SECOND ECSTASY STUDY RETRACTED

Johns Hopkins scientists find new error involving vial mislabeled in the
first experiment.

Scientists at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine have retracted a second
study linking the drug Ecstasy to a certain type of brain damage because
once again the wrong drug was given to lab animals. Dr. Una D. McCann, a
neuroscientist involved in both experiments, said a letter of retraction was
sent Thursday to a medical journal, which she declined to identify until
editors there decide how to handle the matter.

Scientists discovered the mistake after they checked lab records to
see if methamphetamine from a mislabeled vial used in the first
experiment had been used elsewhere.

"As you might imagine, we systematically went through the books to
find out which, if any, of our published studies involved the same
[vial]," she said Thursday. "We did find one, and a letter of
retraction was sent out to the journal today."

The errors came about when a chemical supply company, Research
Triangle International of North Carolina, switched the labels of two
vials containing methamphetamine and MDMA, the active ingredient in
Ecstasy. The scientists have not found any other studies in which they
mistakenly gave methamphetamine rather than MDMA to research animals.
However, she said researchers are concerned about another possible
repercussion. Because labels on two bottles were switched, it is
possible that MDMA was accidentally given to animals instead of
methamphetamine in another experiment.

If a continued search of lab records turns up a problem of that
nature, scientists might have to issue another retraction, she said.
Last week, the journal Science released a letter of retraction in
which the Hopkins scientists admitted that they had accidentally given
methamphetamine, rather than MDMA, to squirrel monkeys and baboons in
an experiment.

That study seemed to show that MDMA damaged cells that secrete
dopamine, a brain chemical needed for normal movement. Because the
same type of brain damage occurs in people with Parkinson's disease,
the scientists suggested that Ecstasy users might be putting
themselves at risk for the devastating ailment.

Members of the research team, led by Dr. George Ricaurte, suspected a
problem when they were unable to replicate the results in other
studies. McCann, who along with Ricaurte has studied Ecstasy for about
20 years, declined to provide details about the second study, saying
only that it involved rats and was not designed to test toxicity to
dopamine cells.

The second retraction may stir up a longtime controversy over Hopkins'
Ecstasy research. Critics have charged that the scientists made too
much of their study results, concluding from scant evidence that the
drug places users at risk for long-term brain damage. Rick Doblin,
founder of an organization that favors research into the therapeutic
potential of Ecstasy, said Thursday that the researchers have been
slow to scrutinize their work's validity.

"This doesn't help their credibility and goes to the whole question of
what else they know," said Doblin, founder of the Multidisciplinary
Assn. for Psychedelic Studies.

Another group of Hopkins animal studies, not called into question by
the labeling problem, tied MDMA to the death of nerve cells secreting
serotonin, a brain chemical that regulates mood. Loss of this chemical
has been tied to depression.