DNA Discovered while on LSD
Francis Crick discovered the secret structure of DNA while on LSD. He was accustomed to using low doses of the drug to increase mental function which reminds me of the juice of Sapho from the David Lynch film based on Frank Herbert‘s Dune. Mentats were human computers.
Unlike computers, however, Mentats are not simply human calculators writ large. Instead, the exceptional cognitive abilities of memory and perception are the foundations for supra-logical hypothesizing. Mentats are able to sift large volumes of data and devise concise analyses in a process that goes far beyond logical deduction: Mentats cultivate “the naïve mind”, the mind without preconception or prejudice, that can extract the essential patterns or logic of data, and deliver useful conclusions with varying degrees of certainty. (Mentat)
In the imaginary world of Dune, Mentats used the juice of Sapho to increase their considerable abilities even further. Perhaps LSD was Crick’s juice of Sapho allowing him to see the essential pattern of the DNA molecule by laying aside preconceptions and self-critical thoughts.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
It is by the juice of sapho that thoughts acquire speed,
the lips acquire stains, the stains become a warning.
It is by will alone I set my mind in motion.
(Mentat Mantra)
Tags: biology, David Lynch, DNA, drugs, Dune, entheogens, Francis Crick, Frank Herbert, LSD, mentat, mind, prejudice, psychedelic, psychology, Sapho
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Anonymous said,
December 3, 2007 @ 8:33 pm
DRUGGIES ARE DUMB ACID KILLZ
December 3, 2007 @ 8:42 pm
Interesting (if opaque) perspective. Care to posit a coherent argument in support of your position that druggies are dumb acid killz? Or is there a new reverse-spambot in the wild which oddly tries to convince me to not buy drugs?
Anonymous said,
January 17, 2008 @ 5:25 am
Interesting about LSD and DNA. I didn’t know that. Reminds me of the time that I, an Electrical Engineering student at Utah State University, heard that Monosodium Glutamate would help my brain and took it a couple of times. Then, I decided that I didn’t want to mess with my body chemistry, and I stopped taking it.
January 17, 2008 @ 5:27 am
Ops… forgot to ID myself in my previous comment. Sorry, Jonathan.
January 17, 2008 @ 10:18 am
If there were legitimate clinical trial of the therapeutic use of LSD, I’d sign up. I’m not necessarily looking for a recreational experience. I’d be more interested in “cleansing the doors of perception” as they say.
mike said,
January 23, 2008 @ 11:04 am
drugs enable one to see things from a different perspective, most psychedelics and hallucinogens subtly alter the brain’s chemistry which allows thought processes to occur which would be impossible while sober. I myself have come up with several solutions to problems while stoned (I am an electrical & mechanical engineering student in scotland).
On another note, the ‘drug war’ only succeeds in perpetrating the drug trade, as every seizure drives the price up for a while. All drug dealers I have met are for the war on drugs as they all know that without it they would be out of a job. indeed, the only reason I started smoking weed was because it was illegal. and once you discover that all the government propaganda is bullshit, you are VERY inclined to disbelieve ANY official information on drugs at all.
sorry to go on a bit, the war on drugs is my personal bugbear!
January 23, 2008 @ 11:23 am
Amen, mike. The only point of disagreement we have is that some thought processes are only possible while under the influence. This might be true, or it might not. Perhaps those thought processes could be induced without external chemicals. Just a thought.
The government would improve its credibility (while trimming its coffers) if it either made marijuana legal or made worse drugs like tobacco and alcohol illegal. As it stands, its policy looks uninformed and extremist at best, cynically calculating at worst.
