from the NYT Report of Ecstasy Drug's Great Risks Is Retracted By DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. 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. The retraction was submitted by the team at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine that did the study. A medical school spokesman called the mistake "unfortunate" but said that Dr. George A. Ricaurte, the researcher who made it, was "still a faculty member in good standing whose research is solid and respected." The study, released last Sept. 27, concluded that a dose of Ecstasy a partygoer would take in a single night could lead to symptoms resembling Parkinson's disease. The study was ridiculed at the time by other scientists working with the drug, who said the primates must have been injected with huge overdoses. Two of the 10 primates died of heat stroke, they pointed out, and another two were in such distress that they were not given all the doses. If a typical Ecstasy dose killed 20 percent of those who took it, the critics said, no one would use it recreationally. In an interview yesterday, Dr. Ricaurte said he realized his mistake when he could not reproduce his own results by giving the drug to monkeys orally. He then 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. Other scientists accuse him of ignoring their studies showing that typical doses do no permanent damage. At the time Dr. Ricaurte's study was published, it was strongly defended against those critics by Dr. Alan I. Leshner, the former head of the drug abuse institute, who had just become the chief executive officer of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science. Dr. Leshner had testified before Congress that Ecstasy was dangerous, and Dr. Ricaurte's critics accused him of rushing his results into print because a bill known as the Anti-Rave Act was before Congress. The act would punish club owners who knew that drugs like Ecstasy were being used at their dance gatherings. Dr. Ricaurte yesterday called that accusation "ludicrous." 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. We get hundreds of chemicals here. It's not customary to check them."
Just remember, eating a peanut can kill you if you eat just one, if you're allergic to peanuts. We must outlaw peanuts, because they have been shown to be a danger to much of society. How can we continue to allow peanuts to be available? We need an anti-peanut law to address this problem. Every time you eat a peanut, you're helping kill someone who's allergic to peanuts.
summary for the ADD turns out they gave the primates speed instead of ecstasy, and 20% of the sample died before ingesting their entire allotment. the research suggesting permanent brain damage by one use of ecstasy has been found mistaken.
I guess if you don't like the results of the study... just change the study and fudge the results. Real ethical. (insert roll-eyes here)
I don't mind thinning out the population of X users. Somebody needs to tell these people that's it's been a whole ten years since 1993. Here's to somebody inventing a particularly virulent form of Ecstasy to kill off the glow-stick kids. Hell, half of them can't even spell 'ecstasy' anyway.
You know, they didn't report X was good for you, just that it probably won't kill you on the first try. I think any idiot can figure that out.
The importance of the piece is that a fraudulent study was used to support draconian laws regarding ecstasy. If you read the piece, you will see that the "report" was a political contrivance, produced at a moment in time to get the votes. sound anything like the elusive Iraqi nuclear arsenal?
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. Other scientists accuse him of ignoring their studies showing that typical doses do no permanent damage. At the time Dr. Ricaurte's study was published, it was strongly defended against those critics by Dr. Alan I. Leshner, the former head of the drug abuse institute, who had just become the chief executive officer of the American Academy for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science. Dr. Leshner had testified before Congress that Ecstasy was dangerous, and Dr. Ricaurte's critics accused him of rushing his results into print because a bill known as the Anti-Rave Act was before Congress. The act would punish club owners who knew that drugs like Ecstasy were being used at their dance gatherings.
Yes, I got that. There was no limit on twisting science to get votes... or twisting the truth about some other things. It happens here in Texas. Twisting the truth about Proposition 12. These are some groups against it: AARP Mothers Against Drunk Driving Texas Federation of Teachers Texas NAACP League of United Latin American Citizen, Texas Sierra Club Common Cause It's a scam by the big insurance companies and others to make sure it gets passed by having the vote on September 13th, which will cost tax dollars from your pockets, in hopes of getting a low voter turnout. Think about it and vote against Proposition 12!
my comment just happened to follow yours, Deckard. my comment was more generic, simply aimed at the thread and the issue of what really took place here. I doubt that ecstasy is good for a person's brain, but I don't want to see the same bad tactics used on weed to be used on it. ANYTHING that gets a person high is probably not good for their brain, but alcohol and amphetamines top the list on what's bad. A certain percentage of most groups who take a drug will have a substantial adverse reaction to it. Just because someone dies after they took a drug doesn't mean the drug is bad. As professor Guy Wellborn used to say "if one person dies and the other 999,999 get better, it's not the drug that is defective - it's the person." I don't put stock in reports of people who use something once and die. It's true of peanuts, strawberries, and asprin, so hardly conclusive. This research project and its "findings" are examples of phony research aimed at further criminalizing recreational drugs. Every day in this country people die from alcohol poisoning, and the alcohol causualties make all the other drug deaths pale by comparison. Abuse of prescription drugs is a much bigger problem than Raves and use of ecstasy. So it makes some young people addled for a while. Partying will do that, no matter what the stimulant is. Raves, like flag burning, aren't a major problem in this country, and neither are the recreational drugs the participants use. kids gettin' high. so what? they always have and they always will.
And the reason it is illegal is because the prohibitionists in the government fund fraudulent scientific studies so that they can saturate the airwaves with their "ecstacy can kill with just one dose" propaganda. It is no wonder that we have 50% of our children doing drugs before they leave high school. When they hear the government's nonsense and compare it with their own experience, they just assume that everything coming out of the mouths of parents, teachers, and the media is a bunch of lies. With a regulated market, it would be much easier to reduce teenage drug use through REAL education and draconian punishments for people who provide drugs to kids. Prohibition doesn't work, it twists the truth, corrupts the justice system, and ultimately kills many more people than drugs themselves.
And it didn't kill people then, either. In fact, it was seen as somewhat of a breakthrough for therapists as subjects will open up completely, even to a stranger, when under the influence of MDMA. Sadly, those benefits were thrown away when the DEA got involved.
Our government continues to resort to fear tactics when it attempts to keep its citizenry from the subversive power of drugs, and its stance towards drugs will remain a total joke if it continues to overhype bulls**t reports such as this study. The rich elite in this country are afraid of drugs not so much that they will kill anyone, it is that drugs can alter thinking patterns and affect your value systems, and you will be more critical of the way society works and the way people are manipulated. They want to keep people hungry for new products and gadgets so that they will slave their lives away to buy a bunch of stuff they "need" to be happy with their lives which is only an illusion. If there is one positive thing that experimenting with drugs has done for me, it is that they have served as a bullsh*t detector, taking me out of the complacent haze I was in where I believed authority figures had my best interests in mind. This is true only if it does not collide with their own.
Hehe. Actually, us "rich elite" don't mind when a bunch of people go out and use drugs all the time. Thins the herd of people we have to compete with to be successful in life. Also, you say it is evil to slave for products and gadgets to be happy, I say its more sad to slave for money to have drugs to be happy. Same thing. Both increase happiness...one chemically, however. That was a hypocritical statement.
