Hope the URL works for everyone:
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$JNKQVTYAACIONQFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2002/04/18/wecs18.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/04/18/por_right.html
If not, read below.
Ecstasy fears based on 'flawed tests'
MUCH of the scientific evidence showing that ecstasy damages the brain is fundamentally flawed and has been mistakenly used by politicians to warn the public of the dangers of the drug, a report said yesterday.
The inquiry by New Scientist found that many of the findings on ecstasy published in respected journals could not be trusted. It said it was an "open secret" that some researchers who failed to find impairment in ecstasy users had trouble getting their findings published.
"Our investigation suggests the experiments are so irretrievably flawed that the scientific community risks haemorrhaging credibility if it continues to let them inform public policy," the report said.
It found there were serious flaws in brain scans which allegedly show that ecstasy destroys nerve cells involved in the production and transport of serotonin, a vital brain chemical involved in a range of functions including memory, sleep, sex, appetite and mood.
In 1998, George Ricaurte and Una McCann at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore published a paper in The Lancet that seemed to provide the first evidence that ecstasy use led to lasting brain damage.
The research involved brain scans with a radioactively tagged chemical probe that latched on to the serotonin transporter proteins that ecstasy targets. The thinking was that brains damaged by ecstasy would give off less radioactive 'glow' than those where the serotonin cells were intact.
The scan pictures, which showed the brains of ecstasy users did on average glow less, were used in public information campaigns. In America they strongly influenced harsher penalties for ecstasy offences.
But two independent experts told New Scientist there was a key flaw. They said the way brains reacted to this kind of scan varied enormously with or without ecstasy.
Some healthy brains glowed up to 40 times brighter than others and even a number of ecstasy users' brains outshone ecstasy-free brains by factors of 10 or more. Another study by Dutch scientists led by Liesbeth Reneman and Gerard den Heeten at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam was similarly flawed.
New Scientist said it found that "despite the poster depiction of 'your brain on ecstasy' there never was - and never has been - a typical scan showing the typical brain of a long-term ecstasy user".
Stephen Kish, a neuro-pathologist at the Center for Addiction and Health in Toronto, said: "There are no holes in the brains of ecstasy users. And if anyone wants a straightforward answer to whether ecstasy causes any brain damage, it's impossible to get one from these papers."
Marc Laruelle, an expert on brain scanning at Columbia University, New York City, said: "All the papers have very significant scientific limitations that make me uneasy."
Similar uncertainty surrounds evidence that ecstasy impairs mental performance. In the majority of tests of mental agility, ecstasy users performed as well as non-users.
Andrew Parrott, a psychologist at the University of East London, found that ecstasy users outperformed non-users in tests requiring them to rotate complex shapes in their mind's eye.
aj
eztest.com
fuckthedea.com
[ 18 April 2002: Message edited by: aj ]
http://portal.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;$sessionid$JNKQVTYAACIONQFIQMGSFFWAVCBQWIV0?xml=/news/2002/04/18/wecs18.xml&sSheet=/portal/2002/04/18/por_right.html
If not, read below.
Ecstasy fears based on 'flawed tests'
MUCH of the scientific evidence showing that ecstasy damages the brain is fundamentally flawed and has been mistakenly used by politicians to warn the public of the dangers of the drug, a report said yesterday.
The inquiry by New Scientist found that many of the findings on ecstasy published in respected journals could not be trusted. It said it was an "open secret" that some researchers who failed to find impairment in ecstasy users had trouble getting their findings published.
"Our investigation suggests the experiments are so irretrievably flawed that the scientific community risks haemorrhaging credibility if it continues to let them inform public policy," the report said.
It found there were serious flaws in brain scans which allegedly show that ecstasy destroys nerve cells involved in the production and transport of serotonin, a vital brain chemical involved in a range of functions including memory, sleep, sex, appetite and mood.
In 1998, George Ricaurte and Una McCann at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore published a paper in The Lancet that seemed to provide the first evidence that ecstasy use led to lasting brain damage.
The research involved brain scans with a radioactively tagged chemical probe that latched on to the serotonin transporter proteins that ecstasy targets. The thinking was that brains damaged by ecstasy would give off less radioactive 'glow' than those where the serotonin cells were intact.
The scan pictures, which showed the brains of ecstasy users did on average glow less, were used in public information campaigns. In America they strongly influenced harsher penalties for ecstasy offences.
But two independent experts told New Scientist there was a key flaw. They said the way brains reacted to this kind of scan varied enormously with or without ecstasy.
Some healthy brains glowed up to 40 times brighter than others and even a number of ecstasy users' brains outshone ecstasy-free brains by factors of 10 or more. Another study by Dutch scientists led by Liesbeth Reneman and Gerard den Heeten at the Academic Medical Centre in Amsterdam was similarly flawed.
New Scientist said it found that "despite the poster depiction of 'your brain on ecstasy' there never was - and never has been - a typical scan showing the typical brain of a long-term ecstasy user".
Stephen Kish, a neuro-pathologist at the Center for Addiction and Health in Toronto, said: "There are no holes in the brains of ecstasy users. And if anyone wants a straightforward answer to whether ecstasy causes any brain damage, it's impossible to get one from these papers."
Marc Laruelle, an expert on brain scanning at Columbia University, New York City, said: "All the papers have very significant scientific limitations that make me uneasy."
Similar uncertainty surrounds evidence that ecstasy impairs mental performance. In the majority of tests of mental agility, ecstasy users performed as well as non-users.
Andrew Parrott, a psychologist at the University of East London, found that ecstasy users outperformed non-users in tests requiring them to rotate complex shapes in their mind's eye.
aj
eztest.com
fuckthedea.com
[ 18 April 2002: Message edited by: aj ]