Anonymous said,
January 23, 2008 @ 7:59 pm
the government doesn’t need to do anything but stop the drug war. I’m not saying all drugs should be legal,there is some really nasty stuff on the streets. but making a substance illegal only fuels the fire for drug dealers. it gives them no regulations and now gidelines. in my opinion things like bud, alcohol, tobacco should be strictly watched and taxed. this would keep people out of jail save the government money. also in the case of hard life hurting drugs, instead of sending these people to jail, they should send them in to rehab. there sick not criminals. now if they go to rehab ever other day then a jail sentence wouyld be ok. lastly in the case of America, were sub post to be free who the fuck cares if you smoke weed, drink at 18, etc.
lsd what a drug!
January 24, 2008 @ 10:35 am
I agree, Anonymous. I think the War on Drugs is a farce, just like Prohibition was a farce. I’m only saying that if America wants to be consistent, if we ban drugs like marijuana and LSD, then we should also ban alcohol and tobacco. I would prefer, however, that we give up on the idea of prohibition, perhaps altogether.
January 24, 2008 @ 1:04 pm
i’m also opposed to the drug war.
jonathan, i presume you are aware that clinical trials HAVE been conducted on LSD and indeed LSD was applied therapeutically for quite a while with good results? there were about 1000 papers published about psychedelic therapy in the 60s. i had a psychiatrist professor in college who said that it was one of his most effective therapies, that he experienced the greatest breakthroughs with clients who were dosed. i personally have never done it, not from lack of desire but more from lack of opportunity. given the opportunity i’d probably give it a shot.
January 24, 2008 @ 1:17 pm
Now if we can only convince them to open clinical trials again, they’ve got two volunteers, at least.
Tyler Thompson said,
November 16, 2008 @ 4:06 pm
The drug war is a joke. A drug punishment should be as damaging as the affects of it. LSD should not be judged by those who have not used it and should be used carefully, those who decide to take Methamphetamine’s and other drugs with LSD are the reason most people have to deal with drama of the American laws. Just because there is a law against something, doesn’t mean it is right. In my belief, when LSD is used correctly, the brain is able to experience life without the biological tricks of the mind. In other words, it allows you to see what the brain doesn’t. The brain is the most influential thing in the world and LSD allows to experience the things that the brain won’t allow us to.
Jonathan Blake said,
November 17, 2008 @ 9:17 am
I don’t see it as freeing us from the constraints of our brains as much as freeing us from the misconception that the mundane way we perceive the world is the only way possible. But what do I know? I’ve never experienced LSD for myself.
I completely agree that the drug war is a farce. We need to step back and reconsider our strategy.
That_Guy said,
January 15, 2009 @ 2:00 am
If you are interested in current psychedelic research see
MAPS.ORG
Phil E. Drifter said,
January 15, 2009 @ 11:46 am
The war on (some) drugs was waged to replace lost slave labor post-civil war with prison labor by focusing on minorities and the drugs *they* brought to this ‘melting pot.’ Asians smoked opium, so opium was outlawed. Mexicans smoked cannabis (aka ‘marihuana: devil weed with roots in hell!’ aka the crop this nation survived on since before it was it’s own nation).
Harry Anslinger, ‘father of the drug war’ used the Mexican Spanish word ‘marihuana’ because if he’d tried to get Congress to outlaw cannabis, a mainstay of this nation, he knew he wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell. So he used a foreign word to induce ‘fear of the unknown’ in Congress.
Read tinyurl.com/1mn and tinyurl.com/potconviction and if you are so inclined you can order a copy of ‘The Marijuana Conviction’ from half.com, the book which the latter tinyurl above was the preliminary research for, first published in 1974 and written by two UVa law professors who investigated the matter and had full access to both the ‘open’ and ‘closed’ articles contained within the Library of Congress.
We learned what the consequences of prohibition are because we attempted to outlaw alcohol from 1919 to 1933; it prevented the government from receiving *any* money while pushing alcohol to the black market, which created bootleggers, Al Capone, and violence in the streets. Prohibition of naturally growing drugs is no different.
Jonathan Blake said,
January 15, 2009 @ 12:42 pm
Phil,
Take it easy on the conspiracy theories. We’re going for respectable in this joint. I believe there are plenty of reasons to rethink the drug war without taking a dip in the loony pool.
