Scientia Press

Identifying the best ways to stimulate the immune system to fight infectious diseases and cancer makes eminent sense and could provide highly attractive benefits. But it is not easy to do. Here is a list of category-leading immunostimulants, followed by a discussion of the issues involved.

Cytokines: IL-2 has shown itself to be an effective general immunostimulant in scores of clinical trials against different indications and appears promising against HIV (Cohen and Powderly, 2004). Used in high doses, IL-2 has significant side effects, so it is best used as a low-dose adjuvant. Other cytokines of proven general merit include G-CSF and GM-CSF, both for hematopoiesis. Interferons may work in specific cases, but their side effects make them less suitable as broad-spectrum adjuvants.

Microbial fragments/toxins: Of the large number of candidates, beta-glucans (also found in plants) are the most frequently investigated as an approach to provoking a general immune response (Wagner, 1999).

Negative thoughts have a way of inserting themselves unbidden into our minds. They reflect the unhappiness, perversity, and tragedy in our past and in the world about us. Only a Pollyanna would be ashamed to acknowledge them.

Negative thinking (rumination) does little harm as a long as it simply passes like a shadow across the otherwise sunny landscape of the mind. But negative thoughts bear a burden of emotion. They tend to plant themselves squarely in our path and grow roots. We dwell on them, sometimes for hours at a time. In certain cases this can lead to genuine depression. More often, habitual negative thinking tends to make people unhappy, pessimistic, cynical, suspicious, and morose. It also wastes precious resources of time and emotional energy.  And it can lead to anxiety and depression.

The Afghan Herbal Medicines for Addiction and Depression project aims to conduct clinical trials of promising herbal medicines drawn from Afghanistan’s high-potential medicinal and aromatic plants (MAP) sector, in keeping with traditional Unani medicine. Addiction (overwhelmingly from opiates) and depression (some from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder from the horrors of Afghanistan’s wars, and some from mistreatment of women) represent especially salient targets, and they possess worldwide importance. Unani herbal medicines have been reported in preliminary Iranian clinical studies to be effective and safe in these indications, and they possess certain advantages over synthetic drugs. However, thorough, scientific, multicenter trials need to be done.

Remix & Return is a concept for solving the vexing problem of the disposal of radioactive waste. It refers to remixing waste with uranium mine and mill tailings, then returning the mixture to the mines from which it came. The average original level of radioactivity of the uranium ore before it was extracted is first estimated, and this becomes the upper, “natural” limit of the tailings and waste that may be reinserted into a given mine.

Caffeine, the world’s most widely used psychoactive substance, attracts a lot of research. Caffeine also attracts controversy. Some scientists argue that caffeine is a benign and useful drug whose side effects are only of concern in regard to a small number of “sensitives”, including those with pre-existing anxiety or similar symptoms. They note that caffeine improves attention, reaction time, numeric and verbal memory, and work output and endurance in long-term exercise.

But other researchers claim that caffeine causes multiple damaging effects ranging from boosting blood pressure to disrupting sleep, and that these affect hundreds of millions.