Thursday, June 29, 2017
William H. McGlothlin
Most of us in epidemiology knew Bill for his "clinical epidemiology" work on the California Civil Commitment Act outcomes, described below by Doug Anglin, one of his protégés.
He also studied hallucinogens, and wrote about them here:
A different era, perhaps.
Monday, June 26, 2017
Craig Reinarmand, Intoxication, and US Culture
I never met Reinarman, but I wish I had.
In this post, I will add some notes about his perspectives, and invite you to comment.
Reinarman on intoxication and US culture
Later on, if Hui or I have time, we'll add some additional interviews and readings.
In this post, I will add some notes about his perspectives, and invite you to comment.
Reinarman on intoxication and US culture
Later on, if Hui or I have time, we'll add some additional interviews and readings.
Tom Ungerleider , RIP
Tom Ungerleider
I was lucky to interview Tom in the early 1970s as part of a DEA research contract that helped me understand the US drug policy structure. (At the time I drafted that research contract proposal, I was a 'wet behind the ears' Instructor at the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy, and it helped sustain me through both my master of science studies and my PhD studies. I came away with a serious pessimism about learning anything definitive from analyses of already-gathered data, and a commitment to gather my own data. The search for definitive evidence and understanding must include analysis of already gathered data, but do not count on analyses of already gathered data to win you anything more than a seat testifying before the US Congress as the highest honor. Hard to speak definitively on any subject if all you do is analyze hard-won data that comes from protocols you did not design to 'sing' to the research question you seek to answer.)
Some notes on Tom and his contributions to our field:
Life history information
Bias and cannabis research
Drugs and adolescents
PubMed trace of his work over the years
On some occasions, we learn from a short interaction with an important field leader.
My interaction with Professor Ungerleider was a short one.
I called him on the telephone, set up the interview appointment, and flew out to meet him, returning with notes and valuable insights about how the DEA and FDA do and do not work together.
But the most profound insight involves compassion coupled with science.
Compassion for people using drugs and the use of science to harness the energy of that compassion in the direction of 'betterment'.
Thanks to Tom Ungerleider for what he taught me on that important front.
I was lucky to interview Tom in the early 1970s as part of a DEA research contract that helped me understand the US drug policy structure. (At the time I drafted that research contract proposal, I was a 'wet behind the ears' Instructor at the University of Minnesota College of Pharmacy, and it helped sustain me through both my master of science studies and my PhD studies. I came away with a serious pessimism about learning anything definitive from analyses of already-gathered data, and a commitment to gather my own data. The search for definitive evidence and understanding must include analysis of already gathered data, but do not count on analyses of already gathered data to win you anything more than a seat testifying before the US Congress as the highest honor. Hard to speak definitively on any subject if all you do is analyze hard-won data that comes from protocols you did not design to 'sing' to the research question you seek to answer.)
Some notes on Tom and his contributions to our field:
Life history information
Bias and cannabis research
Drugs and adolescents
PubMed trace of his work over the years
On some occasions, we learn from a short interaction with an important field leader.
My interaction with Professor Ungerleider was a short one.
I called him on the telephone, set up the interview appointment, and flew out to meet him, returning with notes and valuable insights about how the DEA and FDA do and do not work together.
But the most profound insight involves compassion coupled with science.
Compassion for people using drugs and the use of science to harness the energy of that compassion in the direction of 'betterment'.
Thanks to Tom Ungerleider for what he taught me on that important front.
Tales on the Cannabis Road
Tales on the Cannabis Road.
Notes on Denver and Seattle.
I will post some images later.
Although I have purchased anything, the cannabis shop owners have been quite willing to allow me to take photographs.
What will they think of next?
Sunday, June 11, 2017
Saturday, June 10, 2017
Neglected classics
Balter's work with Nurco was in the criminological tradition: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/1211378
(I'm looking for someone to do a literature review based on this line of studies, and the most highly cited of the work that subsequently cited these studies: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/7327796 . I think DAD would publish that lit review.)
This line of studies, sustained by the late David Nurco, as well as John Ball, from a base in the Friends Research Institute in Baltimore, is important reading for anyone seeking to master drug dependence epidemiology. David was at University of Maryland and John had been a NIDA Intramural Program researcher (Lexington, KY: Addiction Research Center) before he moved to the Baltimore area. They were somewhat dismissive of the kind of field surveys we were doing -- didn't think 'serious' drug users would participate and be found in our samples (left truncation problem, and a sense of left-censoring, although they did not use those terms).
After Mary Monk and I submitted and got trashed for our NIDA proposal to create a primary care study base in Washington County, Maryland (with primary care and community controls) which we wanted to start to use to conduct a series of case control studies on cannabis dependence, before studying other IRD, David came up to me at a seminar. He disclosed that he had been on the study section, and asked me why I was interested in marijuana, whether I truly thought people become dependent on marijuana, and why I wasn't studying 'real' drug problems like cocaine and heroin. My next proposal to NIDA was to study cocaine use and problems in the United States. It got the equivalent of 1.8 and then 1.7 priority scores, not good enough for funding, mainly because we only had cross-sectional samples of users, and too few newly incident users from the 1-year followup of the ECA samples.
Some of you know what happened next, and how it came to pass that my first NIDA R01 award was to complete these proposed studies in cocaine epidemiology. I thank David for that advice, even though he had misjudged the public health importance of cannabis.
(As of last December, John Ball was still alive, per our mutual friends Faith and Jerry Jaffe.)
R.I.P. for Mitch and for David.
Age of Anxiety now?
Echoes of the 1960s.
More by that group:
When I read this article, I learned what kind of research methods I wanted to try to master. At that time, I didn't think of it as epidemiology. I thought of it as social science survey research.
Sunday, June 4, 2017
Heroin by Velvet Underground
URLs to the right: Top one opened a new web page and the song started playing once I used cursor to press PLAY triangle.
Live Version, top of page:
Live versionJulie Bosman's NYT article from January 2017 is here.
Friday, June 2, 2017
Background reading: children and adolescent mental health, IACAPAP
Could be a useful resource for those interested in children and adolescent mental health:
Please leave comments if you find something particularly interesting, especially if it involves neuropsychiatric epidemiology.
I am looking for pediatric psychiatry examples to illustrate clearly how neuropsychiatric epidemiology should strive to be neither mindless nor brainless.
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