News (Media Awareness Project) - US MA: Wire: Deaths: Dr. Robert Byck |
| Title: | US MA: Wire: Deaths: Dr. Robert Byck |
| Published On: | 1999-08-22 |
| Source: | Associated Press |
| Fetched On: | 2008-09-05 22:55:05 |
DEATHS
ROBERT BYCK
BOSTON (AP) -- Dr. Robert Byck, a Yale Medical School brain researcher who
in 1979 gave Congress an early warning about smokable cocaine, died Aug. 9
of complications from a stroke suffered three days earlier. He was 66.
In the early 1970s, Byck and a Yale associate, Dr. J. Murdoch Ritchie, were
the first to show that the major component of marijuana --
tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC -- had a direct effect on nerve cells and was
more dangerous than previously thought.
Shortly afterward, Byck and colleagues began a study on the use of coca
paste in Peru that led him to predict a coming crisis in the use of smoked
cocaine.
In 1979, Byck told the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control
that smoking coca paste gives a very intense, and almost immediate, high.
Byck said that the United States did not have an epidemic of freebase or
coca-paste smoking but that the possibility of one strongly existed.
"We are on the brink of a dangerous drug-use phenomenon," he said. "We
should do something about it as rapidly as possible."
Robert Byck was born in Newark, N.J. He received his medical degree at the
University of Pennsylvania and joined the Yale faculty in 1969.
ROBERT BYCK
BOSTON (AP) -- Dr. Robert Byck, a Yale Medical School brain researcher who
in 1979 gave Congress an early warning about smokable cocaine, died Aug. 9
of complications from a stroke suffered three days earlier. He was 66.
In the early 1970s, Byck and a Yale associate, Dr. J. Murdoch Ritchie, were
the first to show that the major component of marijuana --
tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC -- had a direct effect on nerve cells and was
more dangerous than previously thought.
Shortly afterward, Byck and colleagues began a study on the use of coca
paste in Peru that led him to predict a coming crisis in the use of smoked
cocaine.
In 1979, Byck told the House Select Committee on Narcotics Abuse and Control
that smoking coca paste gives a very intense, and almost immediate, high.
Byck said that the United States did not have an epidemic of freebase or
coca-paste smoking but that the possibility of one strongly existed.
"We are on the brink of a dangerous drug-use phenomenon," he said. "We
should do something about it as rapidly as possible."
Robert Byck was born in Newark, N.J. He received his medical degree at the
University of Pennsylvania and joined the Yale faculty in 1969.
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