Ozzy Osbourne To Be Genetically Decoded

Dashiva Dan writes "DNA research lab Knome has announced that it is going to sequence Ozzy's entire genome. Ozzy, the former lead singer of Black Sabbath, reality television star, and spokesman for World of Warcraft among many other things, has been selected so they can discover, among other things, how drugs are absorbed in the body. The amount of abuse Ozzy has put himself through and survived is a large part of why he was chosen."

Re:Do they have any of his old DNA

[hedwards]

All sorts of things can, from free radicals, to cell duplication to sun exposure. But in this case they aren't interested in that so much as what about his DNA might have contributed to him surviving that much abuse.

It's hard to say, but he could always just happen to represent the long tail of the distribution.

Re:Do they have any of his old DNA

[interkin3tic]

Also, I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think(?) that anything other than radiation can break down dna.

Epigenetics are proving to be far more influenced by our environment than we thought. Here's one article [medicalnewstoday.com] that suggests BPA affects the epigenetics of mice.

As far as DNA goes, it's actually pretty easy to break down or otherwise make inoperable. Ionizing radiation does do it quickly, but normal cellular processes even damage it. Thousands of chemicals and proteins are mutagenic. Fortunately, your cells, skin, and clothing help protect the DNA, and there's a lot of active repair. Still, it seems that many (almost all?) cancers are caused initially damage to the DNA.

Many drugs probably have mutagenic properties and could damage your DNA. Having said that, it wouldn't make -specific changes- to the DNA in your -whole body- and thus would not fundamentally alter your DNA sequence. Maybe cocaine would cause breaks in your DNA at random places. There's a lot of DNA, the chances that it would break your DNA at a specific point in every single cell in your body... it's virtually impossible.

Re:Do they have any of his old DNA

[ZirconCode]

No, a Common mutagen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutagen) are Alkaloid plants (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alkaloid) which include Cocaine. I'm sure there are more but that's what I was able to figure out after a quick google.

Re:Concentrations

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think Ozzy absorbs drugs anymore. After all, osmosis only works for moving stuff from high to low concentrations.

After all, OZmosis only works for moving stuff from hi to low concentrations.

There, fixed that for you.

Re:Better idea

[Anonymous Coward]

I second this. Keith Richards cannot be killed by conventional weapons.

Re:Survived?

[DesScorp]

The reason is the drug war. In the olden days, Illegal drugs were made by professional chemists in white coats who had pride in the quality of their product.
It also had the backing of big money from that are better unnamed sources and pure intermediate chemicals to work with.
Today, It's made using the simplest and usually worst methods, using filthy chemicals by thugs.

You have a very idealized version of drug use's "Good Ole' Days". There really weren't any. To begin with, the first Federal prohibition against drugs didn't come until 1914, when the Harrison Act was passed. And many of the drugs on the prohibited list aren't very common on the streets today.

Do you know when America had its biggest addiction problem, by far? If you said "the sixties" or "today", you'd be flat wrong. The high water mark for addiction in this country was between the Civil War and right before WWI. Between 2 and 5 percent of the population was addicted to drugs. And I mean really addicted. Do you know who helped cause this? Dirty street pushers? Columbian gangs? No.

Doctors.

That's right, our biggest addiction rates came from the men in "clean white coats".... but it was all legal. After morphine became widely available, doctors so overused opiates for even minor patient problems that addiction became common. You could literally go the hospital with a middling ailment and come home addicted to morphine.

  Do you know what the most common profile of the American drug addict was prior to WWI? The white, middle class housewife. The closest thing to a "drug pusher" was the snake oil salesman that offered a bottle of liquid for whatever ailed you. And that bottle was often up to 50 percent morphine-based, and was often cut with dangerous chemicals. So much for pride in quality of the product.

There are legitimate criticisms of the drug war, many of them. But don't pretend that before the "drug war" that we didn't have a huge problem. The biggest aid in bringing down both the addiction rate, and cleaning up the quality of drugs? A government law. The Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906, which prohibited the consumption of opiates without a prescription.