Our blogs about
America's Wars
War on Iraq
War on Drugs
War on Afghanistan
War on Columbia
War on Philippines
War on Venezuela

More
Matrix Masters
Blogs
World Events
US News
Science & Health
Earth News
Free Speech
News from Africa
News from Palestine
Bill of Rights Under Attack

Matrix Masters'
SUPPORTERS

Lorenzo's
Random Musings
. . . about Chaos,
Reason, and Hope

 

Research On Ecstasy Is Clouded By Errors and Possible Fraud
(Donald G. McNeil Jr., New York Times, December 2, 2003)
In September, the journal Science issued a startling retraction. A primate study it published in 2002, with heavy publicity, warned that the amount of the drug Ecstasy that a typical user consumes in a single night might cause permanent brain damage. . . . It turned out that the $1.3 million study, led by Dr. George A. Ricaurte of Johns Hopkins University, had not used Ecstasy at all. His 10 squirrel monkeys and baboons had instead been injected with overdoses of methamphetamine, and two of them had died. The labels on two vials he bought in 2000, he said, were somehow switched. The problem corrupted four other studies in his lab, forcing him to withdraw four other papers. . . . It was not the first time Dr. Ricaurte's lab was accused of using flawed studies to suggest that recreational drugs are highly dangerous. In previous years he was accused of publicizing doubtful results without checking them, and was criticized for research that contributed to a government campaign suggesting that Ecstasy made "holes in the brain." . . . Dr. Ricaurte, a 50-year-old neurologist at Hopkins since 1988, is probably the best-known Ecstasy expert in the war on drugs. He has received $10 million from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, more than any other investigator of the amphetamine analogs known as designer drugs, club drugs or diet drugs, including MDMA, better known as Ecstasy. . . . other scientists, and two human research subjects of Dr. Ricaurte's who came forward after the retraction, say they see a pattern of shaky research supporting alarmist press releases. . . . "It's hard to trust George," said Dr. Julie Holland, a professor of psychiatry at New York University who has edited a book on Ecstasy and wants to test it in psychotherapy. She accused him of "playing games with his data" to win more federal grants by making the drugs look bad. . . . Dr. Richard J. Wurtman, a prominent clinician at Harvard and M.I.T. who has clashed with Dr. Ricaurte, accused him of "running a cottage industry showing that everything under the sun is neurotoxic." . . . For 20 years, Dr. Ricaurte has produced studies saying the amphetamine analogs may cause the tremors of Parkinsonism, depression and memory and sleep problems. But the consensus among many amphetamine researchers, Dr. Ricaurte included, is that there is no proof thus far that Ecstasy causes permanent human brain damage. . . . Just last month Dr. Stephen J. Kish of the Center for Addiction and Mental Health in Toronto published a review of all Ecstasy research, including Dr. Ricaurte's, and concluded that there was no evidence that Ecstasy caused the tremors of Parkinsonism or any other brain damage . . . Some heavy users have memory problems, but no studies prove the loss is permanent, or that it is caused by Ecstasy rather than other drugs in the mix that virtually all heavy users take. . . . Dr. Holland says it relieves anxiety-provoking memories like a sedative, but as an amphetamine, it does not induce sleep. Patients "want to talk things through." . . . As a potent painkiller, she said, it also may help the terminally ill. . . . The Food and Drug Administration recently approved a study in traumatized crime victims who have failed to respond to antidepressants. A study of rape victims is under way in Spain, and another one in the United States is proposed for depressed patients with terminal cancer. . . . Dr. Nora Volkow, the new director of the national drug institute, declined to pass judgment on his whole body of work, but called his latest error "crying wolf and losing your credibility." Because of it, she said, she spent a weekend checking the agency's Web page on the dangers of Ecstasy "to make sure it was not overstated." . . . The agency had already removed all current references to another well-known study from the site, one from 1998 by Dr. Ricaurte and his wife, Dr. Una McCann. Dr. Volkow described it as using "methodologies that were not optimal." . . . Pictures from the study — PET scans of the brains of Ecstasy users — were used on a famous postcard from the drug agency, "Plain Brain/Brain After Ecstasy." The postcards were distributed to thousands of teenagers and implied that Ecstasy users had shrunken brains with holes in them. . . . Dr. Marc Laruelle, a Columbia University PET scan specialist, called the work so technically flawed that it was "something to put under the rug." He cited a recent German study showing that serotonin decreased only modestly and returned to normal within six weeks. . . . Greg's friend reiterated that he had been badly treated and said he felt the research was skewed to prove he was brain-damaged. . . . "Most of the people I used to do drugs with are pretty screwed up," he admitted. "But if Ricaurte's studies are true, Greg and I should both be dead. We ate grams a night of pharma-grade stuff." . . . Nonetheless, he said: "We're fairly intelligent, rational guys. We had a stretch of three or four years where we really blew ourselves out. But we're still smart and ambitious. Some of their assertions about long-term brain damage are way off."

posted by LoZo 11:39 AM