Pubdate: Mon, 02 Sep 2002
Source: Guardian, The (UK)
Copyright: 2002 Guardian Newspapers Limited
Contact:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/guardian/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/175
Author: Sarah Boseley, health editor
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)

ECSTASY NOT DANGEROUS, SAY SCIENTISTS

Three leading psychologists have provoked an outcry by claiming that the 
dance drug ecstasy may not be dangerous and that some of its ill-effects 
may be imaginary.

The drug has been blamed for causing deaths and permanent brain damage, but 
the psychologists are strongly critical of animal and human studies into 
its effects, claiming that they are misleading and overestimate the harm 
ecstasy - scientifically known as MDMA - can cause.

Other scientists insisted that those who took ecstasy were undoubtedly 
risking their health and their life.

Two of the scientists challenging the established view are British and the 
third is American. Dr Jon Cole is a reader in addictive behaviour and Harry 
Sumnall is a postdoctoral researcher, both at Liverpool University. 
Professor Charles Grob is director of the division of child and adolescent 
psychiatry at the Harbor-UCLA Medical Centre in California.

Writing in the magazine the Psychologist, published by the British 
Psychological Society, they claim that many of the studies since 1995 have 
been flawed. They also accuse researchers of bias.

Ecstasy is said to affect cells in the brain which produce serotonin, the 
chemical known to influence mood. But the changes observed involved the 
degeneration of nerve fibres, which can be regrown, and not the cell bodies 
themselves, the psychologists say.

They accuse other scientists of minimising the impact of data suggesting 
that ecstasy exposure had no long-term effects. Although numerous tests 
were run on volunteers, only positive results were reported in detail, they 
say. "This suggests that hypotheses concerning the long-term effects of 
ecstasy are not being uniformly substantiated and lends support to the idea 
that ecstasy is not causing long-term effects associated with the loss of 
serotonin," write the authors.

The article is critical of the way studies involving young users have been 
conducted. They point out that many psychological problems start in 
adolescence anyway, ecstasy users invariably took other drugs as well, and 
some of the symptoms reported mirrored those caused by simply staying awake 
all night and dancing.

Most of the young people in the studies were volunteers from universities 
which raised questions about how representative they were of the 
population, the article says.

Most studies have failed to pinpoint ecstasy as the cause of problems, they 
say, and the animal studies were flawed and inconclusive.

They suggested that the long-term effects of the drug might be 
"iatrogenic", which is defined by the New Webster's dictionary as "caused 
by the mannerisms or treatment of a physician, an imaginary illness of the 
patient brought about by the physician".

Paul Betts, whose daughter, Leah, died after taking the drug in 1995, 
called the article "despicable".

Three other ecstasy experts writing in the Psychologist dismissed the 
notion that symptoms of long-term ecstasy use were all in the mind.

Dr Rodney Croft, a research fellow at the Swinburne University of 
Technology in Hawthorn, Australia, said: "There is strong evidence that 
ecstasy does cause impairment... although conclusions drawn from such 
evidence cannot be infallible, I believe the strength of this evidence 
makes 'danger' the most reasonable message for the researchers to be 
broadcasting."

About two million ecstasy tablets are believed to be taken by clubbers in 
the UK every weekend. Deaths linked to the drug have risen in the past 
decade. Between 1993 and 1997, there were 72. In 2000, there were 27, 
although 19 had other drugs in their system.

The exact cause of death cannot always be established, but where it has 
been, it was often dehydration.
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