By Laura Beil The patient, known as only “MBM,” was just 7 years old the first time doctors saw her. She had always been prone to night sweats, but now excessive perspiration was forcing her to change clothes several times a day. She was endlessly thirsty, fatigued and losing weight despite a voracious appetite. A dozen years later, at age 19, doctors checked her into a hospital, thinking she had some kind of unusual metabolic condition. After aggressive treatment with drugs, her symptoms improved, but only for a short time, and the next year surgeons removed most of her thyroid. When she was 35 — gaunt, weak and losing hair — doctors began searching every tissue of her body for a diagnosis. They finally located the problem. It was MBM’s mitochondria, the organelles that supply the energy for cells to function. Thanks to mitochondria, the sandwich you had for lunch is now powering your heart and brain. Somehow the mitochondria inside MBM’s cells had gone haywire, becoming too large and too numerous. Such damage was “the first instance of a spontaneous functional defect of the mitochondrial enzyme organization.” The mysterious case of patient MBM was considered so remarkable that the Journal of Clinical Investigation published a description of it. That was in 1962. Today, scientists suspect that millions of people may be suffering from mitochondria gone awry, in more subtle but nonetheless insidious forms. Evidence suggests that malfunctioning mitochondria could explain Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, obesity, cancer and other consequences of aging. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Parkinsons; Alzheimers
Link ID: 12583 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Bruce Bower Heart-felt perils await people who hold disapproving attitudes about the elderly, a new study suggests. Young and middle-aged adults who endorse negative stereotypes about older people display high rates of strokes, heart attacks and other serious heart problems later in life, compared with aging peers who view the elderly in generally positive ways, say Yale University psychologist Becca Levy and her colleagues. “We found that age stereotypes, which tend to be acquired in childhood or young adulthood and carried over into old age, seem to have far-reaching effects on cardiovascular health,” Levy says. Her team describes evidence for a connection between attitudes toward aging and eventual heart health in a paper published online February 13 and set to appear in Psychological Science. Reasons for this association remain unclear. In earlier studies, Levy found that elderly volunteers who reported negative stereotypes about old people were more likely to display heightened physiological responses to stress and to report unhealthy habits, such as cigarette smoking. Levy’s new report “is the latest in a series of well-conducted studies by various scientists that demonstrate that individual psychological differences assessed early in life predict various health and longevity outcomes many years later,” remarks psychologist Howard Friedman of the University of California, Riverside. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Emotions; Stress
Link ID: 12582 - Posted: 06.24.2010

The future health of thousands of UK children could be affected because their ear infections are not being treated properly, a charity says. Deafness Research UK says that antibiotics are given routinely in many cases, but often do not work. Children whose hearing is regularly affected may suffer developmental problems, but many parents are unaware of what to do, it said. The RNID said it was vital to seek GP advice about recurrent infections. A report by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, published last year, suggested that as many as 200,000 children each year suffer repeated middle ear infections, a condition called otitis media, or sometimes "glue ear". Dr Ian Williamson, a senior lecturer in general practice at Southampton University, said that too many GPs turned to antibiotics to treat the condition. He said: "Ear conditions and their root causes are not necessarily best tackled by antibiotics. We are concerned that time pressure on the NHS - combined with a deeply held cultural myth by the public that antibiotics are a cure-all - means that many children and parents aren't receiving the best advice possible on how to treat and prevent ear infections." Instead, Dr Williamson is urging the NHS to take a more "holistic" approach, with children suffering recurrent infections identified quickly so that other treatments can be provided. These can include the insertion of tubes called "grommets", which allow the fluid trapped in the middle ear to drain away. Dr Williamson said that if other treatments were not considered, children could suffer problems with speech in language development as their impaired hearing held them back. The charity also warned that overuse of antibiotics could help breed resistant bacteria and kill "good bacteria" in the nose and throat which actually helped prevent infection taking hold. (C)BBC

