Seattle Hempfest 2008: A celebration of all things cannabis

This weekend on the Puget Sound waterfront, Myrtle Edwards Park plays host to America's largest marijuana law reform event in the 17th annual Seattle Hempfest. The festival, the purpose of which is to educate the public on the many uses and benefits of the cannabis plant, runs from 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Saturday and Sunday and promises nonstop entertainment.

Hempfest will include five stages featuring hundreds of speakers and music performers. Key speakers include PBS travel show host Rick Steves, author of The Emperor Wears No Clothes Jack Herer, and NORML (National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws) founder Keith Stroup.

A Hempfest attendee flies a marijuana flag at a past festival. Getty Images

The Hemposium Stage will offer attendees a chance to participate in panel discussions with many of the Hempfest speakers, which John Davis, the event's board chairman, said is an opportunity not to be missed.

"The panels will provide a chance to hear people that really know what they're talking about discuss the issues," Davis said, adding, "It's really a neat experience to get to talk directly to the speakers."

Among the issues on tap for this weekend, industrial uses of cannabis will be at the forefront, as this year's theme is "Industrial Hemp, and what it can do for America."

"There are a lot of issues that surround the big issue, which is the legal status of the plant, but we do like to bring up industrial usage," Davis said.

Although the issue of marijuana legalization is at the center of Hempfest, the festival's always-impressive band lineup is a major reason why it is expected to draw more than 150,000 people to the waterfront this weekend. Among the many bands performing on the event's five stages will be L.D.T. Mo-Thugs (featuring members from Grammy-winning Bone Thugs-n-Harmony), Vains of Jenna, and Herbivores. Because the event is free and run by a nonprofit organization, most of the acts are volunteering their time to support the cause.

Any event involving the legality of marijuana is sure to raise the question of police presence. However, Seattle Hempfest has a fairly clean bill on this issue and works closely with Seattle Police to ensure a safe festival environment. Davis said he has been especially impressed with the efforts put forth by police during past Hempfests.

"The police have really shown our group the meaning of protect and serve," Davis said.

Hempfest is free and largely put on by volunteers, with funding coming from a combination of vendor revenue, sponsorships, and donations. However, Davis estimates that the average donation at last year's event was somewhere around 15 cents. 15 cents! So with two days chock full of complimentary entertainment, enjoy some speeches and concerts and then open up that billfold and contribute a little more than a nickel and dime for a great cause.

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Red Bull gives you wings - and heart trouble?

(Nigel Morton)

Does Red Bull give you more than just wings?

Sophie Tedmanson in Sydney and David Rose

Red Bull may claim to “give you wings” but drinking too much of the popular energy drink may also lead to heart damage, a study suggests.

A study of 30 university students aged between 20 and 24 years old found that drinking just one 250ml sugar-free can of the caffeinated energy drink increased the “stickiness” of the blood and raised the risk of blood clots forming.

Using tests to measure blood pressure and the state of blood vessels around the body, the Australian researchers said that after drinking one can participants had shown a cardiovascular profile similar to that of someone with heart disease.

Red Bull today emphatically denied that the drink, which is distributed to 143 countries worldwide, was dangerous. In a statement, it said that Red Bull had been proved safe by “numerous scientific studies”, and that it had never been banned from anywhere it had been introduced.

Scott Willoughby, of the Cardiovascular Research Centre at the Royal Adelaide Hospital and Adelaide University, said that he was alarmed at the results, and suggested that older adults who already have symptoms of heart disease should refrain from drinking too much of the energy drink.

“After one can it seemed to turn the young individual into one with more of the type of profile you would expect to see with someone with cardiovascular disease,” he said. “People who already have existing cardiovascular disease may want to talk to their physician before they drink Red Bull in future.”

Previous studies have examined the effects of consuming Red Bull, one can of which contains 80mg of caffeine — around the same as a cup of filter coffee — and taurine, an amino acid commonly used in energy drinks.

An estimated 330 million litres of energy drinks were consumed in Britain last year, a market worth £1 billion. However Red Bull is banned in countries such as Norway, Uruguay and Denmark because of health fears.

Last year a research team from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit presented a paper to the American Heart Association suggesting that energy drinks may boost heart rates and blood pressure levels. The results, from a small study, prompted them to warn against consumption by those with cardiovascular problems.

