The only news I can find is that same Reuters report with no citations. I hate it when news agencies don't give enough information to find the original study. I don't have much faith in it without seeing their research - reporters often overinterpret results. Here's the news blurb from the Italian group (in Italian) with no citation as far as I can tell:
I couldn't find anything searching PubMed for MDMA mutagen but I did find this about cocaine, showing that this particular study found it was not a carcinogen in rats in the conditions they examined:
Time is by far the greatest mutagen, yet I don't see anyone clamoring to do something about it (unless you count cancer research).
As for the article, no citations, no researcher's names, not even a lab associated with the research - this is going on the "bullshit" pile until I get more information.
My apologies, you are correct. A quick Pubmed search shows that Mario Giusiani (from what I can tell he was the PI involved with the study) is involved in pharmocological toxicology with the vetrinanry clinic department, but beyond a paper on techniques for finding opiates in urine he doesn't work with drugz. Similar searches for George Bronzetti (the spokesman for this research) shows that he's done a ton of research in antimutagens and mutagneic effects of evironmental toxins (i.e. take samples of air and river water and check them for mutagens), but again there's a notable lack of doing anything with drugz. Interestingly enough, researchers at the same university (different department) wrote a paper where they seem to be arguing that mixing ecstasy and loud noise can cause heart failure (Abstract 1; Abstract 2).
Net result: still dubious. Waiting, like you, for the peer-reviewed paper.
Y'know, the last piece of research about MDMA that hit the news . . . it turned out that the "scientists" "accidentally" used methamphetamine. At huge doses, like usual.
I just don't trust this stuff without heavy backup anymore.
Incidentally, while I agree with the idea that in this politically-charged environment, most research on drugs should be taken with a grain of salt pending an investigation of funding sources, replication, and peer-review; it bothers me that people seem to have the idea that the study you're referring to was intentionally biased. It wasn't; it was ruined by some idiot lab-tech who mislabelled some vials. Granted, the lab-tech was probably an over-stressed, underpaid undergrad or first-year grad student; but still, he screwed up pretty royally.
I'm not going to pass judgment, but when studies on drugs are regularly intentionally biased (and I haven't got immediate examples for you, but if you look up many of the studies on MDMA and brain damage, or LSD and brain damage from 20-40 years ago, you'll find a number of suspect doses and odd subjects. I researched this, once, but it was a couple of years ago.)
Anyway, I haven't an official verdict on the "whoops, that was methamphetamine" thing, but I'm 'specting horses. Not zebras.
I'm actually not sure I think there's all that much truly intentional bias -- there's bias in that people perform experiments that they think will attract more grant money (much of which is being given by a gov't that is biased on this subject), and when the data is fuzzy they tend to regard the parts that disagree with the "desirable" results as failed trials, for similar reasons. But I definitely don't think anyone would intentionally have done something like the meth/MDMA mixup case.
Also, the primary author, Ricaurte, is somebody I'm midly familiar with -- a friend I knew from the CogSci dep't, who was more on the Neuro side of things, worked with him. I just don't see him throwing his reputation away on something so obvious. He would've known that at some stage -- peer-review, later attempts at replication, etc -- the problem would come out.
(Oh, and actually, according to the retraction letter, the mistake wasn't even inside their lab, it was made by the supplier. And they voluntarily retracted the study; the replications which revealed the problem were conducted by the same lab. Though, if you're inclined towards conspiracy theories, perhaps somebody at the supplier was being malevolent. *shrug*)
In any case... Most of the scientists I've met who study this subject really are trying to be objective; and actually, most of them favored legalization, regardless of whether the drugs were toxic. They just want to know exactly what the drugs do. (If you're a CogSci person, the interactions between drugs and physiology, and between physiology and mind, are major issues.) Very few people get rich doing univerity- or government-funded scientific research; they go into the field because they want to contribute to the grand project of the Enlightenment.
Not to belabor the point, but to go back to the horses/zebras metaphor -- basically, I think that honesty among researchers is the "horses", not the "zebras". To some degree the journals are probably filtering in favor of anti-drug articles; it's harder to publish an article on positive effects than negative. (Though I could note that it's basically conventional wisdom now that marijuana is safer for pain treatment than a lot of what's on the market.) The media and politicos spin the research to push their agendas, but most of the people doing this work really just want to know the truth; I suspect most would support DanceSafe, or any other program that educates people about the effects of drugs and, if they're going to use, how to use safely. To make a comparison: There's a big body of evidence showing that kids who have comprehensive sex ed have sex at the same, or possibly lower, rates; and by a huge margin, more of those that do, do so safely. The typical drug researcher, at least going on my admittedly non-scientific sample of three or four profs and a handful of grad students, would recognize the analogy here.
I understand why those who favor legalization, and an end to the War on Drugs that are not profit-makers for pharma corps, have a knee-jerk reaction of suspicion toward any new research that suggests something negative; but it'd be nice if we didn't start referring to "scientists" in ironic quotes. They're mostly on our side.
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 12:34 pm (UTC)Here's the news blurb from the Italian group (in Italian) with no citation as far as I can tell:
http://www.cnr.it/cnr/news/CnrNews.html?IDn=1138
I couldn't find anything searching PubMed for MDMA mutagen but I did find this about cocaine, showing that this particular study found it was not a carcinogen in rats in the conditions they examined:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9804275&dopt=Abstract
There were also some interesting reviews and such, like this one that's sort of old - 1998:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=9862186&dopt=Abstract
(whee. This is just like doing work. ;)
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 02:09 pm (UTC)As for the article, no citations, no researcher's names, not even a lab associated with the research - this is going on the "bullshit" pile until I get more information.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 02:51 pm (UTC)Net result: still dubious. Waiting, like you, for the peer-reviewed paper.
no subject
I just don't trust this stuff without heavy backup anymore.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 07:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 07:27 pm (UTC)Anyway, I haven't an official verdict on the "whoops, that was methamphetamine" thing, but I'm 'specting horses. Not zebras.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-08 11:41 pm (UTC)Also, the primary author, Ricaurte, is somebody I'm midly familiar with -- a friend I knew from the CogSci dep't, who was more on the Neuro side of things, worked with him. I just don't see him throwing his reputation away on something so obvious. He would've known that at some stage -- peer-review, later attempts at replication, etc -- the problem would come out.
(Oh, and actually, according to the retraction letter, the mistake wasn't even inside their lab, it was made by the supplier. And they voluntarily retracted the study; the replications which revealed the problem were conducted by the same lab. Though, if you're inclined towards conspiracy theories, perhaps somebody at the supplier was being malevolent. *shrug*)
In any case... Most of the scientists I've met who study this subject really are trying to be objective; and actually, most of them favored legalization, regardless of whether the drugs were toxic. They just want to know exactly what the drugs do. (If you're a CogSci person, the interactions between drugs and physiology, and between physiology and mind, are major issues.) Very few people get rich doing univerity- or government-funded scientific research; they go into the field because they want to contribute to the grand project of the Enlightenment.
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 05:47 pm (UTC)Thank you.
(Terse mode: tired.)
no subject
Date: 2003-12-09 08:05 pm (UTC)I understand why those who favor legalization, and an end to the War on Drugs that are not profit-makers for pharma corps, have a knee-jerk reaction of suspicion toward any new research that suggests something negative; but it'd be nice if we didn't start referring to "scientists" in ironic quotes. They're mostly on our side.