Misdemeanor
12th September 2003, 02:16 PM
Good news ....makes a change eh!?
But scary that these morons are providing governments with information!
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A leading scientific journal yesterday retracted a paper it published last year
saying that one night's typical dose of the drug Ecstasy might cause permanent
brain damage.
The monkeys and baboons in the study were not injected with Ecstasy but with a powerful amphetamine, said the journal, Science magazine.
The retraction was submitted by the team at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine that did the study.
A medical school spokesman called the mistake "unfortunate" but said that Dr. George A. Ricaurte, the researcher who made it, was "still a faculty member in good standing whose research is solid and respected."
The study, released last Sept. 27, concluded that a dose of Ecstasy a partygoer would take in a single night could lead to symptoms resembling Parkinson's disease.
The study was ridiculed at the time by other scientists working with the drug,
who said the primates must have been injected with huge overdoses.
Two of the 10 primates died of heat stroke, they pointed out, and another two were in such distress that they were not given all the doses.
If a typical Ecstasy dose killed 20 percent of those who took it, the critics
said, no one would use it recreationally.
In an interview yesterday, Dr. Ricaurte said he realized his mistake when he
could not reproduce his own results by giving the drug to monkeys orally. He then realized that two vials his laboratory bought the same day must have been mislabeled: one contained Ecstasy, the other d-ethamphetamine.
Dr. Leshner had testified before Congress that Ecstasy was dangerous, and Dr. Ricaurte's critics accused him of rushing his results into print because a bill known as the Anti-Rave Act was before Congress. The act would punish club owners who knew that drugs like Ecstasy were being used at their dance gatherings.
Dr. Ricaurte yesterday called that accusation "ludicrous."
His laboratory made "a simple human error," he said. "We're scientists, not
politicians."
Asked why the vials were not checked first, he answered: "We're not chemists.
We get hundreds of chemicals here. It's not customary to check them
But scary that these morons are providing governments with information!
************************************************** ****
A leading scientific journal yesterday retracted a paper it published last year
saying that one night's typical dose of the drug Ecstasy might cause permanent
brain damage.
The monkeys and baboons in the study were not injected with Ecstasy but with a powerful amphetamine, said the journal, Science magazine.
The retraction was submitted by the team at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine that did the study.
A medical school spokesman called the mistake "unfortunate" but said that Dr. George A. Ricaurte, the researcher who made it, was "still a faculty member in good standing whose research is solid and respected."
The study, released last Sept. 27, concluded that a dose of Ecstasy a partygoer would take in a single night could lead to symptoms resembling Parkinson's disease.
The study was ridiculed at the time by other scientists working with the drug,
who said the primates must have been injected with huge overdoses.
Two of the 10 primates died of heat stroke, they pointed out, and another two were in such distress that they were not given all the doses.
If a typical Ecstasy dose killed 20 percent of those who took it, the critics
said, no one would use it recreationally.
In an interview yesterday, Dr. Ricaurte said he realized his mistake when he
could not reproduce his own results by giving the drug to monkeys orally. He then realized that two vials his laboratory bought the same day must have been mislabeled: one contained Ecstasy, the other d-ethamphetamine.
Dr. Leshner had testified before Congress that Ecstasy was dangerous, and Dr. Ricaurte's critics accused him of rushing his results into print because a bill known as the Anti-Rave Act was before Congress. The act would punish club owners who knew that drugs like Ecstasy were being used at their dance gatherings.
Dr. Ricaurte yesterday called that accusation "ludicrous."
His laboratory made "a simple human error," he said. "We're scientists, not
politicians."
Asked why the vials were not checked first, he answered: "We're not chemists.
We get hundreds of chemicals here. It's not customary to check them