Long Term Ecstasy Users Don't Have Brain Damage

Government backed scientists in Germany published new research this week, which failed to find any significant or lasting harm to the brains of heavy ecstasy users.

While the study of past and present heavy users (who averaged 827 and 793 pills respectively) uncovered tiny differences in SERT densities (relating to potential seratonin damage) between current and non-users, the differences disappeared altogether when former heavy users were compared to non users.

"These results were particularly interesting in that they dramatically contradict an American study done by George Ricuarte (funded by the US government) which used similar brain scan techniques and ecstasy users with a similar level of lifetime use, but which claimed to have found massive (as much as 90%) loss of SERT," said an editorial in the hugely prestigious Journal of Nuclear Medicine.

"This huge discrepancy is both unexplained and troubling, as Ricuarte's claims were used both to justify outlawing ecstasy in the US and as justification for sentencing increases," the journal added.

The authorities' favourite scientist was heavily criticised last autumn over experiments he conducted involving injecting mice with MDMA, which other experts branded 'the latest in a string of biased studies sponsored by the federal government (Washington Post)'.

"Much of the NIDA-promoted (federally funded) research record . . . suffers from serious flaws in methodological design, questionable manipulation of data, and misleading and deceptive reporting in the professional literature and to the media," said Charles Grob, a neuropsychiatrist from the University of California.
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