JOHNS HOPKINS RESEARCHERS RETRACT REPORT ON ECSTASY STUDY

A team of scientists at Johns Hopkins University has retracted a widely
publicized report on the harmful health effects of the drug Ecstasy after
concluding that most of the laboratory animals in its study had mistakenly
been given a different substance.

In a retraction scheduled to be printed this week in the journal Science,
the researchers say that all but one of the 10 primates in its study were
mistakenly given methamphetamine rather than the intended drug, which is
popularly known as Ecstasy and technically referred to as
methylenedioxymethamphetamine, or MDMA.

The report in question, "Severe Dopaminergic Neurotoxicity in Primates
After a Common Recreational Dose of MDMA ('Ecstasy')" appeared in the
September 27, 2002, issue of Science, and triggered alarm and
controversy with its conclusion that recreational users of the drug might
be doing extensive damage to their brains' dopamine neurons and increasing
their risk of developing a condition similar to Parkinson's disease later
in life.

The report's findings had been based on experiments on squirrel monkeys and
baboons. The researchers said they believed that they had injected the
animals with MDMA, and only later determined that there had been a mix-up
among the laboratory's drug samples, and that all but one of the animals
had been given methamphetamine, or "speed," which is commonly linked to the
health effects found.

The researchers discovered their error when they were unable to replicate
their findings, and decided to examine the frozen brains of two animals
that had died during the experiment to determine what substance the animals
had been given, the retraction says. The retraction blames the error on the
apparent mislabeling of bottles that a chemical supplier had shipped to the
laboratory.

The researchers' report on their findings had been controversial at the
time it was published. Other scientists who had been studying MDMA said
that the animals in the Johns Hopkins study were given much larger doses of
the substance than most human users typically consume. Some critics of the
report accused its authors of trying to influence a debate in Congress over
a measure, sponsored by U.S. Sen. Joseph Biden, Democrat of Delaware,
intended to create stiff penalties for the organizers of "raves" and other
events where Ecstasy and other drugs are consumed.

The Johns Hopkins researchers denied having any political motives. Among
those who had strongly defended their findings was a Alan I. Leshner, a
former director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, which had helped
finance their work, and who is now the chief executive of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, which publishes Science.

On Sunday, the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine issued a
statement saying that it stands behind, and has no intention of taking any
action against, the report's authors: George A. Ricaurte, George
Hatzidimitriou, and Jie Yuan of the department of neurology; Brandon J.
Cord of the department of neurosciences; and Una D. McCann of the
department of psychiatry.

The statement notes that the scientists called attention to their own
mistake, and says that "the researchers' efforts to investigate conflicting
data in the laboratory are an excellent example of how science is
self-correcting."

The statement says that the research error "in no way undermines the
results of numerous previous studies performed in multiple laboratories
worldwide" demonstrating that recreational doses of MDMA may have harmful
effects on human brains.