Episodes
Tuesday Nov 17, 2015
Infectious Myth – News Roundup – 11.17.15
Tuesday Nov 17, 2015
Tuesday Nov 17, 2015
In Episode 80 David updates us on vaccine problems, the problematic military malaria medication mefloquine (Lariam), the (in)justice system, Facilitated Communications and sexual assault. He discusses a case of a sports star who appears to have gone unpunished for a vicious assault, while another star was convicted in the public eye before the evidence point out it was a false allegation of rape. Colorado high school students drop their pants for each other. Who is a victim, who is a pedophile, and who is just a teenager exploring their sexuality? Yale students go into a tizzy when a professor says they are adults. Mizzu students fire their president, and then try to fire the press. And Amherst students want their president to apologize for all the wrongs in world history.
For a list of resources for further exploration of these stories see http://theinfectiousmyth.com/PRN-TIM/80.html
Tuesday Nov 10, 2015
Infectious Myth – Addiction is not a Disease – 11.10.15
Tuesday Nov 10, 2015
Tuesday Nov 10, 2015
In episode 79 David talks with Marc Lewis who has unique experience in the area of drug addiction, as both a former addict, and today a neuroscientist and professor of developmental psychology at Radboud University in Holland. He described his personal voyage into and out of addiction in his 2011 book, “Memoirs of an Addicted Brain”. His recently published book, “The Biology of Desire: Why Addiction is Not a Disease” is titled to illustrate his conclusion that addiction is desire gone wrong, and that the addict gets trapped into a vicious cycle of desire, use, disappointment, repeat. David observes that loneliness, separation and isolation are a common factor at the start of many addiction stories, and that drugs only worsen this (as does imprisonment, the other common approach to drug addiction).
For more information on Marc Lewis, see his Wikipedia page at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marc_David_Lewis
Tuesday Nov 03, 2015
Infectious Myth – Life for Drugs – 10.27.15
Tuesday Nov 03, 2015
Tuesday Nov 03, 2015
In Episode 78 David the over-criminalization of drugs in the United States with Amy Povah. It is not just that recreational drugs are criminalized, but the sentences are sometimes absurd. Amy received a 24 year sentence in the 1990s largely because she refused to infiltrate her ex-husband’s ecstasy manufacturing operation. Her sentence was so egregious it was covered by Glamour magazine and the television show, “60 Minutes”, and her sentence was eventually commuted by President Clinton after she had served 9 years. She started helping some of the women she was in jail with, and eventually broadened the scope of her organization to other women, and then to men who also commonly received these lengthy sentences. One of her most shocking observations is that a single witness can produce a conviction, even if the witness has a motivation to lie, to receive a lesser sentence for themselves, and even if the victim of the false testimony is not a bit player in the conspiracy, but an innocent pawn. Amy describes several shockingly unjust convictions and talks about how the war of drugs is finally starting to wane, but there are still of millions of Americans in jail for non-violent drug convictions, and even if marijuana is legalized, people serving life for small quantities of marijuana won’t necessarily be released.
Amy runs the Can Do foundation (http://www.candoclemency.com) and is making the film called Four Twenty.
Other useful resources are:
- Life for Pot: http://www.lifeforpot.com
- Law Enforcement Against Prohibition: http://www.leap.cc
- Cut 50: http://www.cut50.org
- November coalition: http://november.org