Re: Ecstasy Research Error Undermines Drug Warnings

"Peter H. Proctor" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]

> Science Fraud...   see www.organicmetals.com/schonscience.htm  for a
> link to the Schon case at Bell labs ( which evolved rather like this
> one is evolving ).

The more I look into this, the more confusing (or worrying) it all becomes.
They're trying to put it all down to human error, and sweep it under the
carpet, but things just don't add up.  I'm really not one for conspiracy
theories or cover-ups without a decent ammount of evidence, but it will be
very interesting how things develop.  I think this story is far from over...

Firstly, Ruicarte is blaming the suppliers of the drugs for the mix-up. You
can be damned sure that any NIDA sponsored test is going to use extremely
reliable chemical suppliers who have VERY strict quality controls and the
substance would have been purity tested. There is no way Amphetamine could
pass even a melting point test as MDMA, and I suspect they would have used
some form of spectrometry to ensure purity. I really find it hard to believe
that such a mix-up could be their fault. This stuff hasn't come from some
guy in a home lab somewhere who stuck the wrong label on the bottle, it's
come from a major chem supplier.

Secondly, not only is there no previous evidence of MDMA causing this
parkinsons like symptoms, there is also no real evidence of amphetamine
causing them either, and there have been a lot more studies on amphetamines
than MDMA. Granted amphetamine does effect the dopamine system, but it has
never been shown to induce the symptoms described by ricaurte. In fact
Amphetamines may HELP parkinsons symptoms. The drug Selegilie, which is used
in the early treatment of parkinsons is metabolised by the body into
amphetamine. Is it possible that that a substance such as MPTP somehow found
it's way into the amphetamine?  It all seems a bit strange that he was
looking for parkinsons symptoms that previous studies had shown don't exist,
and he found them. Why was he even looking for them in the first place?

Thirdly, apparently the mix-up was discovered due to failiure to replicate
the results, yet for a long time after he had failed in this he still openly
defended the study and completely failed to mention this.  This fact alone
should completely discredit him.

And finally, assuming that everything is above board and there are
reasonable explanations, there is a hell of a lot of this stuff unaccounted
for. He used 1.5g of the supposed MDMA in these experiments, yet it was
delivered to him in a 10g batch. How many other studies has he performed
with the remainder beliving it to be MDMA, and how many of his other studies
now need to be retracted?  Considering that he couldn't test the substance,
and was only able to identify it as amphetamines through examining the
brains of the primates used in the experiments, it seems to indicate it has
been used.

Add to this the convenient fact that this study played a major role in
passing the RAVE act, and something smells really fishy. What would be the
political repurcussions if Ruicaurte is discredited as a result of this? So
much of his research has played a major role in defining policy that it
could potentially blow the whole thing apart.