Phil E. Drifter said,
January 15, 2009 @ 7:22 pm
Blake, with all due respect…you’re an idiod. Did you even read the links I provided? No?
I nearly lost my life drunk on alcohol, had no recollection of the event, when I woke up 6 months later in a hospital bed I had no idea how I got there, I couldn’t walk and I couldn’t talk because after 6 months in a coma all your muscles atrophy.
To make a long story short, after my extensive rehabilitation (and with my hearing being chipped away by LEGAL ‘ototoxic’ drugs (which means ‘possibly detrimental to ones hearing) I’m now 80% deaf.
Because of legal drugs.
Anyone who’s ever smoked pot knows it’s nowhere near as dangerous as the government says it is. So why is it outlawed? Why is it still schedule 1 according to the DEA, even though FOR THOUSANDS OF YEARS it was used for it’s medicinal properties?
TO REPLACE SLAVE LABOR WITH PRISON LABOR.
You did me the dishonor or suggesting i was ‘loony.’ I DID 5 years of online research after my physical rehab when i was deaf and my mother graciously got us hooked up with Comcast internet because I’M UNABLE TO USE A TELEPHONE.
Go fuck yourself. And read the fucking links I left you before you flap your gums at me again.
Jonathan Blake said,
January 15, 2009 @ 7:44 pm
I’m guessing that That_Guy = Phil E. Drifter?
I’m sorry for the suffering you’ve experienced. I wish you the best of what life can offer you.
I never intended to call you loony. Your conspiracy theory is. I’m calling on you to step away from it. Do our cause a favor and keep crackpot theories to yourself (or perhaps try to be less credulous in the first place). We will never be able to end the drug war if everyone thinks we’re all out-to-lunch. Focus on facts that are more supportable. Our cause doesn’t need conspiracy theories.
By the way, if the links you refer to is maps.org, then I scanned them and provisionally subscribed to the RSS feed before you became Phil E. Drifter for this thread. Otherwise, I’m unaware of any links that you, Phil, have posted.
Phil E. Drifter said,
January 15, 2009 @ 8:08 pm
No, you people aren’t listening.
tinyurl.com is simply a great tool on the internet; it allows you to take ANY url and assign it a ‘tiny url’ so that instead of having to post long-ass urls (which may be clipped because many comment boards have limitations, take alternet.org for example, which hosts a story about how in 1974 (for President Nixon’s ‘Shaeffer Commission’ to investigate if cannabis should be legal or not) they showed that cannabis cures many different types of cancer, including breast (women, mostly), prostate (men only) and lung cancer. See tinyurl.com/gov74
See, you copy ‘ tinyurl.com/gov74 ‘ and you paste it into a new browser window. Tinyurl *automatically* redirects you to the intended page. Then you read.
I didn’t know you expected me to preclude links with ‘http://’ because this isn’t 1992, it’s 2008; more than that, many comment boards also prevent hotlinking, another reason I don’t bother to include http:// because that alerts the scripts to a url, which then may be rejected.
Just do yourselves a favor and copy my tiny urls and paste them into a new tab and then read them:
tinyurl.com/1mn
(this was before tinyurl allowed you to add your own suffix, it would just generate the next unused character keystrokes, because tinyurls are permanent)
tinyurl.com/potconviction
tinyurl.com/gov74
Here are some more:
tinyurl.com/waltershatesmexico
(John Walters is the current ‘Drug Czar,’ i.e. the director of the DEA)
tinyurl.com/waronminorities
tinyurl.com/carlylegrp
tinyurl.com/religitards
tinyurl.com/mccainsbiglie
Phil E. Drifter is my internet handle, and I use stumbleupon (stumbleupon.com) to stumble around the web, and when I come to pages on drug use I add what I’ve learned to the comment boards.
