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More shoddy "science" from Johns Hopkins: Second Ecstasy paper to be retracted
(Robert Walgate, The Scientist.com, September 17, 2003)
The European Journal of Pharmacology has received an e-mail from George Ricaurte, principal author of the recently retracted Science paper on the effects of the recreational drug Ecstasy (methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA), which may indicate that another paper will have to be retracted. Editorial representatives of the journal would not describe the contents of the e-mail, but told The Scientist that a decision on the matters therein will be taken at tomorrow's (September 18) editorial board meeting. . . . The Baltimore Sun last week reported that according to a spokesperson for the Ricaurte group, Una McCann, "a letter of retraction had been sent to a medical journal, which she declined to identify until editors there decide how to handle the matter." . . . McCann's admission indicated that experiments other than the one reported in Science may also have used the wrong chemical. The letter of retraction to Science indicated that the suspect container for Ecstasy was now empty, suggesting much use must have been made of it. The controversial issue of whether MDMA is neurotoxic is one of the group's principal fields of work.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 3:14 PM

 

Independent inquiry demanded into Ecstasy affair
(The Scientist.com, September 18, 2003)
Colin Blakemore, who is to become Chief Executive of the UK's Medical Research Council, wrote yesterday (September 17) to the editor-in-chief of Science, Donald Kennedy, to renew his demand for publication of the referees' reports for Ricaurte's retracted paper, published there last September. . . . Blakemore also made a new request: that there be an independent inquiry into the whole affair. . . . The two retractions came about after Ricaurte and his group from Johns Hopkins University discovered that two vials of reagents, one containing MDMA and the other methamphetamine ("speed"), had been mislabelled. . . . In his latest letter to Kennedy, Blakemore asked some hard questions:

"Since the study was so obviously flawed that even I (not a pharmacologist) picked up the problems as soon as I saw the paper, why were they not detected by the expert peer review that Science employs?

"If the reviewers did express any such concern, why was it overridden by Science? I should mention that Les Iversen, who is, of course, expert in the field, even suggested last September that the results looked more characteristic of amphetamine than of MDMA: the flaw was that obvious to an expert.

"Were mechanisms put in place to check the veracity of press releases associate with papers in Science, after your admission that the release for this paper had been altered in a way that mispresented the findings? If not, will Science now state what mechanisms it will institute to protect the media and the public from mischievous use of media releases in the future?

"Did the fact that 'anti-rave' legislation was being debated in Congress at the time play any part in the editorial decision to publish this paper?

"Will Science itself issue a statement regretting the contribution that this flawed and hyped study must have played in that debate?

"What efforts are being made to discover the true reasons for the use of the wrong drug, and whether any other studies from the Ricaurte lab used the apparently mislabelled drug? When can we expect a public statement from Science on how the group came to use the wrong drug?

"Will Science agree to an independent inquiry into this affair, and make available to that inquiry all the correspondence and other evidence concerning this paper?"

Iversen also wrote yesterday in support of Blakemore's stance. "I believe that some further action by Science is needed to disassociate your journal more emphatically from this poor science," he wrote.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 3:06 PM

 

'Killer' Ecstasy claim was false
(BBC News, 8 September 2003)
Research suggesting just one Ecstasy tablet could harm humans was based on a laboratory mistake, it has been revealed. . . . The Johns Hopkins University team were forced to withdraw their paper from eminent research journal Science. . . . Experts have expressed amazement as to how the flawed research ever managed to get published in such a well-respected publication. . . . Colin Blakemore, a Professor of Physiology at Oxford University, said that the sheer number of primates left dead or severely damaged already seemed implausible. He told the BBC: "Whatever we think about the toxicity of Ecstasy, 40% of people using it each weekend do not die." . . . The original study suggested that even a single episode of Ecstasy use might be enough to produce long-lasting drops in the brain's ability to produce the vital chemical dopamine. . . . He said he was unsure how the normally-rigourous "peer-reviewing" procedure - in which other leading scientists are asked to look over research papers prior to publication looking for mistakes - had failed in this instance.

[COMMENT by Lorenzo: It is obvious how this alleged "mistake" happened. The good reputation of Johns Hopkins has been subverted by it's addiction to government funding. In my opinion, Ricaurte has been conducting shoddy science in the government's name for a long time. He has never, as far as I can find, disagreed with a single position of the drug warriors, even when they were obviously delusional.]

