'Killer' Ecstasy claim was false | BBC

[Ediacara]

Last Updated: Monday, 8 September, 2003, 09:55 GMT 10:55 UK

'Killer' Ecstasy claim was false


There is controversy over Ecstasy health effects
Research suggesting just one Ecstasy tablet could harm humans was based on a laboratory mistake, it has been revealed.

US experts found that four out of 10 monkeys died or were severely damaged after a small dose of a drug, at first believed to be Ecstasy.

In fact, a far more potent drug had been given to the animals by mistake.

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.

More at the BBC

as an aside..... Science has this awful knack of letting completely terrible "science" onto its pages... it's quickly becomign the laughingstock of the science world...

[Soloflecks]

1. And then they wonder why

no one, especially, the young 'ums most likely to try it, do not listen to the warnings.

[noonwitch]

2. I don't care what their experiments say

Ecstasy is an amphetemine. The same risks you take from speed, you take with Ecstasy. A couple of young, healthy people have died in bars around metro-Detroit. The only drug in their system was Ecstasy.
When MDMA first came out, it was a prescription drug. Psychiatrists used it to give their patients a milder version of a psychedelic experience to help break through denial and such. It was effective with some patients, in a one-time use situation, supervised by a psychiatrist, who is a medical or osteopathic doctor. Making it illegal made it into a dangerous street drug, with varying production standards and no medical supervision of it's uses.

[ret5hd]

3. the problem isnt in what their experiments said...

it is that the experiments they conducted were bogus...
noone knows now anymore about the longterm effects of ecstasy than they did before these experiments were conducted...because they used methamphetimine instead of ecstasy.

i don't think that anyone is now saying "see, i told you long-term use of ecstasy is good for you".

[BuddhaGirl]

4. Ecstasy was the only drug in their systems?

If that's true they either over indulged on it, or drank too much alcohol with it.

One ecstasy pill doesn't kill a person.

[DrWeird]

6. Yes, making it illgeal makes it dangerous.

Since it's often manufactured illegally by students with sophomore level organic chemistry and thus poorly. The dangerous drug isn't MDMA, but the methylated side product that isn't removed by the inexperienced chemists. So you make it legal, it will be produced by people who know what they're doing. And thus you'll have a clean, safe product.

[plurality]

7. true

that and the hundreds of 'ecstasy-like' knock offs that have flooded the place. Drugs like MDA, MDE, DXM, etc... There are so many chemicals that are passed off as ecstasy and it's most of these that are doing the killing.

[plurality]

5. funny it doesn't mention

That the experiment was also bogus because they gave the monkeys doses that were over 100 times the normal dose of extasy. I could run a similar experiment with aspirin and give 100 tabs of aspirin to monkeys and publish it as proof that aspirin is dangerous and should be outlawed.