Ozzy Osbourne To Be Genetically Decoded 256
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."
Do they have any of his old DNA (Score:5, Interesting)
Do they have any of Ozzy's old DNA?
i'd love to see a before-and-after diff...
Re:Survived? (Score:5, Interesting)
In this case it's, "made more money letting a few cameras wander around his family's life than in decades of laborious rock and roll."
Re:Do they have any of his old DNA (Score:2, Interesting)
At worst they can probably check his kid's dna to get a rough idea.
Also, I'm not entirely sure, but I don't think(?) that anything other than radiation can break down dna.
Re:Do they have any of his old DNA (Score:5, Interesting)
With the bit I know about street drugs, and the amount he has done over the years, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised if some was tainted with some sort of radioactive material. I'm afraid to know many radiation tainted drugs came out of Eastern Europe around 1986/1987.
I knew someone who OD'd (and survived). I knew what drugs she thought she had been taking. I also had the opportunity to read her toxicology report. Thank goodness it wasn't a postmortem report, and she gave it to me to read. The report almost read like a complete list on every street drug and several pharmaceuticals. Everything *EXCEPT* for the ones she had taken. For some reason, I pictured a drug manufacturer sweeping the floor, taking everything that was the right color, and pressing it into the pills she had taken.
The report didn't have anything else on it, so I'm guessing they didn't test for heavy metals or anything of that sort. If they had, I wouldn't have been all that surprised to see mercury and lead in the list.
Ozzy osbourne, marilyn manson. the 'scare' (Score:2, Interesting)
the onion had a good piece about this :
http://www.theonion.com/articles/marilyn-manson-now-going-doortodoor-trying-to-shoc,459/ [theonion.com]
Re:Survived? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re:Not their first choice (Score:1, Interesting)
Was my first thought too, hell he named his band after a colloquialism for speed addict.
Those same white blood cells were later found in a bar, so far over 30 police have been injured in the riots that followed the attempted removal of said cells from said bar. Sources claim "the music must have made them violent".
Re:Do they have any of his old DNA (Score:3, Interesting)
That's pretty much what I was thinking. Nothing intentionally radioactive, just accidentally done (i.e., Chernobyl). I'd stretch the suspicion from growing areas to things that may have been out and exposed. You know perfectly well, if illegal stuff was exposed, the dealers will still sell it. There's no money in drugs that are thrown away.
Re:Survived? (Score:5, Interesting)
Idealists! Sheesh! (Score:3, Interesting)
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, ... 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.
...
You have a very idealized notion of American history, and an odd definition of doctors, and a very warped perception of the 60s and 70s.
First off, most of the "medicines" you mention in the 1800s were discovered by doctors and scientists, but produced by both reputable companies and charlatan con artists. Not to mention many addictive drugs were simply added to food stuffs to give them an extra boost. Addiction in children and housewives and men was not so much abuse by the doctors but greed by legitimate companies and all manner of small time cheats. Sure doctors were far too liberal in using these new miracle drugs, and.some doctors were unethical with them also. But I blame simple greed most. Drugs were everywhere, and in almost every commercial product.
Secondly, in the sixties and seventies the popular drugs were by and far professionally produced drugs. Many of which were legal until the seventies. LSD was legal when it first hit the street scene and remained so for several years. So, before you go off spouting history, learn it first. I lived through the sixties and seventies, I was there. A firsthand witness. I can personally vouch that the majority of drugs in the sixties and seventies were produced by corporations, and not in people's basements. Sure there was some of that, but those were a small minority.