| expect everybody to have much better morals and sense about
| it than he's ever had.
| wbl wrote:
| After the dead whale nothing should surprise me but what?
| Amezarak wrote:
| I started at "bronze age Protestant" and chuckled. I know you
| of course weren't being that serious about the exact
| phrasing, but of course the Protestants didn't come around
| until the 1500s. What that phrase put into my mind was
| Pilgrims showing up in the Trojan war. :)
| hollerith wrote:
| >> drug LSD, which is used to treat conditions like depression,
| post-traumatic stress disorder
|
| LSD can _cause_ PTSD. Dr K of the "Healthy Gamer" YT channel
| gives that as the reason people shouldn't do LSD in this next
| 8-min video:
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=So7hE1Ba_QA
|
| The video is not about LSD or PTSD, so it would be nice if I
| could give a time index into where in the video Dr gives the
| warning, but sadly I don't have time right now.
| 173throwaway wrote:
| LSD saved my life. I suffered chronic depression and anxiety
| with suicidal ideation, had tried multiple psychiatric drugs
| and forms of therapy, and nothing had improved (the failure of
| these officially-approved modes of treatment actually left me
| feeling much more hopeless). Taking LSD gave me the insight
| that this wasn't fundamental the the nature of being me, that
| there was hope that one day I could love my life. The road to
| get there has been difficult, and has involved intense (non-
| LSD) psychedelic-assisted therapy to deal with very deep
| childhood trauma, but that first fundamental glimmer that
| there's a reason to have hope came from an experience with LSD.
|
| If I had listened to stern authority figures telling me that
| there's never a good reason to try it and it could only do me
| harm, I would in all likelihood be dead today.
| SequoiaHope wrote:
| I think people should be properly informed about the risks of
| LSD and should try a small dose before trying anything larger,
| and should have the maturity to understand what a complex or
| difficult trip could mean.
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