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 4:41 PM

 

Results Retracted On Ecstasy Study (washingtonpost.com)
(Rick Weiss, Washington Post, September 6, 2003)
Scientists at Johns Hopkins University who last year published a frightening and controversial report suggesting that a single evening's use of the illicit drug ecstasy could cause permanent brain damage and Parkinson's disease are retracting their research in its entirety, saying the drug they used in their experiments was not ecstasy after all. . . . The retraction, to be published in next Friday's issue of the journal Science, has reignited a smoldering and sometimes angry debate over the risks and benefits of the drug, also known as MDMA. . . . The drug is popular at all-night raves and other venues for its ability to reduce inhibitions and induce expansive feelings of open-heartedness. . . . Advocates of ecstasy's therapeutic potential, including a number of scientists and doctors who believe it may be useful in treating post-traumatic stress disorder or other psychiatric conditions, criticized the study. They noted that the drug was given in higher doses than people commonly take and was administered by injection, not by mouth. They wondered why large numbers of users were not dying or growing deathly ill from the drug, as the animals did, and why no previous link had been made between ecstasy and Parkinson's despite decades of use and a large number of studies. . . . The answer to at least some of those questions became clear with the retraction, which is being released by Science on Sunday evening but was obtained independently by The Washington Post. . . . The error has renewed charges that government-funded scientists, and Ricaurte in particular, have been biased in their assessment of ecstasy's risks and potential benefits. . . . Rick Doblin, president of Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies, a Sarasota, Fla.-based group that funds studies on therapeutic uses of mind-altering drugs and is seeking permission to conduct human tests of MDMA, said the evidence of serotonin system damage is weak. . . . "The largest and best-controlled study of the effect of MDMA on serotonin showed no long-term effects in former users and minimal to no effects in current users," he said. . . . Una McCann, one of the Hopkins scientists, said she regretted the role the false results may have played in a debate going on last year in Congress and within the Drug Enforcement Administration over how to deal with ecstasy abuse. . . . "I feel personally terrible," she said. "You spend a lot of time trying to get things right, not only for the congressional record but for other scientists around the country who are basing new hypotheses on your work and are writing grant proposals to study this."

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 2:24 PM

 

Report of Ecstasy Drug's Great Risks Is Retracted
(Donald G. McNeil, Jr., New York Times, September 6, 2003)
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 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." [COMMENT by Lorenzo: This was no "mistake." In my opinion, it was scientific fraud, pure and simple. I now question ALL research coming from Johns Hopkins. Any institution that continues to employ people like Ricaurte does not deserve the trust and financial support of American taxpayers. Hopefully, Congress will investigate the shoddy scientific research practices of this institution and withdraw all of their fedreral funding.] . . . 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. . . . If a typical Ecstasy dose killed 20 percent of those who took it, the critics said, no one would use it recreationally. . . . 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.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 2:16 PM

 

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.

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 2:07 PM

 

California Candidates All Agree: Medical Marijuana Will Remain Legal in California
In an astounding display of unity, every one of the major candidates for governor of California agreed that the US Government has no business trying to overturn the express wishes of the citizens of the State of California concerning the use of medical marijuana. Even the candidates from the Fascist Fringe of the Republican Party agreed that this valuable medicine should not be denied to people in pain. It was an unprecedented moment in politics when, without exception, every candidate expressed their intention to challenge the brutal tactics of Ashcroft’s right-wing Christian fanatics who are arresting dying people who are using cannabis to ease their pain and suffering.

The tide has turned, America. New social movements that take hold in California eventually spread across this land. When arch conservatives like some of the Republican candidates for governor unequivocally support the right to use medical marijuana, other politicians throughout the land had best take note. The people are rising up on this issue and will not be denied their right to use what is perhaps the safest medicine on the planet.

Now it is time to do your part. It is time to stand up and be counted. Call and write to your political representatives and let them know how you feel about this issue. If you haven’t already done so, lend your support to one or more of the activist organizations that are working for a more sensible drug policy. Check out the following links and become involved with the group that most resonates with you.

Americans for Safe Access

The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML)

Marijuana Policy Project

Drug Policy Alliance

Center for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics

. . . Read more!


posted by LoZo 12:15 PM