Pubdate: Mon, 02 Sep 2002
Source: CNN (US Web)
Copyright: 2002 Cable News Network, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.cnn.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/65
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mdma.htm (Ecstasy)

ECSTASY EFFECTS 'MAY BE IMAGINARY'

LONDON, England -- An article in a British scientific journal suggests the 
party drug Ecstasy may not be dangerous -- and that reported ill effects 
could be imaginary.

Writing in the British Psychological Society's magazine The Psychologist, 
three researchers -- two from Liverpool, England, and one from California 
- -- criticised studies into the drug's effects.

Studies have reported that the tablets -- popular with young people 
attending raves and nightclubs -- cause long-term brain damage and mental 
problems.

But the new article criticised that research and accused researchers of 
bias. The article was written by Jon Cole and Harry Sumnall of the 
University of Liverpool and Charles Grob of the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center 
in California.

Cole is an expert in cognitive neuroscience and Sumnall is a post-doctoral 
psychopharmacologist; both work in the university's psychology department. 
Grob, director of the hospital's division of child and adolescent 
psychiatry, is a leading U.S. expert on child and adolescent depression and 
adolescent drug use.

Their criticisms focussed on several areas of existing research:

*	Ecstasy is said to affect brain cells that produce the mood-influencing 
chemical serotonin. But Cole, Sumnall and Grob said any changes involved 
the degeneration of nerve fibres, which can be regrown -- and not the brain 
cell bodies themselves.

*	Some research only reported positive results and ignored negative data, 
thus minimising data that suggests Ecstasy has no long-term effects, the 
authors said. "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," they wrote.

*	Because many people participating in studies were self-selected and from 
universities, the article questioned whether they truly represented the 
general population. "Given the high media profile of the long-term effects 
of Ecstasy, one must question whether the participants are coming forward 
to confirm their fears about any adverse reactions that they may have 
suffered," the authors wrote.

*	Studies on animals often involved injecting them with large doses of the 
Ecstasy chemical MDMA but "routinely failed to find changes in the 
behaviour of MDMA-treated animals" even when there were signs of damage to 
the brain, according to the article.

Surveys indicate that about 90 percent of young people in the UK regularly 
attending raves or nightclubs have taken ecstasy *	The authors noted that 
many psychological problems started in adolescence, that Ecstasy users 
often took other drugs, and that some of the reported symptoms mirrored 
those caused by staying awake all night and dancing.

*	Most community-based studies have failed to find a definitive 
cause-and-effect relationship between Ecstasy use and associated problems, 
they wrote.

*	Perhaps most controversially, they suggested that Ecstasy's long-term 
effects might be "iatrogenic" -- or caused by a physician's manner or 
treatment. "We are concerned that the long-term effects of Ecstasy could be 
iatrogenic because researchers and the media are discussing a hypothesised 
cause-and-effect relationship as if it were fact," they wrote.

The article was countered by three other Ecstasy experts writing in The 
Psychologist, who dismissed the idea that Ecstasy's symptoms were imaginary.

"There is strong converging evidence that Ecstasy does cause impairment, 
that it is not merely iatrogenic," wrote Rodney Croft, a research fellow at 
the Swinburne University of Technology in Hawthorn, Australia.

"Although conclusions drawn from such evidence cannot be infallible, I 
believe that the strength of this evidence makes 'danger' the most 
reasonable message for the researchers to be broadcasting."

Michael Morgan, senior lecturer in experimental psychology at the 
University of Sussex in Brighton, England, said he had found "overwhelming 
evidence" that regular Ecstasy use causes impulsive behaviour and impaired 
verbal memory.

He said he did not believe this could be due to "some form of autosuggestion."

"It seems highly implausible to me that samples of Ecstasy users could be 
sufficiently suggestible and sophisticated enough to feign such selective 
neuropsychological deficits and appear cognitively unimpaired in all other 
respects," he added.

Andy Parrott, a professor and addiction expert from the University of East 
London, said: "The deficits are very real and cannot be explained away as 
artifacts."

The article also was criticised by Paul Betts, whose daughter's death in 
1995 after taking Ecstasy brought nationwide notoriety to the drug in the UK.

Between 1993 and 1997 there were 72 deaths in the UK attributed to Ecstasy.

Betts described the article as "despicable." Leah Betts died after taking 
one tablet of Ecstasy on her 18th birthday. Later it was revealed that she 
died as a result of drinking too much water to counteract the overheating 
effects of the Ecstasy.

Between 1993 and 1997 there were 72 deaths in the UK attributed to ecstasy

"It has been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that every single Ecstasy 
tablet destroys parts of the brain. The main thing it destroys is 
serotonin, and depression follows on from serotonin depletion," Betts told 
the UK Press Association.

"It has reached such epidemic proportions in America that they talk of 
Suicide Tuesday. That's because people who have taken Ecstasy at the 
weekend are feeling so suicidal by Tuesday that they kill themselves.

"If you study experiments around the world the evidence against Ecstasy far 
outweighs anything else."

However, Roger Howard, chief executive of DrugScope, an umbrella 
organisation whose members include drug treatment providers and bodies 
working in the criminal justice field, told PA: "This underlines previous 
studies that have said much of the evidence around Ecstasy is not as 
reliable as it could be.

"This reinforces the need for the UK Home Secretary David Blunkett to refer 
the classification of Ecstasy to the experts on the Advisory Council on the 
Misuse of Drugs, so that we can have an evidence based drugs policy that we 
can all trust."
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager