SCIENTISTS RETRACT STUDY OF ECSTASY

Wrong Drug Used in Research; Link to Brain Damage Not Proved

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, saying they used the wrong drug in
their experiments.

In a retraction, to be published in next Friday's issue of the journal
Science, the scientists say, all but one of the animals were injected not
with ecstasy but with methamphetamine, or "speed." The scientists blame
mislabeled vials.

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.

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."

The incident has reignited a smoldering and sometimes angry debate over the
risks and benefits of ecstasy, 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.

Speed is know to damage the dopamine system.