The Null Device

One pill can kill

Last year, scientific journal Science published a study which showed that just one dose of Ecstasy (MDMA) can cause irreversible brain damage and premature Parkinson's disease. The piece was picked up on to give impetus to laws prosecuting dance party organisers for not enforcing a drug-free environment. Now it emerges that the experiment was a sham; the substance injected into the hapless monkeys in the experiment was not MDMA but methamphetamine; the result of mislabelled test tubes. Oops! Though I bet that prohibitionist zealots and prison industry lobbyists will keep trotting this experiment out as "proof" that we need more draconian anti-drug laws, confident that the average voter isn't going to have a foolproof scorecard of just what has been discredited.

There are 3 comments on "One pill can kill":

Posted by: gjw http://the-fix.org Mon Sep 8 00:26:28 2003

Well, unfortunately most "Ecstacy" in Australia _is_ mostly meth, with a little bit of MDMA if you're lucky. Although, of course, if drugs were legal to be manufactured safely and professionally, that wouldn't be the cast.

Posted by: Graham http://grudnuk.com/ Mon Sep 8 02:10:15 2003

Pan Ecstacy!

Posted by: Ben http://leviathan.weblogs.com Tue Sep 9 05:14:49 2003

No, ban speed!