UK - Students given £250 to take hallucinatory drug

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edgarshade

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cambridge-news.co.uk

Jen Mills
Published: 20/12/2010 09:42 - Updated: 20/12/2010 10:06

With reader comments

http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/Home/Students-given-250-to-take-hallucinatory-drug.htm

Cambridge University students have been paid £250 to take part in a study which induced the symptoms of schizophrenia by giving them a hallucinogenic drug.
The study, carried out by the Department of Psychiatry, involved injecting participants with ketamine to see if it would make them more likely to falsely identify a rubber hand as their own.

People with schizophrenia can sometimes feel that external objects are part of their body.

One participant, who is studying for a PhD, said she experienced feelings similar to being drunk after an initial dose of ketamine, which is illegal when it is in powder form.

She said: “After they increased the dose I began to hallucinate. It made me feel scared. It felt like the bed was floating up and I felt very disoriented.
“I couldn’t find my way to the bathroom. It was quite disturbing. I needed the money at the time and I wouldn’t do it again.”

A statement from Professor Paul Fletcher and PhD student Hannah Morgan, who conducted the study, said: “All participants undergo intensive screening beforehand, in terms of their history of physical or mental illness and of past drug abuse.

“We would not do this work if we considered that there was an unacceptable risk to participants.”

One participant did not declare a previous mental illness in the questionnaire provided and took part in the study.

Prof Fletcher and Ms Morgan said: “We ensured that he experienced no subsequent ill-effects. Interestingly, he reported that he had been feeling very well and cheerful since participating in the study, though this is likely to be quite by chance rather than due to any therapeutic effect.”

The study was designed to find out more about psychotic illness and explore new possibilities of treatment. It was one of four studies conducted by the Department of Psychiatry in the last two years for which volunteers were paid more than £70, and two involved ketamine.

John Mitchell, from Rehab Guide, an organisation which helps people to find treatment for addiction, has worked with ketamine addicts for 25 years.
He said: “This is encouraging people to use ketamine for monetary reward. It’s immoral. That’s just a personal opinion but it’s a very dangerous game.”
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It pisses me off when medical officials act like they know fuck-all about what is happening in the perception of "schizophrenics".

That being said, getting paid to do a bunch of K 0_o
 
I've never taken Ketamine but I would do it for that many pounds or the equivalent of US dollars, or for free in a study like that.
 
TFA said:
Prof Fletcher and Ms Morgan said: “We ensured that he experienced no subsequent ill-effects. Interestingly, he reported that he had been feeling very well and cheerful since participating in the study, though this is likely to be quite by chance rather than due to any therapeutic effect.”
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Riiiiiiiiiiiiiiigggggggghhttttt... let's just ignore the truth staring us in the face
 
"to see if they would notice a rubber hand as there own"

AHHHAHA!!! the shock on there faces
 
The guy bitching because they paid a few people to try it is such a jackass. Sign me up is right, i'd pay them to let me take part in these studies, but them paying me would be even better of course
 
The guy who is bitching about this being immoral clearly doesn't not understand that ketamine is non-toxic and used as an anesthetic in humans.

(of course all of the classic psychedelics are non toxic, but that's besides the point...)
 
Also from the Telegraph...
Ketamine experiments: Why it is sometimes necessary to use humans for experimentation

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/andrewmcfbrown/100069207/ketamine-experiments-why-it-is-sometimes-necessary-to-use-humans-for-experimentation/

Some commentators have expressed disapproval of the University of Cambridge for paying a few students to be injected with the anaesthetic drug ketamine in an experiment. For example, John Mitchell of the Rehab Guide said it was a “very dangerous game” and “immoral” – because it encouraged people to use ketamine, he thinks.
I disagree with Mr Mitchell. To my mind there are already quite enough restrictions on experimentation using human subjects. Sure, you can use other mammals such as mice, monkeys and so forth for a lot of basic safety experiments. But they don’t tell you much about how a given drug is going to behave in a real life human being.
Ethics committees are very strict these days: I doubt the Milgram experiment would be allowed nowadays, for instance. But, still, some experiments on willing subjects – or “participants” as they’re usually called these days – are needed because they provide essential information that could not be gathered by any other means.
In the case of ketamine, the drug’s effect on the brain was believed to mimic one of the symptoms of schizophrenia – the hallucinatory sensation that external objects are joined to the body. Using ketamine on volunteers might have pointed researchers in the direction of the receptors in the brain which are involved in this “mislocalisation”. Not only that, but the research had an unexpected outcome: one participant with an undeclared mental illness felt unaccountably cheery after the experiment. Maybe this is a chance effect. But possibly it points to some antidepressant benefit of ketamine itself.
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There's been a slight over-reaction in the media to the publication of a study exploring the fascinating effects of the drug ketamine on people's perception of reality.

Most reports got bogged down in hyped outrage over paying students £250 to take part in the trial, and the side effects experienced by one participant. Paying participants is a common practice in scientific research and risks would have been weighed by an ethical review board. The side effects reported in a local Cambridgeshire newspaper seemed to have stirred things up, even though that report also admits it is not the first of its kind - at least two other studies involving ketamine were conducted at Cambridge over the last two years.

But there's a far more interesting story here.
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more related reading @ http://www.newscientist.com/blogs/shortsharpscience/2010/12/whats-really-interesting-about.html
 
One participant did not declare a previous mental illness in the questionnaire provided and took part in the study.

Prof Fletcher and Ms Morgan said: “We ensured that he experienced no subsequent ill-effects. Interestingly, he reported that he had been feeling very well and cheerful since participating in the study, though this is likely to be quite by chance rather than due to any therapeutic effect.”

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/08/100819141913.htm

yeah thinking ketamine could have an antidepressant effect that would be crazy considering there has been research suggesting that for a while now...
 
caseface99 said:
The guy who is bitching about this being immoral clearly doesn't not understand that ketamine is non-toxic and used as an anesthetic in humans.

(of course all of the classic psychedelics are non toxic, but that's besides the point...)
Click to expand...

I have heard that ketamine is renotoxic. Not totally sure on that. Any more info would be good.
 
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