The word ‘conspiracy’ has taken such a negative connotation because MSM (that is, mainstream media) is in Uncle Sam’s pocket. Just throwing the words ‘conspiracy theory’ out automatically makes most sheeple disregard it as nonsense.
Do you really think your government is being honest with you? Not a single charge brought forth by Bush as a reason to invade Iraq was true. This was no accident, this was no ‘faulty intelligence.’ He’s playing the American people because the American people are, for the most part, STUPID.
Jonathan Blake said,
January 15, 2009 @ 9:43 pm
My apologies. I did miss the tinyurl links in the middle of your comment. I will admit that once you started down the conspiracy theory path in your comment, I stopped reading.
I’m already on your side as far as legalization of drugs, but even I—someone who should be on your side—tuned you out. Throwing out “MSM” and “sheeple” doesn’t help your case either. I already left one cult that thought it had the Secret Truth. I have no time to waste on another.
Phil E. Drifter said,
January 15, 2009 @ 9:55 pm
I know I’m right. Look at history: all these substances were used throughout history with no negative impact. These drugs grow out of the ground and humanity not only survived but thrived regardless.
1865: north wins the civil war and outlaws slavery
1866-1900: Various politicians write ‘grandfather clauses’ (google the term if you’re unfamiliar, but I learned about it in grade school) to prevent newly freed slaves from voting
1904: In California, it was outlawed for Asians to operate opium dens. Not just ‘opium dens are illegal,’ only Asians were barred from operating opium dens. Because white people had no interest in opium, it was only an Asian custom that they’d brought with them.
I’m tired of explaining it to you. If you don’t want to believe me that’s up to you, but you’re still wrong. it’s not a war on (some) drugs, it’s a war on minorities, and the federal government uses it to bypass the constitution. 4th amendment right to be free of illegal search and seizure? yeah right; pigs confiscate anything they want from *suspected* drug dealers, then it’s up to them to prove they DIDN’T buy their stuff with ‘drug money.’ 5th amendment protection against incriminating yourself? Then why do we have pre-employment drug testing?
Do yourself a favor and read *at least* tinyurl.com/1mn it’s the transcription of a speech given to the CA Judges Association before Prop 215 passed, legalizing medicinal cannabis. it’ll take you about 20 minutes to read it, and like I think i said, it was written by one of the UVa law professors who had full access to the library of congress.
Oh and check out
http://s269.photobucket.com/albums/jj48/phillydrifter/drugs/cannabis/
and it’s sub-directories and you can see all the bottles used to distribute cannabis tinctures by doctors before it was outlawed.
And if you go up one level you can see my research on other drugs; under ‘coca’ you can see some business cards used to advertise cocaine tooth drops.
Jonathan Blake said,
January 16, 2009 @ 5:48 am
I know I’m right.
I’m sorry, Phil, this certainty sounds just like the Mormonism I escaped.
I’ll read the one you suggested that I shouldn’t do without.
Phil E. Drifter said,
January 16, 2009 @ 6:10 am
Well I’m glad you’re going to read the one I pointed out, because it strikes at the heart of the racist matter of the war on (some) drugs.
As serendipitous as it was after I left a comment last night, I received my daily (ok, nightly; I get them right around 2 am each morning) google alert I set up about 3 months ago. It sends me a once-a-day notification on any news articles containing ‘marijuana OR cannabis OR hemp’.
Check out http://www.freepress.org/departments/display/8/2009/3343 which isn’t nearly as long as tinyurl.com/1mn but just to give you a taste, it ends with:
“As a whole, the violent, repressive War on Drugs has been forty years of legal, cultural and economic catastrophe. Like FDR, Obama must end our modern-day Prohibition, and with it the health-killing crusade against this ancient, powerful medicinal herb.”
And I’m not trying to offend anyone, just trying to open their eyes to the truth their own government has been lying to them about. Did you know in the Drug Czar’s job description, it allows him to lie if he needs/wants to?
