MEDICAL TEAM RETRACTS STUDY ON ECSTASY DAMAGE

A leading scientific journal on Friday retracted a paper it published
last year, which said that one night's typical dose of the drug
Ecstasy might cause permanent brain damage.

The monkeys and baboons in the study were not injected with Ecstasy
but with a powerful amphetamine, Science magazine said.

The team at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine that did the
study submitted the retraction.

A medical school spokesman called the mistake "unfortunate" but said
Dr. George Ricaurte, the researcher who made it, was "still a faculty
member in good standing whose research is solid and respected."

The study, released Sept. 27, concluded that a dose of the drug a
partygoer would take in a single night could lead to symptoms
resembling Parkinson's disease.