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Researchers retract study tying Ecstasy to Parkinson's
(Frank D. Roylance and Dennis O'Brien, SunSpot.net, September 6, 2003)
Researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bayview Medical Center have been forced to retract a highly publicized paper linking the drug Ecstasy to serious brain damage after discovering that they had actually administered a different drug to most of the animals in their study. . . . In a retraction scheduled for publication next week in the prestigious journal Science - which ran the original results a year ago - the team led by Hopkins neurologist George A. Ricaurte says that a vial labeled as MDMA, the active chemical in Ecstasy, actually contained methamphetamine . . . Influential and widely publicized at the time, the Hopkins study was seized on by health officials who argue that the drug causes serious, long-term brain damage, a conclusion that is not universal in the scientific community. The study was funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). . . . Minor corrections are common in Science, but Ginger Pinholster, director of public programs for the journal, said she could recall "maybe a handful" of retractions in the past four years. . . . Dr. Una D. McCann, one of the study's co-authors, said she worries that the false results may mislead other researchers and erode public confidence in drug research. "We're very regretful about what it might have done, not only to our scientific colleagues, but to the public at large," she said. . . . Research into Ecstasy has been controversial, with some physicians arguing that funding targeted at finding problems with the drug is politically motivated and that neurological damage has been exaggerated. . . . Dr. Charles Grob, a Hopkins-trained psychiatrist on the faculty at the UCLA School of Medicine and longtime critic of Ecstasy research, said that many studies of the drug at Hopkins have been flawed, targeting the drug's ill effects and discouraging research into its possible therapeutic value. . . . Grob said MDMA may have applications for patients suffering from severe anxiety or trauma. "It's been a seriously hyped issue," he said. "We have a drug war going on, and it's hard to shift gears and examine a drug in an entirely different context, where it could be useful for psychiatric treatment," he said.

posted by LoZo 2:07 PM