WILL PARTY DRUG ECSTASY HELP TERMINALLY ILL FACE DEATH?

WASHINGTON - The illegal club drug ecstasy can trigger euphoria among
the dance club set, but can it ease the debilitating anxiety that
cancer patients feel as they face their final days?

The Food and Drug Administration has approved a pilot study looking at
whether the recreational hallucinogen can help terminally ill patients
lessen fears, quell thoughts of suicide and make it easier to deal
with loved ones.

"End of life issues are very important and are getting more and more
attention, and yet there are very few options for patients who are
facing death," Dr. John Halpern, the Harvard psychiatrist in charge of
the study, said Monday.

The small, four-month study is expected to begin early next spring. It
will test the drug's effects on 12 cancer patients from the Lahey
Clinic Medical Center in the Boston area. The research is being
sponsored by the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic
Studies, a nonprofit group that plans to raise $250,000 to fund it.
MAPS, on its Web site, touted the study's approval, saying "the
longest day of winter has passed, and maybe so has the decades-long
era of resistance to psychedelic research."

The FDA would not comment, but this will be the second FDA-approved
study using ecstasy this year. South Carolina researchers are studying
the effects of ecstasy on 20 patients suffering from posttraumatic
stress disorder.

As well, two U.S. studies are looking at the usefulness of psilocybin
- - the active ingredient in "magic mushrooms" - in terminally ill
cancer patients and in people with obsessive-compulsive disorder. And
in the coming year, advocates hope to submit to the FDA an application
to test psilocybin and LSD as treatments for a debilitating syndrome
known as cluster headaches.

Halpern, who has done other research on the effects of hallucinogenic
drugs, said that some, when used properly, can have medical benefits.
He said that unlike LSD, ecstasy is "ego-friendly," and unlike some
pain medications it does not oversedate people. Instead, he said, it
can reduce stress and increase empathy. There are anecdotal reports,
he said, of people dying of cancer who take ecstasy and they are able
to talk to their family and friends about death and other subjects
they couldn't broach before.

"I'm hoping that we can find something that can be of use for people
in their remaining days of life," he said.

- -Information from the Associated Press and Washington Post was used in
this report.