Keyword: Hearing; Development of the Brain
Link ID: 12581 - Posted: 02.23.2009

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has approved the limited use of a device that sends electrical signals to the brain to ease the symptoms of severe obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). The Reclaim system, made by Medtronic Inc., can be used to treat up to 4,000 people in the United States each year under a humanitarian exemption from the Food and Drug Administration rules, the agency said Thursday. "Deep-brain stimulation using the Reclaim system may provide some relief to certain patients with severe obsessive compulsive disorder who have not responded to conventional therapy," FDA official Dr. Daniel Schultz said in a news release. "However, Reclaim is not a cure for OCD. Individual results will vary and patients implanted with the device are likely to continue to have some mild to moderate impairment in functioning and continue to require medications." The device, which Medtronic compares to a pacemaker, uses a small electrical pulse generator that blocks abnormal nerve signals in the brain. A battery-powered unit implanted near the abdomen or the collar bone is connected to electrodes implanted in the brain. © CBC 2009

Keyword: OCD - Obsessive Compulsive Disorder
Link ID: 12580 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Heidi Ledford Suicide victims with a history of abuse during childhood are more likely to carry chemical changes to their DNA that could affect how they respond to stress as adults, a study has found. Those with no history of childhood abuse did not show the same pattern of DNA modification, and had normal expression of NR3C1, a gene linked to stress responses. But the findings do not mean that the effect of childhood abuse is indelible, cautions Joan Kaufman, a psychologist at Yale School of Medicine in New Haven, Connecticut, who was not involved in the new study. "The long-term effects of early abuse are not inevitable," she says, "and the more you understand about the mechanisms of risk, the more you can devise treatments." The results, reported today in Nature Neuroscience1, follow on from work showing that rat pups that are stressed because they were raised by negligent mothers have extra methyl groups in their DNA in a region of the genome that controls expression of Nr3c1, the equivalent gene in rats. Such 'methylation' can reduce gene expression. NR3C1 encodes a protein expressed in neurons that responds to hormones called glucocorticoids. Lower expression of NR3C1 could be harmful because reduced responses to these glucocorticoids have been linked to increased stress. © 2009 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Stress; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12579 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Michael Shermer "There’s an old English proverb that says, ‘It is an equal failing to trust everyone and to trust no one.’ ” So begins Paul Zak, a professor of economics at Claremont Graduate University, who is taking the study of economic behavior down to the molecular level. His search for the neurochemistry of trust and trade has brought him to oxytocin, a hormone synthesized in the hypothalamus and secreted into the blood by the pituitary. In women, oxytocin stimulates birth contractions, lactation, and maternal bonding with a nursing infant. In both women and men, it increases during sex and surges at orgasm, playing a role in pair bonding, an evolutionary adaptation for long-term care of helpless infants. “We know that trust is a very strong predictor of national prosperity, but I want to know what makes two people trust one another,” Zak explains as we sit down in his Center for Neuroeconomics Studies nestled in the bedroom community of Claremont, California. Zak is the oxytocin man. It says so right on his license plate. Tall and handsome with square shoulders and the physique of someone who works out regularly, Zak’s firm grip and warm smile exude, well, trust. Trained in traditional economics, in the mid-1990s his research led him to connect trust to economic growth. ©2009 Heldref Publications ·

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12578 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Unhealthy lifestyles are associated with more than double the risk of a stroke, a UK study has reported. Smoking, drinking too much alcohol, not taking enough exercise and eating few vegetables and little fruit contribute to the chances of a stroke, it found. Just a small proportion of the 20,000 adults studied had healthy enough lifestyles to protect against the condition, researchers said. Strokes cost the UK £7bn a year, the British Medical Journal article added. Previous studies have shown that lifestyle behaviour, such as smoking and diet, are associated with the risk of heart attacks and stroke, but the impact of a combination of risk factors in apparently healthy people has been less clear. In the latest study, led by the University of East Anglia, researchers gave one point for each "healthy behaviour" reported by the participants, aged between 40 and 79. One point was given to those who did not smoke, one point awarded for drinking just one to 14 units of alcohol a week, one point for consuming five portions of fruit and vegetables a day and one point for being physically active. A significantly higher percentage of women than men scored a maximum of four. The study found those who scored zero points were 2.3 times more likely to have a stroke in the 11-year follow-up than those with four points. For every point decrease in the scores, there was an increase in likelihood of stroke, the researchers said. Some 259 people did not score any points, of whom 15 had a stroke - at a rate of 5.8%. But the most common score was three - achieved by 7,822 individuals, of whom 186, or 2.4%, had a stroke. Around 5,000 achieved the healthiest score of four, which was associated with an absolute stroke risk of 1.7%. (C)BBC

