Ecstasy

Have you ever walked into a coffee shop in the morning and seen those kids in the corner, heavy eye lids, big yawns, smeared massacre, and venti black coffees steaming into their faces? The toll of a late night party erasing the youth off their faces, making them worn out and tired, but have you ever wondered or thought about the effect these late nights are having on in the inside of their body and much worse: brain directly. Alcohol, has taken a back seat when it comes to youths preference as a source to “relax” at a party; ecstasy or MDMA is now much more popular.

In the article Party Drug Ecstasy May Cause More Widespread Brain Damage Then Previously Thought by Kate Wong it opens up our eyes to the short term and detrimental long term this party drug has. Through animal studies, it has been proven that ecstasy, damages the serotonin in a persons brain. It can be looked in a sense of a cup with water in it, the water regulates itself, always having a steady flow, but when you take MDMA it over produces the water making it over flow much more than natural, and when the drug effects wear off, the cup is “empty”.

I had heard about ecstasy from friends and even had some friends that had talked about it and that is why this is this is so interesting. Knowing the effects it has on your body and brain is crazy. I knew that it wasn’t good for you to do it but I definitely didn’t know the long run affect it had on your brain. I never would want my friends ‘cups’ to be empty, much less mine.

Podcast

Everything in this world is part of our ecosystem. People take advantage of that by not taking care of the world with littering and pollution.  

People don’t like being called ecosystem services, their name is just provided to show how they are protecting the world from pollution. The world is run by money, and when the ecosystem cant produce money, it isn’t on the table of discussion and also isn’t getting credit for what its doing.

There is one earth in our universe and in my opinion we treat like there are many more to spare.  We cant use money to replace the world.

Mosquito's

Would getting rid of mosquitos affect the world? Nobody can really say, some say it wont and some say it will. Taking them out of our ecosystem might negatively impact our world by replacing them with something worse but none of this is proven. Therefore, we go on with living with them.

This article also explains different types of mosquitos and how they affect the world positively and negatively.  It states that mosquitos have been around for too long to get rid of them. A reason we cant get rid of them is because none of this is proven, nobody is sure that they would impact the ecosystem a great amount.

Personally I would rather rid the world of mosquitos. They are just bumps on my perfect world, literally. I also wouldn’t like to live through the consequence of getting rid of them, if there was to be one.

Shark Disection

Nathan Wolfe

Many people die from a sickness called HIV, Human Immunodeficiency Virus. This is a sexually transmitted sickness for the most part. There is yet a cure for this sickness but doctors have come up with medicine that will help you live with it as long as possible.

This disease was started in 1929 in Congo, Africa when a group of hunters set out to bush hung for primates to feed their families. In class we watched a video about a scientist by the name of Nathan Wolfe. He is trying to figure out what animals carry this disease and is also trying to monitor viruses so they stay away from the human race. Wolfe personally went on a bush hunt to collect samples of blood to check for zoonotic diseases. Zoonotic diseases are diseases caused by infections that can be transmitted between animals and humans. We hope as a world that we will someday find a cure to all these diseases that are life threatening, especially HIV.

Before I watched this movie I had no idea how HIV had actually started. I had never really thought about it. I’m glad I know how it started but I also think that there are other ways to take care of your family without threatening the life of the hunter and spreading it throughout the world. Such as hunting for animals we know for a fact don’t have diseases and aren’t endangered species.

Chimp's Article Summary

After a ten-year hiatus there is questioning and debate whether a certain group of chimpanzees should really be sent back to a labratory after such a long break in a retirement home in Alamagordo New Mexico. Questions such as these come up in discussion: Should testing really be allowed on chimpanzees when we wouldn't risk it on ourselbes and haven't these specific chimps already donated enough time and years to this lab?
A specific group of Chimps are being sent back to the lab after a decade of being at a retirement home in Alamagordo. The governer of New Mexico, Bill Richardson, is going to put up a fight agains the National Institutes of Health which would prevent them from going back to the lab. They want to test on these chimpanzees because they think it would be better to risk a cimp than a human.
The reaction I have to this article would be that these specific chimpanzees have already done their time in the lab and do not deserve to go back. I personaly think that they should stay where they are permanently.

Tina, Guest Speaker

Having a guest speaker on this topic really helped me to understand what people in situations of needing organs have to go through in order to live their life. This experience was really eye opening and helped me to think in a different perspective in which i could better understand the struggles that people suffering with organ failures have to cope with on a day to day basis.