After undergoing several modifications, including the use of chloroform, the test became known as the Duquenois-Levine test, and became widely popular. Though scientists would show in the 1960s and 1970s that the D-L test was nonspecific, meaning it rendered false positives, it remains today the most commonly used test for marijuana — used in many of the 800,000 marijuana arrests that take place each year.
The test is a simple chemical color reagent test, easy to perform but difficult to interpret.
So why don't they use the specific GC/MS test to confirm? Well, it is expensive. And the government labs are backed up. And budgets are tight. So corners are cut. After all. When you are processing 800,000 people a year there is not much time for justice.
See the last chapter or two in Mike Gray's Drug Crazy for a description of assembly line "justice" in Cook County, Illinois.
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.
After undergoing several modifications, including the use of chloroform, the test became known as the Duquenois-Levine test, and became widely popular. Though scientists would show in the 1960s and 1970s that the D-L test was nonspecific, meaning it rendered false positives, it remains today the most commonly used test for marijuana — used in many of the 800,000 marijuana arrests that take place each year.
The test is a simple chemical color reagent test, easy to perform but difficult to interpret.
So why don't they use the specific GC/MS test to confirm? Well, it is expensive. And the government labs are backed up. And budgets are tight. So corners are cut. After all. When you are processing 800,000 people a year there is not much time for justice.
Sounds a lot like the genesis of the AIDS epidemic in Africa. Folks in Africa have symptoms consistent with AIDS and a dozen other wasting diseases like starvation, TB and a bunch of other endemic diseases. They then use the LISA test which is KNOWN to have a significant false positive rate but is cheap. They test positive for AIDS (or false positive for TB or certain metabolites in a starving person's blood, etc.) and "viola" we have an AIDS epidemic. Shoddy science at best. Lies and fraud at worst. I suspect the latter.
Uhm, but there most definitely is an HIV epidemic in Africa. Denying that will result in people becoming even more careless and prevention being neglected. This will ultimately result in more people dying (maybe some people desire that though). I would call this murder!
Skipjack wrote:Uhm, but there most definitely is an HIV epidemic in Africa. Denying that will result in people becoming even more careless and prevention being neglected. This will ultimately result in more people dying (maybe some people desire that though). I would call this murder!
So far, the evidence persented to me has been as shoddy as the AGW evidence. Many people are convinced of that too. Doesn't make it so.