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 12577 - Posted: 02.21.2009

LONDON - AstraZeneca's cholesterol-lowering drug Crestor cut the risk of stroke by nearly half in seemingly healthy patients, according to a new study. The medical trial involving 17,802 patients found even those with low levels of cholesterol benefited from daily treatment with Crestor. The results were presented at the American Stroke Association meeting in San Diego yesterday. The study resembles earlier findings from the company-funded study, which showed Crestor slashed the risk of heart attack, stroke, and death by 47 percent. All of the patients had high levels of protein called hsCRP, an indicator of inflammation. The data "clearly demonstrate that statin therapy reduces stroke risk among individuals with elevated levels of hsCRP," Robert Glynn, of the division of preventive medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital, said in a statement. Crestor is from the medicine class known as statins. AstraZeneca plans to file for expanded approval of the drug in the first half of this year. Over five years, 33 patients who took Crestor in the study suffered a stroke, compared with 64 of those getting a placebo. The drug prevented strokes caused by clots that block blood flow the brain, the researchers said. © Copyright 2009 Globe Newspaper Company.

Keyword: Stroke
Link ID: 12576 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Kay Lazar Children of parents with Alzheimer's disease can develop memory problems in their 50s or even younger - much earlier than previously thought - according to a large study released yesterday by researchers at Boston University School of Medicine. The study subjects, who carried a gene strongly linked to Alzheimer's, performed worse in memory tests, on average, than other middle-aged people who had the same gene but did not have a parent diagnosed with Alzheimer's. The difference in memory between the two groups was equivalent to approximately 15 years of brain aging, researchers found.. "How big an effect we saw was surprising," said Dr. Sudha Seshadri, a BU associate professor of neurology and senior author of the study. "It was like you were comparing two groups, 55-year-olds to 70-year-olds." Researchers not involved with the study say the findings have broad implications because they are the first to demonstrate changes in cognitive abilities years before the age at which the degenerative brain disease is diagnosed. By the time the most common form of Alzheimer's is confirmed, usually around age 75, it has irreparably damaged large sections of the brain's memory center. The BU findings do not suggest that everyone with the gene, known as APOE-e4, will develop Alzheimer's, said Seshadri. The gene is believed to play a role in about 50 percent of Alzheimer's cases. The study also did not address whether the people showing early memory impairment were destined to develop Alzheimer's. © 2009 NY Times Co

