There were some details in the paper that I either did not understand, or indicate flaws in the authors’ thinking.

1)
If adenosine is produced by the body as a natural self-analgesic, why isn’t it produced as a response to the injury in the mouse’s paw?

2)
If adenosine and CCPA act locally and diffuse very slowly, how could their manipulations affect the ilias nerve, which was partially ligated (presumably some distance away from the Zusanli point) to create neuropathic pain.

3)
Were there control mice that had the incision, but not the nerve ligation? This would separate the effects of pain from the ligated nerve and the effects of pain from the incision.

4)
“We next modeled neuropathic pain by spared injury of the sciatic nerve (22)”

What does “spared mean”?
The reference 22 seems beside the point as it throws no light on what they are saying.

Malathion is also commonly used for mosquito control, though that has been in decline for the last decade as programs shift to synthetic pyrethroids.

Therefore, non-food exposures to OPs should be considered in the analysis.

Calli – the material you mentioned as coming from chrysanthemums is pyrethrum. Pyrethrins and pyrethroids were all developed from that and for the most part, were designed to have lower avian and mammalian toxicity.

While organic farming uses a lot of excellent techniques that need to be included in conventional farming, the pest control materials allowed really aren’t always safer than those excluded and in some cases, like copper sulfate as a fungicide, is more toxic and more persistant in the environment.

http://www.pnas.org/content/87/19/7777.full.pdf+html

discussing the naturally occurring carcinogens produced by plants, many in response to predation.

if anything, switching to all organic produce only changes the types of carcinogens not the amount.

Hitchens’ article is terrible. His criteria for whether a disorder exists are pretty bad; he doesn’t demonstrate any awareness of construct validity; he makes up alternative hypotheses for ADHD diagnoses and thinks that is meaningful, but hasn’t looked at whether other people are considering and testing for the variables he raises (they are); and he collapses any distinction between knowledge of etiology with knowledge of a disorder.

He says why does it affect boys so very much more than it affects girls? No other medical complaint – except those involving reproductive organs – discriminates between the sexes in this way but plenty of pathology is sex-linked. I conclude that he doesn’t know what he is talking about. I can’t find a justification for paying Hitchens’ any mind, but maybe someone else can.

Were you praising the media coverage? At least then the comment would have some consistency to it. I assumed you then pointed out the “Big Ag” makes most of the organic crap they buy, and that the logo of the nice simple couple and their mule is called marketing.

The media doesn’t give proper weight to this study. It is limited in what you can draw from it. It is not really designed to show a causal relationship…not even close. It is not prosective. It uses self reporting over 1 year to determine ADHD diagnostic status and correlates that with a one time measurement of metabolites. The levels of metabolites in the urine maybe representative of long term exposure, or they may be not.

If the measured metabolites are highly variable over time they are not good surrogate markers for long term exposure. How variable the levels are would relate to the sources of exposure to pesticides. The fact that the half-lives for these compounds are fairly short also conflicts with the idea that these are good surrogate markers. This is analogous to correlating someone’s weight with their hunger level at a given point in time. Even if there is a relationship between weight and appetite, a single hunger level is not a good marker.

I’m not saying that this is not a useful study, its just that the interpretations from it are too limited and subtle for the media to be able to report it accurately. People are already worried about all the wrong things… this just adds to it.

Actually, from reading the below article, that’s exactly how I read it:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100517/ap_on_bi_ge/us_children_pesticides

“The new findings are based on one-time urine samples in 1,139 children and interviews with their parents to determine which children had ADHD. The children, ages 8 to 15, took part in a government health survey in 2000-2004.”

“In the body, pesticides break down into compounds that can be measured in urine. Almost universally, the study found detectable levels: The compounds turned up in the urine of 94 percent of the children.”

“The study dealt with one common type of pesticide called organophosphates. Levels of six pesticide compounds were measured. For the most frequent compound detected, 20 percent of the children with above-average levels had ADHD. In children with no detectable amount in their urine, 10 percent had ADHD.”

Am I wrong in how I am interpreting it?