IT'LL KILL YOU -- WAIT, NO IT WON'T

Let us consider the case of Dr. George Ricaurte, still a "member in good
standing" of the faculty of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
despite recent events.

Ricaurte has long been a fighter in the War Against Some Drugs. Much the
way some universities are able to find positive things to say about a drug
in studies funded by the manufacturer of that drug, so is Ricaurte able to
say negative things about recreational drugs in studies funded by the WOSD.
Science is a lot easier when you know your conclusions ahead of time.

Last year, Ricaurte issued a study saying that the amount of ecstasy
commonly taken by a user in one night could lead to permanent brain damage
and symptoms resembling those of Parkinson's disease.

The study was met with some skepticism even when it was released. According
to Donald J. McNeil, writing in the New York Times, "the study was
ridiculed at the time by other scientists working on the drug, who said the
primates (used in the study) must have been injected with massive
overdoses. Two of the 10 primates died of heatstroke, 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 used it, critics
said, no one would use it recreationally."

Yeah, word would get around. Thirty or so dead bodies at a rave -- people
would talk.

It was noted that Ricaurte's study was published just in time for him to
testify to Congress in favor of a proposed law called the Anti-Rave Act.
(Thank God there's no Anti-Rant Act, or I'd be out of a job.)

Well, now it turns out that the drug Ricaurte gave to his baboons was not
ecstasy but a powerful amphetamine called d-methamphetamine. The admission
of error was published in the journal Science.

Ricaurte called the mistake "a simple human error."

"We're scientists, not politicians," he said, and later: "We're not
chemists. We get hundreds of chemicals here. It is not customary to check
them. "

OK, slow down. Read that again. We get hundreds of chemicals in here, in
this scientific laboratory where we analyze the effect of chemicals on
primate subjects, and we do not bother to check the chemicals. Nope, we
just read the labels, get out the syringes, and hello monkey want some
whatever-this-is?

Doesn't that give you faith in science? I mean, I knew a guy in London like
that once, he'd pretty much inject anything into his body, but he died a
long time ago. Maybe there's a lesson there.

The whole thing is so loony. The government takes its usual moralistic
approach to drug research, funding projects to prove that bad drugs are
bad, and it prevents the funding of studies that do not start with any
conclusions.

It may be that drugs like ecstasy and marijuana have some medical uses.
There is already some evidence that this is true, but there's been no
follow-up because the government will not allow it. The government is
afraid of the answers, so it refuses to ask the questions.

Meantime, lapdogs like this Ricaurte dude get gazillions of dollars to
injure monkeys in various ways to prove that the people who think they are
having a good time aren't. This is medieval science, intellectually
bankrupt and breathtakingly stupid.

Why do we allow it? Because it's never the top priority. There is poverty
and hunger and disease and pollution and the death of the oceans, and a
malign administration in Washington wishing to ignore all those problems,
and there are so many hours in the day. This convulsion of superstition
could last centuries. Just say, "Oh, noooo . . ."