Keyword: Alzheimers; Genes & Behavior
Link ID: 12575 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Nathan Seppa Mutations in two genes, IDH1 and IDH2, might provide markers that enable doctors to discern malignant from benign brain tumors and catch some cancers early, scientists report in the Feb. 19 New England Journal of Medicine. The study adds to a growing list of molecular clues that doctors may ultimately use to diagnosis and treat cancers, says study coauthor D. Williams Parsons, a pediatric oncologist and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. Doctors diagnose nearly 200,000 brain cancers each year in the United States. Most get their start elsewhere in the body and spread to the brain. But in about 22,000 of these patients, the cancer originates in the brain or central nervous system. These primary brain tumors are most often gliomas — clusters of tumor cells that derive from the brain’s glial cells. Gliomas vary in virulence from benign (grade 1) to fast-growing and rapidly lethal (grade 4). The IDH genes are so-named because they encode an enzyme called isocitrate dehydrogenase. While the role of the enzyme is poorly understood, the mutations in IDH genes attracted interest after turning up last year in brain tumors but not in other cancer tissues. In the new study, the researchers tested samples of benign and cancerous primary brain tumors removed from 445 people and from tumors obtained from 494 others who had cancers of the colon, prostate, pancreas, breast, stomach, ovary or blood (leukemia). © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Glia
Link ID: 12574 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Solmaz Barazesh A lot of stress can turn your hair gray, but a little stress can actually delay aging. A protein tied to protecting cells from stress also helps slow aging, a new study finds. The research, published February 20 in Science, identifies a key regulator of a mechanism cells use to prevent protein damage from stress. Exposure to heat, cold or heavy metals can damage proteins and unravel them from their usual conformations — trauma that can cause cell death. But cells have a damage-limiting mechanism called the heat shock response to combat these and other stresses. As part of the heat shock response, special protein repair molecules patch up the damaged proteins and refold them correctly, preventing death and extending the life of the cell. Molecular biologist Sandy Westerheide of Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill., and her colleagues found that the heat shock response in human cell lines is regulated by Sirtuin 1, or SIRT1, an aging-related protein. It’s the first evidence linking SIRT1 to the protein-protecting heat shock response. “This is a very interesting and insightful study,” comments Raul Mostoslavsky, a cell biologist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and Harvard Medical School in Boston. “We knew that Sirtuin 1 had many roles in longevity. It’s remarkable that it also affects heat shock response.” The study focused on individual cells, but for whole organisms the finding could shed light on a link between stress and life span. © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Stress
Link ID: 12573 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Diane Mapes Some people wet the bed. Cynthia MacGregor wet her boyfriend. “I was in bed with my then-boyfriend, one leg over his leg and I woke up and found myself peeing on him,” says 65-year-old MacGregor, a freelance writer and editor from Palm Springs, Fla. “He was a good sport about it, but I was embarrassed as all bloody hell.” MacGregor’s episode with nocturnal enuresis — involuntary bed-wetting — took place 30 years ago, after the radiation treatment she received for her cervical cancer left her with temporary urinary incontinence. A talk with her urologist and a few months of medication helped her beat the bed-wetting — and the urgency and frequency issues that went with it — but others haven’t been as fortunate, primarily because they haven't been as forthcoming. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here About 26 million American adults are currently affected by urinary incontinence, according to the Simon Foundation for Continence. Of those, an estimated 1 to 2 percent experience bed-wetting, either as an issue that’s carried over from childhood (i.e., primary enuresis) or a secondary condition that’s developed in adulthood due to a neurological disorder, prostate obstruction, diabetes, overactive bladder, complications from childbirth or other medical issues. But some believe that number is low. © 2009 Microsoft

Keyword: Sleep
Link ID: 12572 - Posted: 06.24.2010

Katharine Sanderson A simple change to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) machines will provide more uniform coverage at higher powers as well as more room for portly patients. In a market set to be worth more than $5 billion by 2010, the new technology may offer an easier way to get to the high-field machines manufacturers and clinicians see as the next target for hospital imaging. MRI machines use a magnetic field to get hydrogen atoms in the body spinning in a particular way, then knock them off-balance with a radio wave. The small radio-frequency signals given off by the recovering nuclei provide the imaging data. In their new version of the technology, Klaas Pruessmann at the University of Zurich, Switzerland, his student David Brunner and their colleagues removed the radio-frequency coil used to tumble the nuclei from an MRI machine built by Philips Healthcare and replaced it with a system that could do the same job from up to 5 metres away. The university has filed for patents on the technology, which is described on page 994 of this issue. "It's a completely new approach to exciting the signal in MRI," says Andrew Blamire, an MRI expert at the nuclear magnetic resonance centre in Newcastle, UK. "Claustrophobia is a widespread problem in clinical MRI," says Pruessmann. Removing the coil from the machine provides a less constraining cavity. But the potential advantages go further than the patient experience. The easily made change of approach may allow designers of increasingly powerful MRI machines to overcome some of the technical hurdles that trouble them. © 2009 Nature Publishing Group,

Keyword: Brain imaging
Link ID: 12571 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Jennifer Viegas While svelte, petite women may attract multiple suitors, bigger is definitely better in the whale world, according to a new study that found male humpback whales favor the largest females. Big in terms of humpback whales means gigantic, since females are usually larger than males to begin with, measuring up to around 50 feet long and weighing approximately 79,000 pounds. "While obesity is understandably a serious problem in humans, it is interesting to find that in some of the largest animals ever to exist, bigger is indeed better. Thus size does matter!" said lead author Adam Pack, an assistant professor of psychology and biology at the University of Hawaii at Hilo. Story continues below ↓advertisement | your ad here Pack, who is also the co-founder and vice president of The Dolphin Institute, and his research team made the determination after studying courting humpback whales for five consecutive years in the waters of the Auau, Kalohi and Pailolo channels off West Maui. The findings have been accepted for publication in the journal Animal Behavior. In winter and spring months, the whales assemble on shallow banks and along coastal areas for breeding and calving. Since females produce a single calf every two to three years on average, and not all females migrate to breeding grounds, males usually far outnumber females at the sites. © 2009 Discovery Channel

