- 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.
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- 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.
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- Studies have reported that the tablets -- popular with
young people attending raves and nightclubs -- cause long-term brain damage
and mental problems.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Their criticisms focussed on several areas of existing
research:
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- 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.
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- Most community-based studies have failed to find a definitive
cause-and-effect relationship between Ecstasy use and associated problems,
they wrote.
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- 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.
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- The article was countered by three other Ecstasy experts
writing in The Psychologist, who dismissed the idea that Ecstasy's symptoms
were imaginary.
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- "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.
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- "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."
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- 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.
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- He said he did not believe this could be due to "some
form of autosuggestion."
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- "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.
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- 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."
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- 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.
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- Between 1993 and 1997 there were 72 deaths in the UK
attributed to Ecstasy.
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- 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.
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- "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.
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- "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.
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- "If you study experiments around the world the evidence
against Ecstasy far outweighs anything else."
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- 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.
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- "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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- http://www.cnn.com/2002/HEALTH/09/02/ecstasy.article/index.html
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