RESULTS RETRACTED ON ECSTASY STUDY

Scientists at Johns Hopkins University who last year published a
frightening and controversial report suggesting that a single
evening's use of the illicit drug ecstasy could cause permanent brain
damage and Parkinson's disease are retracting their research in its
entirety, saying the drug they used in their experiments was not
ecstasy after all.

The retraction, to be published in next Friday's issue of the journal
Science, has reignited a smoldering and sometimes angry debate over
the risks and benefits of the drug, also known as MDMA.

The drug is popular at all-night raves and other venues for its
ability to reduce inhibitions and induce expansive feelings of
open-heartedness. But some studies have indicated that the drug can at
least temporarily damage neurons that use the mood-altering brain
chemical serotonin. Some users also have spiked fevers, which rarely
have proven fatal.

Last year's research, involving monkeys and baboons, purported to show
that three modest doses of ecstasy -- the amount a person might take
in a one-night rave -- could cause serious damage to another part of
the brain: neurons that use the brain chemical dopamine.

Two of 10 animals died quickly after their second or third dose of the
drug, and two others were too sick to take the third dose. Six weeks
later, dopamine levels in the surviving animals were still down 65
percent. That led Hopkins team leader George Ricaurte and his
colleagues to conclude that users were playing Russian roulette with
their brains.

Advocates of ecstasy's therapeutic potential, including a number of
scientists and doctors who believe it may be useful in treating
post-traumatic stress disorder or other psychiatric conditions,
criticized the study. They noted that the drug was given in higher
doses than people commonly take and was administered by injection, not
by mouth. They wondered why large numbers of users were not dying or
growing deathly ill from the drug, as the animals did, and why no
previous link had been made between ecstasy and Parkinson's despite
decades of use and a large number of studies.

The answer to at least some of those questions became clear with the
retraction, which is being released by Science on Sunday evening but
was obtained independently by The Washington Post. Because of a
mislabeling of vials, the scientists wrote, all but one of the animals
were injected not with ecstasy but with methamphetamine, or "speed" --
a drug known to damage the dopamine system.

The researchers said they discovered the mistake when follow-up tests
gave conflicting results, and they offered evidence that the tubes
were mislabeled by the supplier, identified by sources as Research
Triangle Institute of North Carolina. A spokesman for the company said
last night that he did not know whether the company had erred.

The error has renewed charges that government-funded scientists, and
Ricaurte in particular, have been biased in their assessment of
ecstasy's risks and potential benefits.

Rick Doblin, president of Multidisciplinary Association for
Psychedelic Studies, a Sarasota, Fla.-based group that funds studies
on therapeutic uses of mind-altering drugs and is seeking permission
to conduct human tests of MDMA, said the evidence of serotonin system
damage is weak.

"The largest and best-controlled study of the effect of MDMA on
serotonin showed no long-term effects in former users and minimal to
no effects in current users," he said.

Una McCann, one of the Hopkins scientists, said she regretted the role
the false results may have played in a debate going on last year in
Congress and within the Drug Enforcement Administration over how to
deal with ecstasy abuse.

"I feel personally terrible," she said. "You spend a lot of time
trying to get things right, not only for the congressional record but
for other scientists around the country who are basing new hypotheses
on your work and are writing grant proposals to study this."

But she and Ricaurte emphasized last night that the retraction had not
changed their feelings about the danger of taking ecstasy.

"I still wouldn't recommend it to anybody," McCann said.