Brain Cells on Parade

There was an item in the news today titled, “Marijuana May Stave Off Alzheimer’s, Study Claims.” Credit where credit is due – it was written by one Andy Sullivan for Reuters. A quote from the article: “New research shows that the active ingredient in marijuana may prevent the progression of the disease by preserving levels of an important neurotransmitter that allows the brain to function.” Well, I guess that’s good news. It is possible that this will lead to further breakthroughs down the road. I had to laugh though, when they began going over the symptoms of Alzheimer’s: “Those afflicted with Alzheimer’s suffer from memory loss, impaired decision-making, and diminished language and movement skills.” – or you could just smoke some dope, and get the exact same effect!

I have to add the following item of questionable taste. If you are a long-time reader of this journal, you know that I have mentioned various unfortunate juxtapositions of headlines on AOL news. There was another one today. CC emailed the text to me, but I don’t have a screen capture of it. The preceding item about marijuana was paired with an article about the recent shootings of the Amish children in Pennsylvania. The result read like this:
“Girl’s heroics are revealed. Tried to help Amish classmates. She told killer, ‘Shoot me first.’ – New benefit of marijuana?”

Too soon for trying to mine humor from such a tragedy? Yeah, probably. If so, I say blame AOL!