Keyword: Sexual Behavior; Evolution
Link ID: 12570 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By NATALIE ANGIER Most human vices have enough sense to be very, very tempting. Lust, gluttony, sloth, hurling powerful if unimaginative expletives at a member of the political opposition, buying a pair of Thierry Rabotin snakeskin printed shoes at 25 percent off even though you just bought a pair of cherry-red slingbacks last week — all these things feel awfully good to indulge in, which is why people must be repeatedly abjured not to. One vice, however, dispenses with any hedonic trappings and instead feels so painful you would think it was a virtue, except that there’s no gain in lean muscle mass at the end: envy. Skulking at sixth place on traditional lists of the seven deadly sins, right between wrath and pride, envy is the deep, often hostile resentment you feel toward somebody who has something you want, like wealth, beauty, a promotion or the admiration of peers. It is a vice few can avoid yet nobody craves, for to experience envy is to feel small and inferior, a loser shrink-wrapped in spite. “Envy is corrosive and ugly, and it can ruin your life,” said Richard H. Smith, a professor of psychology at the University of Kentucky who has written about envy. “If you’re an envious person, you have a hard time appreciating a lot of the good things that are out there, because you’re too busy worrying about how they reflect on the self.” Now researchers are gleaning insights into the neural and evolutionary underpinnings of envy, and why it can feel like a bodily illness or a physical blow. They’re also tracing the pathway of envy’s equally petty foil, the sensation of schadenfreude — taking pleasure when those whom you envied are themselves brought down low. Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Emotions
Link ID: 12569 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by David Robson DO WE all have the capacity for synaesthesia or is the brain's ability to blend senses bestowed on a select few at birth? It now seems it could be a mixture of the two. Synaesthesia seems to underpin some savants' enhanced memory and numerical skills. The hope is that a better understanding of its origins could help to explain savant abilities - and perhaps even shine some light on whether we are all capable of attaining them. The condition is thought to arise when extra connections in the brain cross between regions responsible for separate senses. To see if genes play a role in building or maintaining these connections, a team led by Julian Asher at the University of Oxford took genetic samples from 196 individuals from 43 families, 121 of whom exhibited auditory-visual synaesthesia, meaning they "see" sounds. "When I hear a violin, I see something like a rich red wine," says Asher, who is a synaesthete. "A cello is more like honey." From their analysis, the team were able to pin down four chromosomal regions where gene variations seemed to be linked to the condition (The American Journal of Human Genetics, DOI: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2009.01.012). As one of the regions has also been associated with autism, there may be a common genetic mechanism underlying the two, says Asher. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd.

Keyword: Miscellaneous
Link ID: 12568 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Emma Young TAKE anyone with a psychiatric disorder and the chances are they don't sleep well. The result of their illness, you might think. Now this long-standing assumption is being turned on its head, with the radical suggestion that poor sleep might actually cause some psychiatric illnesses or lead people to behave in ways that doctors mistake for mental problems. The good news is that sleep treatments could help or even cure some of these patients. Shockingly, it also means that many people, including children, could be taking psychoactive drugs that cannot help them and might even be harmful. No one knows how many people might fall into this category. "That is very frightening," says psychologist Matt Walker from the University of California, Berkeley. "Wouldn't you think that it would be important for us as a society to understand whether 3 per cent, 5 per cent or 50 per cent of people diagnosed with psychiatric problems are simply suffering from sleep abnormalities?" First, we'd need to know how and to what extent sleep disorders could be responsible for psychiatric problems. In the few years since sleep researchers identified the problem, they have made big strides in doing just that. Doctors studying psychiatric disorders noticed long ago that erratic sleep was somehow connected. Adults with depression, for instance, are five times as likely as the average person to have difficulty breathing when asleep, while between a quarter and a half of children with attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) suffer from sleep complaints, compared with just 7 per cent of other children. © Copyright Reed Business Information Ltd