Sorry to hear you were a mormon; glad to hear you escaped. I myself escaped christianity after being sent to catholic schools for 12 years. I took AP precalc & calc, 2 years ap bio, 2 years ap chem… but the religion courses were an insult to my intelligence.
The federal government considers their job to keep you in fear, so they can better control you. Just like religion, as far as i see.
Anonymous said,
January 18, 2009 @ 10:21 pm
the process of PCR (another revolutionary thing in biology) was also invented by a person on LSD, the story goes that he was driving around when all of the sudden the process snapped into place in his mind (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kary_Mullis)
Jonathan Blake said,
January 19, 2009 @ 6:50 am
Interesting. Perhaps the government should be funding LSD for our top scientists.
Anonymous said,
March 14, 2009 @ 5:45 am
Francis Crick didnt discover the DNA sequence… It was the woman that they had working for them, I forget her name, hopefully someone here knows. She exposed herself to years and years of radiation, later dieing from a cancer, while Crick went on and became famous…. Thieving bastard
Jonathan said,
March 14, 2009 @ 6:54 pm
It’s not as simple as saying that Rosalind Franklin had her science stolen from her. Her data were critical to discovering the structure of DNA. Yet she seems to have attempted to be a lone wolf. Her reluctance to be part of a team may have kept her from sharing more credit for the discovery. Anyway, it’s complex.
Bob said,
August 10, 2009 @ 5:29 am
Take LSD.
Delysid said,
August 23, 2009 @ 7:25 pm
Most of what is represented these days as LSD is not the sublime, ethereal cosmic elixir that was used in the 1960s. The product may be LSD (d-Lysergic Acid Diethylamide), but the purity of the substance is quite bad compared to the LSD of the sixties, which was around 96%-98% pure w/ almost no active ergolines (LSD-like chemicals) in the mixture. You see when LSD is produced in a lab the final product is a crystalline mass that contains (hopefully) LSD, iso-LSD, and other byproducts from the synthesis. You can not get 100% LSD, the molecule is simply not stable enough even under ideal conditions so you are left w/ LSD and other isomers and similar chemicals, and if the chemist was poorly trained or made a mistake in the synthesis, you may also be consuming leftover precursors and reagents from the synthesis. I would know, since I’ve met some of the cooks (chemists) who used to produce the stuff. Today’s LSD, in the USA at least, is being produced by a group of second rate cooks and associates scattered throughout the Pacific Northwest, and these people are far from professionals. They have good intentions, but they are not trained chemists and are simply replicating a recipe they were taught…as such their product is not up to par and varies in purity from 60%-90%, with many active and detrimental chemicals being left over in the final batch that eventually hits the tours (music festivals where most distribution of LSD takes place today). This second rate LSD does not produce the same type of experience that the LSD in the 60s and 70s produced, so to say people should go out and take LSD is somewhat disingenuous. I might add that there are also lone wolf chemists who are producing LSD-like compounds and passing them off as LSD…one that has shown up recently is ETH-LAD, which is another ergoline. DOB, DOI, and DOC (potent psychedelics unrelated to LSD) are also being represented in some areas as LSD. You really don’t know anymore what you’re getting unless you’re at the very top, so be careful with experimentation.
August 24, 2009 @ 8:02 am
Delysid, thank you for the unusually informative comment. You don’t see that everyday on a blog.
I’ve heard that synthesizing LSD is not a simple process and can be easily botched. Personally, if I ever took LSD, it would probably be part of controlled experiment.
Kristin said,
March 2, 2010 @ 5:04 pm
The reason that Rosalind Franklin didn’t get credit for her findings is because back in her time that would not allow women to be credited for a nobel prize.
Jonathan said,
March 2, 2010 @ 5:20 pm
As much as I think Rosalind Franklin deserves more credit, your criticism of the Nobel Prize committee is unjustified: the first female Nobel Laureate was in 1903, just two years after they started handing out awards and years before the discovery of DNA. That female first was Marie Curie.