ECSTASY EFFECTS 'MAY BE IMAGINARY'

LONDON, England -- An article in a British scientific journal suggests the
party drug Ecstasy may not be dangerous -- and that reported ill effects
could be imaginary.

Writing in the British Psychological Society's magazine The Psychologist,
three researchers -- two from Liverpool, England, and one from California
- -- criticised studies into the drug's effects.

Studies have reported that the tablets -- popular with young people
attending raves and nightclubs -- cause long-term brain damage and mental
problems.

But the new article criticised that research and accused researchers of
bias. The article was written by Jon Cole and Harry Sumnall of the
University of Liverpool and Charles Grob of the Harbor-UCLA Medical Center
in California.

Cole is an expert in cognitive neuroscience and Sumnall is a post-doctoral
psychopharmacologist; both work in the university's psychology department.
Grob, director of the hospital's division of child and adolescent
psychiatry, is a leading U.S. expert on child and adolescent depression and
adolescent drug use.

Their criticisms focussed on several areas of existing research:

* Ecstasy is said to affect brain cells that produce the mood-influencing
chemical serotonin. But Cole, Sumnall and Grob said any changes involved
the degeneration of nerve fibres, which can be regrown -- and not the brain
cell bodies themselves.

* Some research only reported positive results and ignored negative data,
thus minimising data that suggests Ecstasy has no long-term effects, the
authors said. "This suggests that hypotheses concerning the long-term
effects of Ecstasy are not being uniformly substantiated and lends support
to the idea that Ecstasy is not causing long-term effects associated with
the loss of serotonin," they wrote.

* Because many people participating in studies were self-selected and from
universities, the article questioned whether they truly represented the
general population. "Given the high media profile of the long-term effects
of Ecstasy, one must question whether the participants are coming forward
to confirm their fears about any adverse reactions that they may have
suffered," the authors wrote.

* Studies on animals often involved injecting them with large doses of the
Ecstasy chemical MDMA but "routinely failed to find changes in the
behaviour of MDMA-treated animals" even when there were signs of damage to
the brain, according to the article.

Surveys indicate that about 90 percent of young people in the UK regularly
attending raves or nightclubs have taken ecstasy * The authors noted that
many psychological problems started in adolescence, that Ecstasy users
often took other drugs, and that some of the reported symptoms mirrored
those caused by staying awake all night and dancing.

* Most community-based studies have failed to find a definitive
cause-and-effect relationship between Ecstasy use and associated problems,
they wrote.

* Perhaps most controversially, they suggested that Ecstasy's long-term
effects might be "iatrogenic" -- or caused by a physician's manner or
treatment. "We are concerned that the long-term effects of Ecstasy could be
iatrogenic because researchers and the media are discussing a hypothesised
cause-and-effect relationship as if it were fact," they wrote.

The article was countered by three other Ecstasy experts writing in The
Psychologist, who dismissed the idea that Ecstasy's symptoms were imaginary.

"There is strong converging evidence that Ecstasy does cause impairment,
that it is not merely iatrogenic," wrote Rodney Croft, a research fellow at
the Swinburne University of Technology in Hawthorn, Australia.

"Although conclusions drawn from such evidence cannot be infallible, I
believe that the strength of this evidence makes 'danger' the most
reasonable message for the researchers to be broadcasting."

Michael Morgan, senior lecturer in experimental psychology at the
University of Sussex in Brighton, England, said he had found "overwhelming
evidence" that regular Ecstasy use causes impulsive behaviour and impaired
verbal memory.

He said he did not believe this could be due to "some form of autosuggestion."

"It seems highly implausible to me that samples of Ecstasy users could be
sufficiently suggestible and sophisticated enough to feign such selective
neuropsychological deficits and appear cognitively unimpaired in all other
respects," he added.

Andy Parrott, a professor and addiction expert from the University of East
London, said: "The deficits are very real and cannot be explained away as
artifacts."

The article also was criticised by Paul Betts, whose daughter's death in
1995 after taking Ecstasy brought nationwide notoriety to the drug in the UK.

Between 1993 and 1997 there were 72 deaths in the UK attributed to Ecstasy.

Betts described the article as "despicable." Leah Betts died after taking
one tablet of Ecstasy on her 18th birthday. Later it was revealed that she
died as a result of drinking too much water to counteract the overheating
effects of the Ecstasy.

Between 1993 and 1997 there were 72 deaths in the UK attributed to ecstasy

"It has been proven beyond any shadow of a doubt that every single Ecstasy
tablet destroys parts of the brain. The main thing it destroys is
serotonin, and depression follows on from serotonin depletion," Betts told
the UK Press Association.

"It has reached such epidemic proportions in America that they talk of
Suicide Tuesday. That's because people who have taken Ecstasy at the
weekend are feeling so suicidal by Tuesday that they kill themselves.

"If you study experiments around the world the evidence against Ecstasy far
outweighs anything else."

However, Roger Howard, chief executive of DrugScope, an umbrella
organisation whose members include drug treatment providers and bodies
working in the criminal justice field, told PA: "This underlines previous
studies that have said much of the evidence around Ecstasy is not as
reliable as it could be.

"This reinforces the need for the UK Home Secretary David Blunkett to refer
the classification of Ecstasy to the experts on the Advisory Council on the
Misuse of Drugs, so that we can have an evidence based drugs policy that we
can all trust."