Keyword: Sleep; Schizophrenia
Link ID: 12567 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By Solmaz Barazesh The first experimental study in humans connecting beta-blockers and memory suggests these drugs, usually taken to treat heart conditions, can also wipe away the emotions associated with frightening memories. The power of such memories could be dampened when a person thinks about the traumatic events after taking the drugs, scientists say. Clinical psychologist Merel Kindt of the University of Amsterdam and her colleagues report the new finding online February 15 in Nature Neuroscience. The research builds on a clinical study published in the May 2008 Journal of Psychiatric Research that suggested beta-blockers helped patients suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD. “Kindt’s work confirms our clinical results and goes further by showing beta-blockers also have this effect” on people who had no previous history of mental health issues, comments Alain Brunet, psychiatrist at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute at McGill University in Montreal and a coauthor of the PTSD study. Kindt and her colleagues showed subjects a photograph of a spider, which was accompanied by an electric shock, conditioning the participants to have a fearful memory of the image. Later, some participants were given a beta-blocker drug, propranolol, and others were given a placebo before being exposed to the image again. The beta-blocker group’s fear response was greatly reduced or even eliminated when the subjects were shown the spider photograph 24 hours after taking the drugs. “The people did not forget seeing the photograph of the spider,” Kindt says. ”But the fear associated with the image was erased.” © Society for Science & the Public 2000 - 2009

Keyword: Learning & Memory; Emotions
Link ID: 12566 - Posted: 06.24.2010

by Sunita Reed We’re all familiar with sweet, salty, bitter and sour tastes. But how many of us have heard of umami (pronounced oo-MAH-mee)? The so-called “fifth taste” is found in soups, meats, seafood and cheese. Now researchers at Senomyx, a San Diego based food flavor additive company, have made a discovery that could lead to new ways to make packaged foods harder to resist. Until recently scientists used to say we could sense only four basic tastes; sweet, salty, bitter and sour. But chefs worldwide have long known about umami taste. One hundred years ago, a Japanese chemistry professor, Kikunae Ikeda recognized that the dominant taste in a soup base called dashi was distinct from the four officially named basic tastes. Dashi is made by boiling a seaweed called kombu. Ikeda isolated the source of the taste and identified it as glutamate, a type of amino acid. He called it “umami,” derived from the Japanese word “umai,” meaning delicious. Ikeda developed a method to make a crystallized form of it called monosodium glutamate or MSG. The Ajinomoto company subsequently mass-produced the product. But it took many years for the larger scientific community to acknowledge umami as a basic taste. In 2000, University of Miami researcher Nirupa Chaudhari and colleagues discovered a type of umami receptor on the human tongue. It was only then that scientists began to acknowledge umami as an official basic taste. Glutamates are found naturally in many protein rich foods like meats and seafood but also in tomatoes, shitake mushrooms, fermented products like soy sauce and certain aged cheeses. ©2009 ScienCentral

Keyword: Chemical Senses (Smell & Taste)
Link ID: 12565 - Posted: 06.24.2010

By WILLIAM YARDLEY SEATTLE — Washington State law prohibits the possession of marijuana except for certain medical purposes. Hempfest is not one of them. Yet each summer when the event draws thousands to the Seattle waterfront to call for decriminalizing marijuana, participants light up in clear view of police officers. And they rarely get arrested. “Police officers patrolling are courteous and respectful,” said Alison Holcomb, drug policy director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Washington. One reason for the officers’ approach, said Ms. Holcomb and others who follow law enforcement in Seattle, is the leadership of R. Gil Kerlikowske, the chief of the Seattle Police Department and, officials in the Obama administration say, the president’s choice to become the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy, known as the drug czar. The anticipated selection of Chief Kerlikowske has given hope to those who want national drug policy to shift from an emphasis on arrest and prosecution to methods more like those employed in Seattle: intervention, treatment and a reduction of problems drug use can cause, a tactic known as harm reduction. Chief Kerlikowske is not necessarily regarded as having forcefully led those efforts, but he has not gotten in the way of them. “What gives me optimism,” said Ethan Nadelmann, executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, “is not so much him per se as the fact that he’s been the police chief of Seattle. And Seattle, King County and Washington State have really been at the forefront of harm reduction and other drug policy reform.” Copyright 2009 The New York Times Company

Keyword: Drug Abuse
Link ID: 12564 - Posted: 06.24.2010