Scientists retract ecstasy brain damage study findings

[rooboy]

Researchers, horrified to find they had used a mis-labelled bottle in an experiment, have retracted their findings, saying they have failed to show the drug "ecstasy" can cause a certain pattern of brain damage.

Their original report, published in September 2002, said they had found Parkinson's disease-like damage in the brains of monkeys injected with ecstasy or MDMA.

"The authors recently discovered that the drug used to treat all but one animal in that report came from a bottle that contained methamphetamine instead of the intended drug, MDMA," the American Association for the Advancement of Science, which published the study in its journal Science, said in a statement.

Neurologists Dr Una McCann, Dr George Ricaurte and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore in the US said their experiment in fact showed nothing surprising.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s940330.htm

[Emboldened Chimp]

1. Alright!

Now I can drop E every day!

(kidding)

[LifeDuringWartime]

3. careful now

i know youre kidding, but for people considering using ecstasy: if you buy it at a concert it is most likely not pure ecstasy, or even ecstasy at all. ecstasy by itself is not dangerous but if it isnt ecstasy it could be.

[frustrated_lefty]

4. It's premature to say X by itself is not dangerous.

I'm not saying it is....just that it's premature to say, definitively, one way or the other, that it is safe or it is not.

[BuddhaGirl]

5. well, it's not dangerous if proper precautions are taken...

make sure the pills are pure and take at least a couple hundred milligrams of 5HTP, to promote serotonin production, or so I've
heard ;-)

[loyalsister]

7. There's a big leap

From "not dangerous" to "permanent brain damage."
There is considerable danger in using this drug because messing with brain chemistry is not for amateurs.
Seretonin is potentially THE most important mood regulator we have. It's impossible to deny that it is very risky business to experiment with it. Particularly on oneself, without a medical degree, as is usually the case with these kinds of drugs.

[Skip Intro]

2. The powers do not want a lot of sensual, blissful people walking around

wouldn't be good for production

[raifield]

6. Au contraire

The Soma are some high quality pills. Top notch stuff. Here, take a dram, it's better than a damn.


Boy, if I'm sprouting posts from Brave New World, then it's time to go to bed. A society of blissful people has it's advantages and disadvantages, I suppose.

[SOS]

8. Pathetic "research"

This story is disgusting on many levels. Sloppy pseudo-science, millions wasted to further a political agenda, studies timed to back-up the Anti-Rave act in Congress and worst of all, the torture and killing of monkeys to promote it all.

Here are some gems snipped from the NYT article on this sickening story:

Report of Ecstasy Drug's Great Risks Is Retracted
By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr.

A leading scientific journal yesterday retracted a paper it published last year saying that one night's typical dose of the drug Ecstasy might cause permanent brain damage.
The monkeys and baboons in the study were not injected with Ecstasy but with a powerful amphetamine, said the journal, Science magazine.

A medical school spokesman called the mistake "unfortunate".

The study was ridiculed at the time by other scientists working with the drug.

Two of the 10 primates died of heat stroke and another two were in such distress that they were not given all the doses.

Dr. Ricaurte (the researcher) realized that two vials his laboratory bought the same day must have been mislabeled: one contained Ecstasy, the other d-methamphetamine.

Dr. Ricaurte's laboratory has received millions of dollars from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, and has produced several studies concluding that Ecstasy is dangerous.

Dr. Ricaurte's critics accused him of rushing his results into print because a bill known as the Anti-Rave Act was before Congress.

His laboratory made "a simple human error," he said. "We're scientists, not politicians."

Asked why the vials were not checked first, he answered: "We're not chemists."

So he's not a politician and he's not a chemist. He's not much of a scientist either! Maybe if he tortures another 10 baboons he'll get some more "anti-drug" funding from the idiots in Washington.

[FormerOstrich]

9. not good for the monkeys but good for the troop?

Isn't that what they've been giving the troops to stay awake but saying that it doesn't harm them? I guess when the did the studies for army issue amphetamines they might have been using the sugar pills with the wrong label.