Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!microsoft!rodvan From: rodvan@microsoft.UUCP (Rod VAN MECHELEN) Newsgroups: sci.bio Subject: Re: Are Humans Naturally Monogamous? Message-ID: <60012@microsoft.UUCP> Date: 25 Dec 90 00:40:52 GMT References: <1990Nov8.205905.1627@oracle.com> <4662@idunno.Princeton.EDU> Organization: Microsoft Corp., Redmond WA Lines: 135 In article <4662@idunno.Princeton.EDU>, vnend@phoenix.Princeton.EDU (D. W. James) writes: > In article <59596@microsoft.UUCP> rodvan@microsoft.UUCP (Rod VAN MECHELEN) writes: > )In article <1990Nov26.005512.16483@massey.ac.nz>, A.S.Chamove@massey.ac.nz (A.S. Chamove) writes: > )> You say (about drinking alcohol) that > )> 1--there is no sane reason for it > )> 2--that it does nothing to promote survival > )> 3--ideally no one would do it > > )That's right. > > I'll ignore 1 and 3, since if 2 is true then they are both false. > #2 is false for several reasons, some historial, others not. First, most > telling and most current, moderate alcohol consumption has been shown to > significantly reduce the likelyhood and effects of heart disease and > high blood pressure. Moderate is translated by the medical community > as a couple of glasses of beer or wine a day. No, drinking twice as I'm familiar with this (at home, I have a report which says much the same that came out almost two years before it hit the popular press -- one of the benefits of being a member of the Life Extension Foundation <-:). However, while it is true moderate daily consumption of alcohol can have mildly salubrious side-effects, there are two additional considereations. First, in the examples you mention (beer and wine) both have been shown to promote cancer of the colon. In fact, hard liquor is the least likely to promote cancer of the colon. This is a very definite non-salubrious side-effect of alcohol. Another is that the primary metabolite of alcohol is acetylaldehyde -- a highly damaging free radical. Does the mildly salubrious side-effect of alcohol counter the bad side-effects? I would say not -- PARTICULARLY SINCE THERE ARE FAR SUPERIOR ALTERNATIVES. In most cases, high blood pressure can be successfully treated by taking potassium supplements and DRINKING MORE WATER (when you drink 64 ounces or more of water every day, your body retains less of it and works harder to get rid of the excess; also, the liver is flushed cleaner of the fats and free radicals which accumulate there). Far better to drink water for high blood pressure than alcohol. What about heart disease? Just read some great, golly gee new news about this -- according to a recent study a new *wonder drug* has been shown to greatly reduce accumulations of cholesterol, a leading cause of heart disease. The drug? Niacin. (That's vitamin B3, and to members of the Life Extension Foundation, that's really old news -- I started taking Niacin 15 years ago, and read in a Foundation report about its effects on cholesterol build-up almost 6 years ago.) If you have no modern means of sterilizing surgical equipment, fire works. If you have no antiseptic to disinfect a wound, fire works. Doesn't mean it's a good way to do it, and using fire to disinfect a wound or cauterize a blood vessel may do the trick, but you'll bear the scars for it. Same thing with alcohol -- it may have some minor positive health effects, but it is neither the best way to do it, nor are the negative side-effects necessarily counter-balanced by the positive ones. There is no rational reason to consume alcohol. > much isn't twice as good for you. Historically alcoholic beverages > were used to store grain for long periods of time (beer has nutritional > value aside from its alcoholic content) and as means of providing disinfected > fluids (which it is only somewhat good at, since it is also a diuretic.) Only unpasteurized beer made with real brewer's yeast has any of the nutritional value of which you speak (vitamin Bcomplex), and using alcohol to store grain is not the same as drinking it, last time I checked. > > The majority is, by definition, sane. Therefore 2 comes from 1. So speaks an heir of the Functionalist school (sociology). Here we have the majority of the citizens of the industrialized nations driving around in vehicles which spew poisonous fumes into the air (even though superior and cheaper technologies were developed more than ten years ago -- would have cut a deep hole into Detroit's bottom line, though, retooling), engaging in jobs which most people spend their youth preparing for and their adult life longing for the weekend and holidays and vacations to escape, and you would suggest these are the characteristics of sanity? This morning on one of the national news programs (I think it was on GOOD MORNING AMERICA -- didn't pay much attention), an editorial written years ago was read. The editorial was in answer to a little girl's question about if there really is a Santa Claus. The answer was, yes there is. The exclamation which comes to mind might, from Christians, evoke something like "But that's whose birthday we are celebrating tomorrow." (Which raises another question: aside from the fact the Romans used it as a means for facilitating the assimilation of Britain and other parts of conquered europe into the emipre, why do Christians today, who ought to know better, celebrate the birth of Christ during a Pagan holiday?) When a national news program tells us "Yes, there really is a Santa Claus," and all indications are they are not doing it tongue-in-cheek, but are to some extent serious about it, who could make a case that the majority are sane? (A functionalist, for whom all things are defined in terms of "the majority." And in a functionalist's world, if the majority believe rape is right, then, by the sacred scrotum of Dewey [for the humor impaired, Dewey was a well-known proponent of Functionalist sociology], it is right!") > > )> It is relaxing. > > )In small amounts it acts as a stimulant, in larger doses it acts as a > )depressant, and in big, big doses it kills. > > Thus betraying your ignorance of the subject. Or, rather, mearly > that you are several decades behind the times. Alcohol is *never* a > stimulant, unless you want to burn something. It is a depressant drug. All poisons act initially as stimulants and, in relatively larger doses as depressants. I have read much of the latest literature on this, and it was almost 12 years ago that I first read that alcohol is "*never* a stimulant." At the rate things are going, it will likely take another 12 years before the nature of poisons becomes generally known, and before it is generally known that, in very small amounts alcohol does act as a stimulant (we speak, here, not of alcohol which is laced with buffers, as is beer and wine, but of the distilled spirits which more quickly enter the blood). Yes, alcohol is classed as a "depressant drug." But that is more descriptive of how it is normally experienced because it is usually consumed in quantities which exceed the level necessary to induce toxic stimulation. I am not behind the times, my friend. It is unfortunate that so many others are that the few who ride the cutting edge are often branded as such. OO \/ Rod > Later Y'all, Vnend Ignorance is the mother of adventure.