Earlier this year a teenager from Darlington was sent to hospital after drinking eight cans of Red Bull. Paramedics reported that the 15-year-old suffered heart palpitations.

Last year a large study of American college students found that those who drank energy drinks mixed with alcohol during a night out were twice as likely to be injured or otherwise come to harm than those who consumed alcoholic drinks on their own.

Dr Willoughby said that he was prompted to conduct the study after recent reports of deaths in young people who had consumed large amounts of the energy drink before they died.

The high levels of caffeine in Red Bull was suspected to be a contributing factor in the death of a 40-year-old man in Oxford who suffered a fatal heart attack in April after collapsing at an Asda store where he worked. In 2007 an 18-year-old British basketballer died after consuming three cans of the drink, and in July 2001 and 33-year-old Australian man died of a heart attack after drinking a pitcher of Red Bull and vodka.

“There was enough anecdotal evidence to catch my attention,” Dr Willoughby said. He added that previous studies had shown caffeine and taurine to have an effect on blood platelets and heart function, sometimes with beneficial results, such as boosting endurance while exercising.

But, he added, “maybe there’s something quirky about the effect of the combination of the two in the drink which is causing this reaction, this is what we need to look at next.”

The results shocked the 30 students, some of whom drank up to eight cans a night to help them stay awake to study, and many now refuse to consume the energy drink again. Dr Willoughby said he now aims to extend this preliminary study to a larger group of students to verify the results.

Linda Rychter, a spokeswoman for Red Bull in Australia, said that the report would be assessed by the company’s head office in Austria. “The study does not show effects which would go beyond that of drinking a cup of coffee. Therefore, the reported results were to be expected and lie within the normal physiological range,” she added.

Red Bull, which has the catchphrase “Red Bull gives you wings”, was created in Austria in the 1980s. The company last year sold 3.5 billion cans of the drink in 143 countries. Cans of Red Bull already carry health warnings advising customers not to drink more two cans a day.

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Frozen embryos 'make healthier babies than fresh ones'

Mark Henderson, Science Editor, in Barcelona

IVF babies born from embryos that are frozen and thawed are less likely to be underweight or premature than those conceived during fresh treatment cycles, research has shown.

The findings show that the use of frozen embryos could soon be accepted as completely safe, doctors said.

Another team of researchers told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Barcelona that IVF success rates could be improved by as much as 15 per cent with a “viability index” for selecting embryos with the best chance of a healthy pregnancy.

The Danish study into frozen embryos found that the average birth weight of those babies was 200g more than in fresh-embryo IVF.

The findings, from a team led by Anja Pinborg, of the Copenhagen University Hospital, are important because women are increasingly encouraged to use one fresh embryo — to avoid multiple births — and to freeze any others produced in the process for later use.

Dr Pinborg said it was highly unlikely that freezing improved the health of embryos. The figures could be explained because patients who froze embryos were generally young women with a good prognosis. Poor quality embryos were also more likely to die during the thawing process.

“These findings are reassuring,” she told the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology conference in Barcelona. “If our results continue to be positive, frozen embryo replacement can be accepted as a completely safe procedure, which can be used even more frequently.”

Scientists from Yale University told the conference that overall IVF success rates could be improved by as much as 15 per cent by a new “fitness test” that can predict which IVF embryos will implant into the womb up to 70 per cent of the time.

The non-invasive procedure examines chemical fingerprints in the culture media in which they grow in the laboratory. Scientists said the technology, known as metabolomics, should be ready for widespread use within two to three years, and predicted that the viability index could become a routine part of fertility treatment.

Denny Sakkas, who is leading the research, said: “The other side of IVF is that we probably fail to get patients pregnant about two thirds of the time we do an embryo transfer. One of the reasons is we’re not that good at picking the best embryo we have available.

“In the clinic, we would probably be looking at a 10 to 15 per cent improvement in pregnancy rates.

“It’s not going to make a bad embryo good, but it should help us to tell them apart. This definitely could make the difference between people getting pregnant or not.”

The average success rate for IVF in Britain is 21.6 per cent across women of all ages, and 29.6 per cent for women under 35.

There is no evidence that acupuncture during IVF treatment does anything to improve women’s chances of having a baby, the most extensive review yet has concluded. Sesh Sunkara, who led the research at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital in London, told the conference: “If women come to me and ask if they should have acupuncture, I have to say there is no evidence that it helps.” She said more trials were needed to settle the issue.

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