News (Media Awareness Project) - CN QU: PUB LTE: Dank Research, McGill Daily |
| Title: | CN QU: PUB LTE: Dank Research, McGill Daily |
| Published On: | 2010-03-29 |
| Source: | McGill Daily, The (CN QU Edu) |
| Fetched On: | 2010-04-02 02:36:31 |
DANK RESEARCH, McGILL DAILY
Re: "More than just chemicals on the brain" | Culture | March 15
Are your average McGill undergraduates smarter than most tenured professors
at the best American universities? Congratulations: apparently you are.
What's the proof?
One of your yet-to-be-degreed students, Aaron Vansintjan, recently wrote an
article that boldly flies in the face of mainstream scholarship produced by
history, classics, and women's studies departments stretching across the
United States. And it turns out he's right.
In "More than just chemicals on the brain," an intellectual
slap-in-the-face to respected academics from the U.S., Vansintjan attempts
to reexamine the evolutionary relationship between humans and their long
history of drug use. He accurately claims that many of the world's oldest
cultures promoted drugs that are now deemed dangerous, illegal, and
addictive by the modern West; medicines, recreational substances,
sacraments, and vehicles once used for the spread of culture have now
become the great scourges of Christian modernity.
And the historical evidence is squarely on his side. For example, the
Greeks - the folks who created democracy and the scientific method -
flourished while under the influence of strong hallucinogens, painkillers,
stimulants, and anxiolytics. They had no drug laws and no cartels.
How do I know this? I published a book on the topic after my dissertation
committee demanded I remove an entire chapter on recreational drugs from my
thesis on Roman pharmacy - it was an otherwise drab work on ancient
pharmacology. In the words of the former head of the classics department at
the University of Wisconsin, "They just wouldn't do such a thing."
Congratulations, McGill: you are ahead of the American curve. And by the
way, the Christian church waged the first drug war against women who were
using plants and animal toxins to induce abortion.
Due to your time at McGill, I'm confident you are not completely surprised.
David Hillman
Author of The Chemical Muse: Drug use and the roots of Western civilization
Re: "More than just chemicals on the brain" | Culture | March 15
Are your average McGill undergraduates smarter than most tenured professors
at the best American universities? Congratulations: apparently you are.
What's the proof?
One of your yet-to-be-degreed students, Aaron Vansintjan, recently wrote an
article that boldly flies in the face of mainstream scholarship produced by
history, classics, and women's studies departments stretching across the
United States. And it turns out he's right.
In "More than just chemicals on the brain," an intellectual
slap-in-the-face to respected academics from the U.S., Vansintjan attempts
to reexamine the evolutionary relationship between humans and their long
history of drug use. He accurately claims that many of the world's oldest
cultures promoted drugs that are now deemed dangerous, illegal, and
addictive by the modern West; medicines, recreational substances,
sacraments, and vehicles once used for the spread of culture have now
become the great scourges of Christian modernity.
And the historical evidence is squarely on his side. For example, the
Greeks - the folks who created democracy and the scientific method -
flourished while under the influence of strong hallucinogens, painkillers,
stimulants, and anxiolytics. They had no drug laws and no cartels.
How do I know this? I published a book on the topic after my dissertation
committee demanded I remove an entire chapter on recreational drugs from my
thesis on Roman pharmacy - it was an otherwise drab work on ancient
pharmacology. In the words of the former head of the classics department at
the University of Wisconsin, "They just wouldn't do such a thing."
Congratulations, McGill: you are ahead of the American curve. And by the
way, the Christian church waged the first drug war against women who were
using plants and animal toxins to induce abortion.
Due to your time at McGill, I'm confident you are not completely surprised.
David Hillman
Author of The Chemical Muse: Drug use and the roots of Western civilization
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